, I think," she said.
Then the noise drew closer and closer, and out bounded a whole pack of
hounds, with bristles erect and gleaming eyes, throwing their tongues
furiously on the line of the Cub. They flashed over the scent for
fifty yards, still yelling with all their might, and then they fell
silent and spread out in all directions. Presently they recovered the
line of the Cub, and turned back into the covert yelling louder than
ever; but meanwhile two wild puppies had crossed the scent of the Hind
and Calf and started after them as fast as they could run.

Then the Hind turned and fled and the Calf with her, as he had never
fled before; but his poor little legs began speedily to tire, and he
could not have held out for much longer, when suddenly he found
himself poked down quick as thought by his mother's nose into a tuft
of fern. "Lie still, my son, till I come back," she whispered; and so
she left him. And there he lay panting, while the voices of the
puppies came closer and closer to his hiding-place; but he never
moved, for his mother had bid him lie still. Then they rushed past him
with a wild cry, for his mother had waited to lead them after herself;
and their voices died away, and all was silent. Presently he heard a
dull sound, coming drum, drum, drum, louder and louder and louder; and
then the earth began to shake, and a huge dark body seemed to be
coming almost on to the top of him, but suddenly swerved aside just in
time, and left him unharmed. Then the drumming died away, and after a
time he heard a dismal yelping such as he had once heard before; but
he did not know that it was a man and horse that had nearly galloped
on to the top of him, and would have galloped quite on the top of him
if the horse had not shied, nor that the man had given the puppies a
thrashing for running a deer when they had been told to run a fox.

He was beginning to hope that his mother would soon come back, when he
heard two voices quite unlike any that he had ever heard before, and
saw riding towards him two people. One was a man with fair hair and
blue eyes, and a face burned brown by the sun, and the other a girl, a
year or thereabout younger than the man. She, too, had bright blue
eyes, and very fair hair, and a very pretty face--at least the man
seemed to think so, for he was always looking at it--though of course
the Calf, having never seen such creatures before, could not judge if
they were pretty or ugly. They came on