140 THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. 



have a lurking hope that sometimes I may be 

 able to repeat the feat. I revenged myself 

 for the miss by knocking a large blue goshawk 

 out of the top of a blasted spruce, where it 

 was sitting in lazy confidence, its crop stuffed 

 with rabbit and grouse. 



A coupl of hours' hard walking brought us 

 down to timber ; just before dusk we reached 

 a favorable camping spot in the forest, be- 

 side a brook, with plenty of dead trees for 

 the night-fire. Moreover, the spot fortunately 

 yielded us our supper too, in the shape of a 

 flock of young spruce grouse, of which we 

 shot off the heads of a couple. Immediately 

 afterwards I ought to have procured our 

 breakfast, for a cock of the same kind sud- 

 denly flew down nearby ; but it was getting 

 dark, I missed with the first shot, and with 

 the second must have merely creased the neck, 

 for though the tough old bird dropped, it 

 fluttered and ran off among the underbrush 

 and escaped. 



We broiled our two grouse before our fire, 

 dragged plenty of logs into a heap beside it, 

 and then lay down to sleep fitfully, an hour 

 or so at a time, throughout the night. We 

 were continually wakened by the cold, when 

 we had to rise and feed the flames. In the 

 early morning we again started, walking for 

 some time along the fresh trail made by a 

 large band of elk, cows and calves. We 

 thought we knew exactly the trend and outlet 

 of the valley in which we were, and that there- 

 fore we could tell where the camp was ; but, 

 as so often happens in the wilderness, we 

 had not reckoned aright, having passed over 



