56 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCz#. 
hind a little bend. He'whispered to the rifleman, who 
sat kneeling in the bow of the boat, to take his rifle. 
But instead of doing so he picked up his two-barreled 
shot-gun. As they turned the point, there stood a 
bear not twenty yards away, drinking from the stream. 
Uncle Nathan held the canoe, while the man who had 
come so far in quest of this very game was trying to 
lay down his shot-gun and pick up his rifle. “His 
hand moved like the hand of a clock,” said Unele 
Nathan, “and I could hardly keep my seat. I knew 
the bear would see us in a moment more, and run.” - 
Instead of laying his gun by his side, where it be- 
longed, he reached it across in front of him and laid 
it upon his rifle, and in trying to get the latter from 
under it a noise was made; the bear heard it and 
raised his head. Still there was time, for as the bear 
sprang into the woods he stopped and looked back, — 
“as I knew he would,” said the guide; yet the marks- 
man was not ready. ‘By hemp! I could have shot 
three bears,” exclaimed Uncle Nathan, “ while he was 
getting that rifle to his face!” 
Poor Mr. Bull’s Eye was deeply humiliated. ‘ Just 
the chance I had been looking for,” he said, “‘ and my 
wits suddenly left me.” | 
As a hunter Uncle Nathan always took the game 
on its own terms, that of still-hunting. He even shot 
foxes in this way, going into the fields in the fall just 
at break of day, and watching for them about their 
mousing haunts. One morning, by these tactics, he 
shot a black fox ; a fine specimen, he said, and a wild 
one, for he stopped and looked and listened every few 
yards. 
He had killed over two hundred moose, a large 
number of them at night on the lakes. His method 
