Incredulous and indignant, and longing to be empowered to vindicate his friend’s fair name, George seized his hat, and strode quick along the path towards the basketmaker’s cottage. As he gained the water-side, he perceived Waife himself, seated on a mossy bank, under a gnarled fantastic thorntree, watching a deer as it came to drink, and whistling a soft mellow tune,--the tune of an old English border-song. The deer lifted his antlers from the water, and turned his large bright eyes towards the opposite bank, whence the note came, listening and wistful. As George’s step crushed the wild thyme, which the thorn-tree shadowed, “Hush!” said Waife, “and mark how the rudest musical sound can affect the brute creation.” He resumed the whistle,--a clearer, louder, wilder tune,--that of a lively hunting-song. The deer turned quickly round,--uneasy, restless, tossed its antlers, and bounded through the fern. Waife again changed the key of his primitive music,--a melancholy belliny note, like the belling itself of a melancholy hart, but more modulated into sweetness. The deer arrested its flight, and, lured by the mimic sound, returned towards the water-side, slowly and statelily. “I don’t think the story of Orpheus charming the brutes was a fable; do you, sir?” said Waife. “The rabbits about here know me already; and, if I had but a fiddle, I would undertake to make friends with that reserved and unsocial water-rat, on whom Sir Isaac in vain endeavours at present to force his acquaintance. Man commits a great mistake in not cultivating more intimate and amicable relations with the other branches of earth’s great family. Few of them not more amusing than we are; naturally, for they have not our cares. And such variety of character too, where you would least expect it!” GEORGE MORLEY.--“Very true. Cowper noticed marked differences of character in his favourite hares.”