Bob reflected a minute, and replied that it was ten years, if not more.
“You can see that I was but a sprig of a youngster, though I was considered unusually smart. If they had given me a gun, and I had had a chance to kneel down and aim over the rocks, I would have brought down that buck, for he couldn’t have offered a better target than at the moment I scared him away.”
“Do you suppose,” asked Tom Wagstaff, “that any deer have been over these paths within the past few weeks or months?”
By way of reply Bob stooped down and brushed away the leaves covering the space of several feet in front, doing it with great care.
“Look!” said he to the others, who kneeled beside him.
There, sure enough, were the imprints of the small, delicate hoofs of a deer, the marks being so distinct that there could be no mistake about their identity.
“But they are under the leaves,” said Jim.
“Yes; under the leaves that have fallen this year, but on top of those that fell last fall; you can see how the rotten leaves have been pushed down in the ground by the hoofs.”
“Then how long since the deer went by?”
“It is so early in the autumn that few leaves have fallen, so I’m satisfied the game passed within a few days, probably not more than a week ago.”