"Won't Madge be proud of me?" she murmured half aloud. "Ten days ago I had never fired a gun in my life. Now I have killed this poor little bunny. Beg your pardon, bunny, I never would have shot you, but we really had to have something to eat for dinner to-night. It was your life or ours."
The woods were brown and gold. A heavy frost had fallen early in the autumn. The little spot of earth through which Phyllis Alden wandered was empty of other human beings; it looked as though it might have been created for her alone.
A sudden sound in the underbrush startled Phyllis. She clutched her rifle and brought it to position. There was no further movement.
"I ought not to have come so deep into the woods alone," she thought. "I believe I am beginning to suppose that we are living in the Garden of Eden, and that there is no one alive in the world except Miss Jenny Ann and we four girls."
Phil moved on. Something stirred again. Phil felt her gaze drawn by a pair of big, soft, brown eyes that surveyed her with a fixed stare of horror. It was a wistful, penetrating gaze. Phil had never seen anything like it before.
"Who's there?" called Phil. There was no answer, and no movement in the underbrush. Phil moved cautiously toward the pair of eyes, that never ceased to stare at her. Still the figure back of them made no movement.
The underbrush was so thick that Phyllis could not possibly see what she was approaching. When she was within a short distance of it the little creature collapsed and dropped with a soft flop on the ground at her feet. It was a tiny baby fawn.
"You poor, pretty thing!" exclaimed Phil impulsively, stooping to look more closely at the fawn, which was shivering with terror and hunger. Then Phil, in spite of her lately acquired skill with the rifle, looked fearfully about her.
The girls in their long rambles through the woods had observed several times, from afar, the antlers of a red deer, with her hind grazing quietly beside her. They had never gone near enough to be in any danger. And they had seen no other animals in the woods in the daytime except the wild hare and the squirrels. Only at night the screech of the wildcats in the forests had penetrated behind the closed doors of their sleeping lodge.
Phyllis knew that a deer will seldom risk an attack, but that it will make a tremendous fight in defence of its young. Phil had no idea of being sacrificed, so she edged carefully away, gazing in every direction through the trees. There was no sign of any other deer.