"Who is the White Phantom?" asked my young master eagerly.
He sat on a rug beside Mrs. Devering. I was just behind under some alders and occasionally I thrust my head through the curtain of Virginia creeper and my young master handed me a bit of whatever he was eating.
"She is that rare thing, a white doe," said Mrs. Devering. "Hunters shot her mother, and the warden brought her up. She is like a beautiful dog and comes home every night. You must see the hurdles the warden taught her to jump over."
"Why can't the soldier stay here and finish his supper?" said Dallas. "Can't he hear her coming?"
Big Chief, who sat the other side of his mother, had his mouth stuffed with egg salad, but he managed to open it long enough to say scornfully, "Hear a deer!"
"No, he couldn't hear her," said Mrs. Devering. "Wild creatures, no matter how tame, don't care for strangers. She would not like our being here and would stay in the bush until we left."
My young master had given me so many tid-bits and also having nibbled some grass on my own account, I was no longer hungry, so I backed into the sweet green undergrowth and then slipped softly after the soldier when he went languidly up the path to the road and over it back of the house.
He was whistling at intervals as he went. First a low musical chuck, then a liquid "Puit-puit," a song that was both flute-like and bell-like, and so natural that a hermit-thrush, thinking it was her mate, began to pipe back to him.
When we got on the hill back of the house, I saw a little brushwood shelter, and beyond it the warden's wide grass belt that in case of a forest fire would prevent the flames from reaching his pretty house.
At intervals along the grassy clearing, were placed high movable frames made of interlaced twigs and sticks. This was evidently the doe's race-track. They were pretty high hurdles and absolutely beyond a Shetland-Arabian pony. How I wished I might see her take them.