244 HUNTING THE GRISLY. 



troyed the shanty. The ground was marked 

 up by its tracks, and on leaving the camp it 

 had gone along the soft earth by the brook, 

 where the footprints were as plain as if on 

 snow, and, after a careful scrutiny of the trail, 

 it certainly did seem as if, whatever the thing 

 was, it had walked off on but two legs. 



The men, thoroughly uneasy, gathered a 

 great heap of dead logs, and kept up a roaring 

 fire throughout the night, one or the other sit- 

 ting on guard most of the time. About mid- 

 night the thing came down through the forest 

 opposite, across the brook, and stayed there 

 on the hill-side for nearly an hour. They 

 could hear the branches crackle as it moved 

 about, and several times it uttered a harsh, 

 grating, long-drawn moan, a peculiarly sinister 

 sound. Yet it did not venture near the fire. 



In the morning the two trappers, after dis- 

 cussing the strange events of the last thirty- 

 six hours, decided that they would shoulder 

 their packs and leave the valley that afternoon. 

 They were the more ready to do this because 

 in spite of seeing a good deal of game sign 

 they had caught very little fur. However, it 

 was necessary first to go along the line of their 

 traps and gather them, and this they started 

 out to do. 



All the morning they kept together, picking 

 up trap after trap, each one empty. On first 

 leaving camp they had the disagreeable sen- 

 sation of being followed. In the dense spruce 

 thickets they occasionally heard a branch snap 

 after they had passed ; and now and then there 



