almost to see the white doe."

Little peace had he from that day. Whenever his wife was not there he would
call the little ones to him, and cry, "Show me the white doe and what she
did." And the children would leap and spring this way and that over the little
stream before the door, crying, "She was like this, and she did this, and this
was the way she went!"

The huntsman loved his wife and children with a deep affection, yet he began
to have a dread that there was something hidden from his eyes which he wished
yet feared to know. "Tell me," he cried one day, half in wrath, when the fever
of the white doe burned more than ever in his blood, "tell me where the white
doe lives, and why she comes, and when next. For this time I must see her, or
I shall die of the longing that has hold of me!" Then, when his wife would
give no answer, he seized his bow and arrows and rushed out into the forest,
which for a whole year had not known him, slaying all the red deer he could
find.

Many he slew in his passion, but he brought none of them home, for before the
end a strange discovery came to him, and he stood amazed, dropping the haunch
which he had cut from his last victim. "It is a whole year," he said to
himself, "that I have not tasted meat; I, a hunter, who love only the meat
that I kill!"

Returning home late, he found his wife troubling her heart over his long
absence. "Where have you been?" she asked him, and the question inflamed him
into a fresh passion.

"I have been out hunting for the white doe," he cried; "and she carries a spot
in her side where some day my arrow must enter. If I do not find her I shall