Moose Calling 95 



dying mass, which the faltering legs strive to the 

 last to support, like the failing knees and ankles of 

 that dying gladiator, the real not the false one, at 

 Naples. Indians are the most marvellous trackers 

 in the world. Are they ? I would rather have an 

 Australian black fellow with me now than the keenest- 

 sighted Rouge that ever wore moccasins. Still on, 

 I watching the bushes for a glimpse of the great 

 head, Noel watching the track ; and he touches me 

 with one hand, and almost touches the dead moose 

 with the other. 



' Poor fellow ! there he lies, so quiet, so calm, 

 perfectly composed in every limb, almost graceful 

 now just as the warm life died out of him, without 

 spasm or struggle. What a strange look of ironical, 

 sarcastic resignation there is in those deep cup lips, 

 drawn up at the corners by the last thought that 

 passed through the subtle brain ! ' 



(I add another bit of description from an almost 

 indecipherable MS. note.) * There is something 

 wonderfully eerie about this moose calling, not 

 ghostly exactly ; your foreign clank'm chains, or the 

 little old lady with the powdered hair and the white 

 satin petticoat, would be terribly out of place here ; 

 they'd catch their deaths of cold — thought the 

 willis might suit us, but eerie ; and this feeling 

 comes, I verily believe, from a lurking consciousness 

 that one is playing, and playing a deadly game with 

 love, a lurking consciousness that it is somehow not 

 quite lawful ; on ne badine pas avec r amour — as with 



