The hunted doe went down the “open,” clearing the fences splendidly, flying along the stony path.  It was a beautiful sight.  But consider what a shot it was!  If the deer, now, could only have been caught I No doubt there were tenderhearted people in the valley who would have spared her life, shut her up in a stable, and petted her.  Was there one who would have let her go back to her waiting-fawn?  It is the business of civilization to tame or kill.

The doe went on.  She left the sawmill on John’s Brook to her right; she turned into a wood-path.  As she approached Slide Brook, she saw a boy standing by a tree with a raised rifle.  The dogs were not in sight; but she could hear them coming down the hill.  There was no time for hesitation.  With a tremendous burst of speed she cleared the stream, and, as she touched the bank, heard the “ping” of a rifle bullet in the air above her.  The cruel sound gave wings to the poor thing.  In a moment more she was in the opening:  she leaped into the traveled road.  Which way?  Below her in the wood was a load of hay:  a man and a boy, with pitchforks in their hands, were running towards her.  She turned south, and flew along the street.  The town was up.  Women and children ran to the doors and windows; men snatched their rifles; shots were fired; at the big boarding-houses, the summer boarders, who never have anything to do, came out and cheered; a campstool was thrown from a veranda.  Some young fellows shooting at a mark in the meadow saw the flying deer, and popped away at her; but they were accustomed to a mark that stood still.  It was all so sudden!  There were twenty people who were just going to shoot her; when the doe leaped the road fence, and went away across a marsh toward the foothills.  It was a fearful gauntlet to run.  But nobody except the deer considered it in that light.  Everybody told what he was just going to do; everybody who had seen the performance was a kind of hero,—­everybody except the deer.  For days and days it was the subject of conversation; and the summer boarders kept their guns at hand, expecting another deer would come to be shot at.

The doe went away to the foothills, going now slower, and evidently fatigued, if not frightened half to death.  Nothing is so appalling to a recluse as half a mile of summer boarders.  As the deer entered the thin woods, she saw a rabble of people start across the meadow in pursuit.  By this time, the dogs, panting, and lolling out their tongues, came swinging along, keeping the trail, like stupids, and consequently losing ground when the deer doubled.  But, when the doe had got into the timber, she heard the savage brutes howling across the meadow. (It is well enough, perhaps, to say that nobody offered to shoot the dogs.)