As he stood and gazed, they turned their heads away, though they still seemed to look at him with their great ears, and trotting a few steps to a smoother place, began to bound up and down in a sort of play. They seemed to have forgotten him, and the wonderful effortless way in which they would rise six or eight feet in air by a tiny toe-touch was bewildering. Yan stood fascinated by the strange play of the light-limbed, gray-furred creatures. There was no haste or alarm in their movements, he would watch them until they began to run away—till they should take fright and begin the labored straining, the vast athletic bounds, he had heard of. And it was only on noting that they were rapidly fading into the distance that he realized that _now_ they were running away, _already_ were flying for safety. Higher and higher they rose each time; gracefully their bodies swayed inward as they curved along some bold ridge, or for a long space the buff-white 'scutcheons that they bore behind them seemed hanging in the air, while these wingless birds were really sailing over a deep gully. Yan stood intensely gazing until they were out of sight, and it never once occurred to him to shoot. When they were gone he went to the place where they had begun their play. Here was one track, where was the next? He looked all around and was surprised to see a blank for fifteen feet; and then another blank, and on farther, another: then the blanks increased to eighteen feet, then to twenty, then to twenty-five and sometimes thirty feet. Each of these playful, effortless bounds covered a space of eighteen to thirty feet. Gods above! They do not run at all, they fly; and once in awhile come down again to tap the hill-tops with their dainty hoofs. [Illustration] "I'm glad they got away," said Yan. "They've shown me something to-day that never man saw before. I know that no one else has ever, ever seen it, or he would have told of it." [Illustration: Seven deer had been seen; their leader a wonderful buck.—Page 199.] II Yet when the morning came the old wolfish instinct was back in his heart. "I must away to the hills," he said, "take up the trail, and be a beast of the chase once more; my wits against their wits; my strength against their strength; and against their speed, my gun." Oh! those glorious sand-hills—an endless rolling stretch of sandy dunes, with lakes and woods and grassy lawns between. Life—life, on every side, and life within, for Yan was young and strong and joyed in powers complete, and he said, "These are the best days of my life, these are my golden days." He thought it then, and oh, how well he came to know it in the after years! [Illustration: The seasons round.]