It was gaining on her.Then there was a silence.Then there was a splash of the water just ahead of her, followed by a roar round the lake, the words "Confound it all!" and a rattle of the oars again.
The doe saw the boat nearing her.She turned irresolutely to the shore whence she came: the dogs were lapping the water, and howling there.She turned again to the center of the lake.
The brave, pretty creature was quite exhausted now.In a moment more, with a rush of water, the boat was on her, and the man at the oars had leaned over and caught her by the tail.
"Knock her on the head with that paddle!" he shouted to the gentleman in the stern.
The gentleman was a gentleman, with a kind, smooth-shaven face, and might have been a minister of some sort of everlasting gospel.He took the paddle in his hand.Just then the doe turned her head, and looked at him with her great, appealing eyes.
"I can't do it! my soul, I can't do it!" and he dropped the paddle.
"Oh, let her go!"
"Let H.go!" was the only response of the guide as he slung the deer round, whipped out his hunting-knife, and made a pass that severed her jugular.
And the gentleman ate that night of the venison.
The buck returned about the middle of the afternoon.The fawn was bleating piteously, hungry and lonesome.The buck was surprised.He looked about in the forest.He took a circuit, and came back.His doe was nowhere to be seen.He looked down at the fawn in a helpless sort of way.The fawn appealed for his supper.The buck had nothing whatever to give his child,--nothing but his sympathy.If he said anything, this is what he said: "I'm the head of this family; but, really, this is a novel case.I've nothing whatever for you.Idon't know what to do.I've the feelings of a father; but you can't live on them.Let us travel."The buck walked away: the little one toddled after him.They disappeared in the forest.
V
A CHARACTER STUDY
There has been a lively inquiry after the primeval man.Wanted, a man who would satisfy the conditions of the miocene environment, and yet would be good enough for an ancestor.We are not particular about our ancestors, if they are sufficiently remote; but we must have something.Failing to apprehend the primeval man, science has sought the primitive man where he exists as a survival in present savage races.He is, at best, only a mushroom growth of the recent period (came in, probably, with the general raft of mammalian fauna);but he possesses yet some rudimentary traits that may be studied.
It is a good mental exercise to try to fix the mind on the primitive man divested of all the attributes he has acquired in his struggles with the other mammalian fauna.Fix the mind on an orange, the ordinary occupation of the metaphysician: take from it (without eating it) odor, color, weight, form, substance, and peel; then let the mind still dwell on it as an orange.The experiment is perfectly successful; only, at the end of it, you haven't any mind.Better still, consider the telephone: take away from it the metallic disk, and the magnetized iron, and the connecting wire, and then let the mind run abroad on the telephone.The mind won't come back.I have tried by this sort of process to get a conception of the primitive man.I let the mind roam away back over the vast geologic spaces, and sometimes fancy I see a dim image of him stalking across the terrace epoch of the quaternary period.