The game of hide and seek between Lightfoot the Deer and the
beautiful stranger whose dainty footprints had first started
Lightfoot to seeking her had been going on for several days and
nights when Lightfoot found something which gave him a shock.
He had stolen very softly clown to the Laughing Brook, hoping to
surprise the beautiful stranger drinking there. She wasn't to be
seen. Lightfoot wondered if she had been there, so looked in the
mud at the edge of the Laughing Brook to see if there were any
fresh prints of those dainty feet. Almost at once he discovered
fresh footprints. They were not the prints he was looking for.
No, Sir, they were not the dainty prints he had learned to
know so well. They were prints very near the size of his own big
ones, and they had been made only a short time before.
The finding of those prints was a dreadful shock to Lightfoot.
He understood instantly what they meant. They meant that a second
stranger had come into the Green Forest, one who had antlers like
his own. Jealousy took possession of Lightfoot the Deer; jealousy
that filled his heart with rage.
"He has come here to seek that beautiful stranger I have been
hunting for," thought Lightfoot. "He has come here to try to
steal her away from me. He has no right here in my Green
Forest. He belongs back up on the Great Mountain from which he
must have come, for there is no other place he could have come
from. That is where that beautiful stranger must have come from,
too. I want her to stay, but I must drive this fellow out.
I'll make him fight. That's what I'll do; I'll make him fight!
I'm not afraid of him, but I'll make him fear me."
Lightfoot stamped his feet and with his great antlers thrashed
the bushes as if he felt that they were the enemy he sought. Could
you have looked into his great eyes then, you would have found
nothing soft and beautiful about them. They became almost red with
anger. Lightfoot quivered all over with rage. The hair on the back
of his neck stood up. Lightfoot the Deer looked anything but gentle.
After he had vented his spite for a few minutes on the harmless,
helpless bushes, he threw his head high in the air and whistled
angrily. Then he leaped over the Laughing Brook and once more
began to search through the Green Forest. But this time it was
not for the beautiful stranger with the dainty feet. He had no
time to think of her now. He must first find this newcomer and he
meant to waste no time in doing it.