Page:Bambi A Life in the Woods (1928).pdf/258

felt his strength ebbing for the second time.

“You’re bleeding again,” said the old stag, “I thought you would. But it’s only a little,” he added in a whisper, “and it doesn’t make any difference now.”

They walked very slowly through a grove of lofty beeches. The ground was soft and level. They walked easily on it. Bambi felt a longing to lie down there, to stretch out and never move his limbs again. He couldn’t go any further. His head ached. There was a humming in his ears. His nerves were quivering, and fever began to rack him. There was a darkness before his eyes. He felt nothing but a desire for rest and a detached amazement at finding his life so changed and shattered. He remembered how he had walked whole and uninjured through the woods that morning. It was barely an hour ago, and it seemed to him like some memory out of a distant, long-vanished past.

They passed through a scrub-oak and dogwood thicket. A huge, hollow beech trunk, thickly entangled with the bushes, lay right in front of them, barring the way.

“Here we are,” Bambi heard the old stag say-