her to have wandered, and that we should use the afternoon in going back over the ground we had passed, making a better examination of it. We went back slowly, stopping to look at every log and going through every hollow, and, though there was once a shout that her trail had been struck, it proved a mistake, and our second scouring of the woods was as fruitless as the first. The sun was fast westering when we drew nigh our shanty. About four acres back of it there was a waterhole, a low wet spot which all of us had gone round, nobody deeming it possible for the child to have put foot upon it. As I looked at the black oozy muck, half floating in water, the thought struck me, the toddler could walk where a grown up person would sink, and without saying a word to the lad who was with me, I drew off my shoes and stockings, and, kilting my petticoat, stepped in. How I wrestled through I do not know, but once in I had to scramble as I best could until I reached a dry spot in the centre that was like an island, and on which there was a thicket of bushes. Daubed with muck and wringing wet, I paused when I got my footing. I heard a rustle. I was panting for breath, so exhausted that I was about to sit down for a little, but that sound revived hope in me. I peered through the bushes and saw a deer gazing at me. The creature stared, without moving, which was strange for so timid an animal. I slipped through an opening in the bushes and there, on a grassy plot, lay my Ailie asleep, crusted with muck, and with her arms clasped round the neck of a baby deer; her wee bit face black with dirt and streaked where the tears had been running down. I snatched her to my bosom and sinking down I hugged and cried over her like one demented. Oh, had you heard her joyful cry of “Mammie, mammie!” and seen her lift her bit pinched mou to mine, you would have cried with us. The deer did not stir but stood looking on, startled and wondering, while the fawn lay quietly beside me. This was a mystery, which I soon solved, for I found the fawn could not move from having a broken leg, and the faithful mother deer would not leave her young one. The shout that Ailie had been found soon brought plenty of help, and the first man that came made to kill the deer, but I prevented him and could not, ever after, bear him near me. There are savages among us who cannot see any of God’s creatures, however harmless, in a state of nature, without trying to take their lives. Sportsmen, indeed! Useless louts, who would do the country a service were they to use their powder and shot in killing one another. The fallen tree, by which the deer got across the swale to its well-hidden nest, was found, and I returned by it, carrying Ailie, while Braxton took the fawn in his arms, the deer following. There was much rejoicing at our humble shanty before our neighbors left, and many attempts to account for Ailie’s wandering to where she did. She was weak from want of food and I feared she might