A DEER that lived in a country far from the abodes of men used to stay during the winter on some low-lying lands where she could find patches of grass growing through the cold weather, and thick coverts, also, among the evergreens, in which to hide while the fierce snow-storms were prevailing. But as soon as spring returned she left the low-lands and hastened to a mountain many miles away, and there, roaming over its wooded heights and drinking from a quiet lake that lay spread out on its very top, she stayed, rejoicing, all the summer long.

After she had been doing thus for many years, and when she was no longer young, it happened one winter that certain strange sensations crept through her frame such as she had never before known. She rose from her lair with more difficulty than formerly, and walked at times with an unsteady step. She grew weak and thin, and afraid of the storms that she used to face boldly when going forth in search of food. Then she began to wonder, and say:

“What ails me, and what do these feelings mean?”

But presently she answered:

“I know what I need: it is a drink from the lake on the mountain-top. When I can taste of it once more, these feelings will pass away.”

So she waited in her low-land home, through the cold and dreary winter days that remained, for the opening buds and singing birds of spring. As soon as these appeared she started on her journey to the mountain. But now that journey seemed longer than it used to seem. She had to rest oftener by the way. Instead of leaping from crag to crag as she ascended the mountain-side, she found herself picking out the easiest and safest paths. Still laboring on up the steep ascent, she at last reached the summit and stood beside the lake that she loved. It looked the same. The rocks around its shores were reflected in its bosom, the water-lilies floated on its surface, the trees and wild-flowers grew down to its very edge. All was as it had ever been. She said: “I shall soon be well again;” and, putting her mouth down to the water, drank. But presently she raised it slowly, saying: “Either it is changed, or I am. It does not taste as it once did, or bring the refreshment it has always before brought to my wearied frame.”

Then, turning with feeble step to the bed of moss under the thick bushes where she had so often rested in years gone by, she lay down, to rise from it no more. The fresh, pure mountain-breeze was still blowing; other deer came and drank in new life and vigor at the lake; it was as beautiful and its surroundings were as health-giving as ever; but they could not recall the life that, having reached its farther bound, had passed away.

There is a day coming when the scenes and influences that once revived our failing strength will do so no more, and their failure will be a token that to us the end of earthly things is at hand.