THE LITTLE LOVER. 29 



over the lizard. He was grazing quietly near 

 where I sat under the wren tree, when he sud- 

 denly threw up his head. His ears pointed for- 

 ward, his eyes grew excited, and as he gazed his 

 head rose higher and higher. I jumped from the 

 ground and put my hand on the pommel ready to 

 spring into the saddle. As I did so, across the 

 field I caught a glimpse of a great fawn-colored 

 animal with a white tip to its tail, bounding 

 through the brush — a deer ! Then I heard 

 voices through the trees and saw the red shawl 

 of a woman in a wagon rumbling up the road 

 the deer must have crossed. 



When Mountain Billy and I pulled ourselves 

 together and started after the deer, the poor horse 

 was so unstrung he made snakes of all the sticks 

 he saw and shied at all imaginable bugaboos along 

 the way. We were too late to see the deer again, 

 but found the marks of its hoofs where it had 

 jumped a ditch and sunk so deep in the fine sand 

 on the other side that it had to take a great leap 

 to recover itself. 



The sight of the deer made Billy as nervous as 

 a witch for days. Every time we went to visit 

 the wrens he would stand with eyes glued to the 

 spot where it had appeared, and when a jack-rab- 

 bit came out of the brush with his long ears up, 

 Billy started as if he thought it would devour 

 him. I was perplexed by his nervousness at first, 

 but after much pondering reasoned it out, to my 



