SOME NATURAL HISTORY 
259 
hurried back, and there lay a little oribi only a few 
hours old and with big, wondering eyes that looked 
gravely up at me as I bent over it. It was plenty 
old enough to run and could easily have leaped 
away, but there it lay as tight as if nothing in the 
world could make it budge. 
The whole thing was as plain as could be. It was 
acting under instructions. I could almost hear the 
mother of the oribi tell the little one when it heard 
us coming to lay perfectly quiet and not to move 
the least bit until she came back. Then mamma hur¬ 
ried away to cover. The little oribi remembered his 
instructions and followed them out to the letter. Its 
mamma had told it not to move and it hadn’t. We 
looked at it a little while and then said good-by and 
went our way. Some place near by an anxious 
mother oribi was watching us with her heart in her 
mouth, no doubt, and I’m sure that we had not gone 
many yards before she was back to see what had 
happened to the little one. It was quite an exciting 
adventure for the little oribi and quite incompre¬ 
hensible to the mother that he had emerged from 
the peril so safely. 
Another night I was going out to watch for 
lions. A bait had been placed near the tree where I 
was stationed and I had some hopes of seeing, if 
not killing, a lion. Night had already fallen, but 
there was still a trace of twilight in the air as I 
walked through the low scrub trees that lay between 
our camp and the tree, a mile and a half away. As 
I was walking along I heard a loud screaming to 
