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"I should prefer to remain where I am, naturally, but if I've been sold, I shall have to go, of course." Karr looked at Grayskin and measured him with his eyes. It was apparent that the elk was not yet full grown. He did not have the broad antlers, high hump, and long mane of the mature elk; but he certainly had strength enough to fight for his freedom.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" the dog responded. "Where are you?" "Karr, Karr! Don't you see how it falls and falls?" said Grayskin. Then Karr noticed that the pine needles kept dropping and dropping from the trees, like a steady fall of rain. "Yes, I see how it falls," he cried, and ran far into the forest in search of the elk.
"It was you who taught me that the elk are one with the forest," said Grayskin, and so saying he parted from Karr. The dog went home alone; but this talk with Grayskin troubled him, and the next morning he returned to the forest to seek him, but Grayskin was not to be found, and the dog did not search long for him. He realized that the elk had taken the snake at his word, and had gone into exile.
"Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me the name of this place, Mrs. Brown Owl, and what sort of folk live here." That evening, as on all other evenings, the owl had perched on a rung of the big ladder propped against the roof, from which she had looked down toward the gravel walks and grass plots, watching for rats. Very much to her surprise, not a single grayskin had appeared.
Grayskin had lived for five summers on the game-keeper's place, when his owner received a letter from a zoölogical garden abroad asking if the elk might be purchased. The master was pleased with the proposal, the game-keeper was distressed, but had not the power to say no; so it was decided that the elk should be sold.
"They won't stop till all our forests are destroyed!" sighed the people, who were in great despair, and could not enter the forest without weeping. Karr was so sick of the sight of all these creeping, gnawing things that he could hardly bear to step outside the door. But one day he felt that he must go and find out how Grayskin was getting on.
"I don't know how they manage it, but, large and heavy as they are, they can walk here without sinking. Of course you couldn't hold yourself up on such dangerous ground, but then there is no occasion for you to do so, for you will never be hounded by hunters." Grayskin made no retort, but with a leap he was out on the marsh, and happy when he felt how the clods rocked under him.
"One can see that he has been in captivity all his life," thought Karr, but said nothing. Karr left and did not return to the grove till long past midnight. By that time he knew Grayskin would be awake and eating his breakfast. "Of course you are doing right, Grayskin, in letting them take you away," remarked Karr, who appeared now to be calm and satisfied.
"Water-snakes always like to pretend that they know more than other creatures." When Karr was ready to go home, Grayskin accompanied him part of the way. Presently Karr heard a thrush, perched on a pine top, cry: "There goes Grayskin, who has destroyed the forest! There goes Grayskin, who has destroyed the forest!"
Shortly after that they met the four old elk Crooked-Back, Antler-Crown, Rough-Mane, and Big-and-Strong, who were coming along slowly, one after the other. "Well met in the forest!" called Grayskin. "Well met in turn!" answered the elk. "We were just looking for you, Grayskin, to consult with you about the forest."
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