Suddenly the old dog raises his head, and utters a short half angry note:
slowly and carefully he rises, disengaging himself gently from the form of
the sleeping girl, and stands forth in the full light of the moon. It is an
open cleared space, that mound beneath the pine-tree; a few low shrubs and
seedling pines, with the slender waving branches of the late-flowering
pearly tinted asters, the elegant fringed gentian, with open bells of
azure blue, the last and loveliest of the fall flowers and winter-greens,
brighten the ground with wreaths of shining leaves and red berries.
Louis is on the alert, though as yet he sees nothing. It is not a full free
note of welcome, that Wolfe gives; there is something uneasy and half angry
in his tone. Yet it is not fierce, like the bark of angry defiance he
gives, when wolf, or bear, or wolverine is near.
Louis steps forward from the shadow of the pine branches, to the edge of
the inclined plane in the foreground. The slow tread of approaching steps
is now distinctly heard advancing--it may be a deer.
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