He had not long to wait. The wild voice sounded
again and again, so insistently, so appealingly that the Child became
greatly excited over it. The sound was something between the bleat of
an extraordinary, harsh-voiced kid and the scream of a badly frightened
mirganser, but more penetrating and more strident than either.
"Oh, it's frightened, Uncle Andy!" exclaimed the Child. "What do you
think it is? What does it want? Let's go and see if we can't help it!"
The pipe was drawing all right now, because Uncle Andy had made up his
mind.
"It's nothing but a young fawn--a baby deer," he answered. "Evidently
it has got lost, and it's crying for its mother. With a voice like
that it ought to make her hear if she's anywhere alive--if a bear has
not jumped on her and broken her neck for her. Ah! there she comes,"
he added, as the agitated bellowing of a doe sounded from further back
in the woods. The two cries answered each other at intervals for a
couple of minutes, rapidly nearing. And then they were silent.
The Child heaved a sigh of relief.
"I'm so glad he found his mother again!" he murmured. "It must be
terrible to be lost in the woods--to be _quite_ alone, and not know,
when you cried, whether it would be your mother or a bear that would
come running to you from under the black trees!"
"I agree with you," said Uncle Andy, with unwonted heartiness.
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