Seeing his mother go for the woods, her spotted fawn, which had been
frolicking among the branches of the fallen spruce-tree, skipped from
it, passed Dol with a bound which carried him a few feet, and
disappeared like a whiff too.

Here was a rouser, indeed, which no boy, unless he was in a far-gone
state of suffering, could withstand. Dol Farrar forgot his terrible
predicament. The fog had cleared away from his senses, leaving him free
to think and act once more.

"Well, I never!" he ejaculated, springing to his feet in amazement.
"Wasn't she a beauty? And wasn't she a snorter? I didn't think a deer
could make such a row as that. And to stand still and stare at me! I
wonder whether she took me for some new-fashioned sort of animal or a
gray old stump."

It was a few minutes before he again thought of his plight, and then he
was not overcome. He stood perfectly still, trying to review the
position coolly, and to get a tight grip of his feelings, so that terror
might not again master him.

"I'm in a worse scrape than I ever dreamt of," he muttered, puckering
his forehead to do some tall thinking. "And I must do something to get
out of it. But what? That's the question.

"I wonder if I loaded this 'ole fuzzee,'"--the lad was making a valiant
effort to cheer himself by being jocular,--"and blazed away with it for
a while like mad, whether there is any human being around who would hear
me. Some fellow might be hunting or trapping in this part of the forest,