From the briers he had sighted the buck. It was all aquiver, snorting and twitching its ears. Doby hid behind a buckeye and softly shinned into the first crotch lest the restless beast should turn and charge in his direction.
"I'd like to know what is the matter with the buck," thought Doby. "It is watching something that makes it half curious and half afraid."
The boy stared into the glen before him until his eyes became accustomed to the shadows--until he saw what the buck saw. When he did see he almost fell out of the tree with astonishment. He looked again. He shut his eyes; he opened them; stared some more; he blinked; then he gazed fixedly.
"No wonder the buck is nervous," gasped Doby. "I'm s'prised myself," and still he looked and could not believe that he saw what he really did see.
For there on a log, in the shade of an elm, sat a gnome--a big gnome.
Doby was perfectly willing to be entertained by ghosts and fairies in the gossip of the river towns. He liked such stories. But he knew, of course, that there are no such things as wraiths and sprites. Even on a fairy isle there could not possibly be a gnome.
"I feel dreadfully queer to be looking at him when I know he isn't there," and something inside of Doby began to turn round and round.
The gnome, all of a faded bark color like the earth he grubbed in, sat with his feet crossed, his thin arms akimbo, his beard hanging in a point down his breast, and his hair tied in a wad on his head so that it had a shape something of a peaked-cap style.
He was motionless. He was not a crooked stump. He was not a gnarled branch. He was alive! Laughter was running out of his mouth like cider gurgling from a jug. Between chuckles, his soft, clear voice was scolding the buck.
"Now, Mr. Red Deer," he was saying, "this is the third time I have caught you trying to break down the brush barricade and nipping at my seedling apple-trees. Don't you know that seedlings can never grow up to be trees and bear fruit if you tear the fence and reach over and bite their heads off?"
The deer was so inquisitive about the quaint, still figure with the soothing voice, that it advanced and retreated as if in fascination, while the voice flowed on: "How can you be so greedy, Mr. Deer? I'm ashamed of you. I'll have to carry away the seedlings so you can't get them. I'll plant them in neat orchard rows for a farmer I know."