How Animals Talk 



or new deer-paths offered every one of them safe 

 footing. 



At first these game-trails puzzled me com- 

 pletely, being so many and so pointless. That 

 they were in constant use was evident from the 

 footprints in them, which were renewed almost 

 every morning; yet I never once saw a deer 

 approach the water to drink or feed. Something 

 else attracted them; a highway from one feeding- 

 ground to another, it might be, or the wider out- 

 look which brings deer and caribou out of their 

 dim woods to sightly places; but there was no 

 certainty in the matter until the animals them- 

 selves revealed the secret. One day, when a 

 young buck passed my hiding-place as if he were 

 going somewhere, I followed him to the upper 

 or southern end of the pond. There he joined 

 four other deer, which were very busy about a 

 certain spot, half hidden by low bushes, a couple 

 of hundred yards back from the shore. And there 

 they stayed, apparently eating or drinking, for a 

 full half-hour or more. 



When the deer were gone away, I went over and 

 found a huge spring, to which converged a dozen 

 deep trails. Like the hub of an immense wheel it 

 seemed: the radiating paths were the spokes, and 

 somewhere beyond the horizon was the unseen 

 rim. From the depths of the spring came a sur- 



[260! 



