4 THE HIND LISTENING 



not concerned about me — she was wholly occupied 

 with the wood and the sounds that came to her 

 from it, which my less acute hearing failed to catch, 

 although the wind blew from the wood to us. 



Undoubtedly the sounds she was listening to were 

 important or interesting to her. On putting my 

 binocular on her so as to bring her within a yard of 

 my vision, I could see that there was a constant 

 succession of small movements which told their tale 

 — a sudden suspension of the cud-chewing, a stiffen- 

 ing of the forward-pointing ears, or a slight change 

 in their direction; little tremors that passed over 

 the whole body, alternately lifting and depressing 

 the hairs of the back — which all went to show that 

 she was experiencing a continual succession of little 

 thrills. And the sounds that caused them were no 

 doubt just those which we may hear any summer day 

 in any thick wood with an undergrowth — the snap- 

 ping of a twig, the rustle of leaves, the pink-pink 

 of a startled chaffinch, the chuckle of a blackbird, 

 or sharp little quivering alarm -notes of robin or 

 wren, and twenty besides. 



It was evident that the deer could not see anything 

 except just what I saw — the close wood a couple of 

 hundred yards away from us on the other side of a 

 grassy expanse; nor did she require to see anything; 

 she was living in and knew the exact meaning of 

 each and every sound. She was like the dog as we 

 are accustomed to see it in repose, sitting or lying 

 down, with chin on paws, seemingly dozing, but awake 

 in a world of its own, as we may note by the perpetual 



