shoot Comanche women and children in their winter villages.  These little paths are full of pitfalls among the roots and stones; and, nimble as the deer is, he sometimes breaks one of his slender legs in them.  Yet he knows how to treat himself without a surgeon.  I knew of a tame deer in a settlement in the edge of the forest who had the misfortune to break her leg.  She immediately disappeared with a delicacy rare in an invalid, and was not seen for two weeks.  Her friends had given her up, supposing that she had dragged herself away into the depths of the woods, and died of starvation, when one day she returned, cured of lameness, but thin as a virgin shadow.  She had the sense to shun the doctor; to lie down in some safe place, and patiently wait for her leg to heal.  I have observed in many of the more refined animals this sort of shyness, and reluctance to give trouble, which excite our admiration when noticed in mankind.

The deer is called a timid animal, and taunted with possessing courage only when he is “at bay”; the stag will fight when he can no longer flee; and the doe will defend her young in the face of murderous enemies.  The deer gets little credit for this eleventh-hour bravery.  But I think that in any truly Christian condition of society the deer would not be conspicuous for cowardice.  I suppose that if the American girl, even as she is described in foreign romances, were pursued by bull-dogs, and fired at from behind fences every time she ventured outdoors, she would become timid, and reluctant to go abroad.  When that golden era comes which the poets think is behind us, and the prophets declare is about to be ushered in by the opening of the “vials,” and the killing of everybody who does not believe as those nations believe which have the most cannon; when we all live in real concord,—­perhaps the gentle-hearted deer will be respected, and will find that men are not more savage to the weak than are the cougars and panthers.  If the little spotted fawn can think, it must seem to her a queer world in which the advent of innocence is hailed by the baying of fierce hounds and the “ping” of the rifle.

Hunting the deer in the Adirondacks is conducted in the most manly fashion.  There are several methods, and in none of them is a fair chance to the deer considered.  A favorite method with the natives is practiced in winter, and is called by them “still hunting.”  My idea of still hunting is for one man to go alone into the forest, look about for a deer, put his wits fairly against the wits of the keen-scented animal, and kill his deer, or get lost in the attempt.  There seems to be a sort of fairness about this.  It is private assassination, tempered with a little uncertainty about finding your man.  The still hunting of the natives has all the romance and danger attending the slaughter of sheep in an abattoir.  As the snow gets deep, many deer congregate in the depths of the forest, and keep a place trodden down,