I did not understand till long afterwards, when I had watched the fawns many times, how important is this latter suggestion. One who follows a frightened deer and sees or hears him go bounding off at breakneck pace over loose rocks and broken trees and tangled underbrush; rising swift on one side of a windfall without knowing what lies on the other side till he is already falling; driving like an arrow over ground where you must follow like a snail, lest you wrench a foot or break an ankle,-- finds himself asking with unanswered wonder how any deer can live half a season in the wilderness without breaking all his legs. And when you run upon a deer at night and hear him go smashing off in the darkness at the same reckless speed, over a tangled blow-down, perhaps, through which you can barely force your way by daylight, then you realize suddenly that the most wonderful part of a deer's education shows itself, not in keen eyes or trumpet ears, or in his finely trained nose, more sensitive a hundred times than any barometer, but in his forgotten feet, which seem to have eyes and nerves and brains packed into their hard shells instead of the senseless matter you see there. Watch the doe yonder as she bounds away, wig-wagging her heedless little one to follow. She is thinking only of him; and now you see her feet free to take care of themselves. As she rises over the big windfall, they hang from the ankle joints, limp as a glove out of which the hand has been drawn, yet seeming to wait and watch. One hoof touches a twig; like lightning it spreads and drops, after running for the smallest fraction of a second along the obstacle to know whether to relax or stiffen, or rise or fall to meet it. Just before she strikes the ground on the down plunge, see the wonderful hind hoofs sweep themselves forward, surveying the ground by touch, and bracing themselves, in a fraction of time so small that the eye cannot follow, for the shock of what lies beneath them, whether rock or rotten wood or yielding moss. The fore feet have followed the quick eyes above, and shoot straight and sure to their landing; but the hind hoofs must find the spot for themselves as they come down and, almost ere they find it, brace themselves again for the push of the mighty muscles above. Once only I found where a fawn with untrained feet had broken its leg; and once I heard of a wounded buck, driven to death by dogs, that had fallen in the same way never to rise again. Those were rare cases. The marvel is that it does not happen to every deer that fear drives through the wilderness.