“Lass, you mus’na cry,” said the old woman gently. “If she gangs awa’ it wull be God’s good pleasure. If she bides ’twull be His mercy. We wull hope and pray for the best, Glossie.”
When Gloss sought the wood a white, sweet-scented mist was rising from the leafy carpet where a thin veil of snow had rested. The low calls of the feathered denizens of the Wild sounded mellow and indistinct from the soft-wood swales, for the sky was changing to the slate-blue of eventide. Down in the stumpy potato-patch Boy and Big McTavish were busily engaged in turning the snowy tubers out of the black soil.
Gloss skirted the patch, keeping a thicket between her and the workers, and passed on southward until she reached a wide ridge of giant beech trees, whose long outstretched arms were fruited with the toothsome nuts which the first frost of autumn would send in a shower to the earth.
Black and red squirrels were busy among the trees, garnering their winter’s food. They worked noisily, chattering and scolding. They were a busy little body of workers, and they could not afford to pay much attention to the wood-nymph whom they had become accustomed to see in their kingdom. The old-time restfulness and happiness had stolen back to the heart of the girl. Her great eyes were alive with life and joy, and she passed on, humming a merry tune to herself, drinking in the golden beauty, the songs, and the scents of nature.
Beyond a tangled clump of trees Gloss came unexpectedly upon another creature of the wood. A young doe was browsing among the tender shoots of the brush-pile, and at the girl’s soft footsteps it lifted its shapely head and stood quivering, its nostrils dilated and its sides heaving. And so the two animals of the Wild gazed at each other with a deep and growing wonder.
Nature had built those two after the same fashion. Both were slender and graceful; both were alert and watchful; both possessed long-lashed eyes; both were wild, free, and beautiful.
The doe stood with her slender muzzle lifted, her sensitive lips a-tremble, her humid eyes fastened upon the girl of the forest, who, instinctively, she felt, would do her no harm.
For a moment the two creatures stood gazing at each other. The doe reached forward timidly and plucked another mouthful of the juicy twigs, then with a sudden start leaped into the thicket on the right.
Gloss turned quickly. A little man with a small face fringed with whiskers, and light-blue eyes blinking from beneath a coon-skin cap, stepped out from behind a tree and lowered the hammer of his long rifle.
“Jinks and ironwood!” he ejaculated; “you stud right in my way, Glossie. I’d o’ had that doe sure pop if I hadn’t been a trifle timid about hittin’ you.”