208 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
for many miles, and having less fear of man than 
his fellows in whose company he often traveled, 
and knowing, also, how good certain domestic 
products are to eat, such as apples, beet tops, the 
tips of young string bean vines, and succulent 
Swiss chard, he not infrequently came out of the 
woods into fields and orchards, just as the dawn 
was reddening, or even trod softly into the very 
gardens and nibbled what he liked best. It was 
he, I always thought, who came into my garden 
one morning, after a rain, so that the ground was 
soft and he left deep prints with his sharp hoofs, 
and ate the tops off an entire row of beets. He 
touched nothing else, stepping daintily through 
the strawberry bed without treading on a single 
vine. It took the beets the rest of the season to 
make new tops, and we never did get any roots 
from them. But I treasure no grudge. I don’t 
particularly like beets. 
However, the next authentic record we have of 
OY Buck was, as I say, two years and a half after 
his escape, and the circumstances were dramatic. 
Drama, you may recall, has been defined by Bru- 
netiére as a “ clash of wills,” a contest of contend- 
