One day he placed the bowl just a few steps’ distance from his seat, almost at the threshold of the hut, shooing away the cat that was intent on getting his share of the milk. The hind soon approached calmly, drank the milk and peered inquisitively inside. He was keeping dead still, watching her, but when he saw her so close, glossy and palpitating, he was overcome by the desire to touch her and reached out his hand. She leapt, all four dainty legs leaving the ground, her muzzle dripping milk, and fled. But she came back, and from then on he refrained from attempting to lay a hand on her again.

By now he had come to know her ways, and was confident that she would eventually stay with him of her own free will. There is no more sweet-tempered and sociable creature than a young hind. As a boy he had kept one that had taken to following him around wherever he went, and to sleeping next to him at night.

So as to better attract his new friend and keep her with him all day without using force of any kind, he had the idea of searching for a litter of fawns, taking one and tying it next to the hut so that, on seeing a potential companion, she would yield more readily to being domesticated. But no matter how much he searched, his plan was not easily achieved: one needed to head towards the mountains, to the lower slopes of the Gonare itself, in order to find fawns – and he was unaccustomed to hunting. He found nothing but a crow with one damaged wing, flapping the other pitifully in a vain attempt to fly off. He took it in to look after, holding it tight to his chest; but when the hind caught sight of him with that ugly bird she fled without ever coming close. She must have been jealous. So the old man hid the crow behind the herds: his servant found it and took it to town to give to some lads who were acquaintances of his, and retorted when his master rebuked him for it – ‘If you don’t keep quiet, I’ll lasso that hind as well, and sell it to some out-of-luck hunter.’

‘If you so much as touch her, I swear on the cross I’ll break every rib in your body.’

‘You?’ laughed the lout. ‘You and who else? What are you good for anyway? For supping on bread and honey, that’s what!’

That day, after the servant and the dealer had left, the old man waited in vain for the hind. Night was falling, and even the sound of the rustling wind made no impression on the silence of the misty evening. The old man was overcome with sadness. He had no doubt that the servant had got a rope around the creature and dragged it to town.

‘You see, if you had only let yourself be caught! You see, if you had only stayed here with me!’ he grumbled, sitting before the fire in his hut, while the cat lapped the milk from the bowl, oblivious to his master’s sorrow. ‘Now they will have tied you up, they will have butchered you. This too was your fate …’