Page:Bambi A Life in the Woods (1928).pdf/253

Faline looked at him and asked softly, “Do you love me still?”

“I don’t know,” Bambi answered in the same tone.

She walked silently away from him, leaving him alone.

He stood under the great oak at the meadow’s edge and peered out cautiously, drinking in the pure and odorless morning air. It was moist and fresh from the earth, the dew, the grass and the wet woods. Bambi breathed in great gulps of it. All at once his spirit felt freer than for a long time. He walked happily onto the mist-covered meadow.

Then a sound like thunder crashed.

Bambi felt a fearful blow that made him stagger.

Mad with terror, he sprang back into the thicket and kept running. He did not understand what had happened. He could not grasp a single idea. He could only keep running on and on. Fear gripped his heart so that his breath failed as he rushed blindly on. Then a killing pain shot through him, so that he felt that he could not bear it.

He felt something hot running over his