" _Bla-a-a, blr-r-t_, "I can't; come here." _Ka-a-a-h,
ka-a-a-h!_ "danger, follow!"--and then the crash of brush as she
rushed away followed by the second fawn, whom she must save, though she
abandoned the heedless one to prowlers of the night.
It was clear enough what had happened. The cries of the wilderness all
have their meaning, if one but knows how to interpret them. Running
through the dark woods his untrained feet had missed their landing, and
he lay now under some rough windfall, with a broken leg to remind him
of the lesson he had neglected so long.
I was stealing along towards him, feeling my way among the trees in the
darkness, stopping every moment to listen to his cry to guide me, when
a heavy rustle came creeping down the hill and passed close before me.
Something, perhaps, in the sound--a heavy, though almost noiseless,
onward push which only one creature in the woods can possibly make--
something, perhaps, in a faint new odor in the moist air told me
instantly that keener ears than mine had heard the cry; that Mooween
the bear had left his blueberry patch, and was stalking the heedless
fawn, whom he knew, by the hearing of his ears, to have become
separated from his watchful mother in the darkness.
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