The Land of the Muskeg 295 



For five minutes the massive dark figure 

 stands under the larch, chewing his cud ; 

 then slowly he turns, for all of his motions 

 are slow, and fades into the gray gloom 

 from whence he came, a shade among the 

 shadows, the silent reproachful ghost of the 

 Thundering Herd. 



On the same day and almost the same 

 hour that we last glimpsed old Buck in the 

 Land of the Muskeg, a scene was being 

 enacted a thousand or more miles to the 

 south, upon a Kansas homestead, that con- 

 nected the forlorn old buffalo with ties of 

 peculiar tenderness to the past. 



Two stalwart young men, Benjamin and 

 Thomas Anderson, aged twenty-five and 

 twenty-three years respectively, are carrying 

 a wrinkle-faced, rusty-coated old dog out 

 on the lawn and laying him down beside a 

 newly-dug grave. 



It needs but a glance at the anxious gray- 

 haired face of the dog to assure you that he 



