IN THE OPEN |[ 



and is evidence of the redeeming power of the 

 heart. There is a rare pleasure in encountering 

 deer when you have no designs upon them. Such 

 furtive meetings are in themselves adequate. They 

 have the fascination of lovely faces seen for a 

 fleeting moment in a crowd, instantly to be lost 

 sight of. How little we really know about the 

 lives' of animals. We can surmise a few things and 

 imagine a great many, but we know next to 

 nothing. Perhaps there is not so very much to 

 know. Their emotions are not complex but simple ; 

 their lives run in narrow grooves. That they suffer, 

 much as we suffer, is certain, and the main thing 

 is to be kind. It is impossible to come upon 

 a wild animal and watch it unobserved without 

 deriving a subtle impression foreign to our usual 

 life. There is something in the free, savage exist- 

 ence which is a shock to the thought-burdened, 

 educated mind, and breaks for a moment its prison 

 of glass. 



A glen to which I often go is, like most others 

 in the sequestered woods, really populous, while 

 being to all appearances quite deserted. Its in- 

 habitants are closely associated with the brook; 

 they drink at it and all their lives hear its song. 



138 



