A Dead-water Vigil 



Conching, head on ground, with cat-like watch. 



—As You Like It. 



YiGiLS, as the reader is doubtless aware, may be of 

 all sorts and sizes, and I will now try to entertain him 

 with a short story of a long one. It is of the " dead- 

 water " variety, and if he hasn't had enough hunting 

 experience to know exactly what a " dead-water " is, I 

 will tell him. In a big-game country when a stream 

 widens out to several times its normal breadth and 

 then flows so lazily that the current is almost imper- 

 ceptible, that part of the stream is known to the 

 hunter as a " dead-water." It is a place full of attrac- 

 tion for him, and for the best of reasons. Its banks 

 are usually covered with a growth of rich grasses and 

 low bushes, while near the shore various plants of the 

 lily-tribe lift themselves above the water and nod their 

 tops to the breeze. If the location be secluded, as it 

 generally is, and there be enough growing timber 

 around it to safely shelter the approach of the moose 

 and the deer, the hunter is pretty sure to find their 

 tracks along the shore and in the soft clinging mud. 

 Such a place is a veritable paradise for these shy crea- 

 tures. Here the antlered moose delights to spend his 



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