444 The Wilderness Hunter. 



men rolled up in their blankets, and went to sleep under 

 the lean-to. 



At midnight Bauman was awakened by some noise, 

 and sat up in his blankets. As he did so his nostrils were 

 struck by a strong, wild-beast odor, and he caught the 

 loom of a great body in the darkness at the mouth of the 

 lean-to. Grasping his rifle, he fired at the vague, threat- 

 ening shadow, but must have missed, for immediately 

 afterwards he heard the smashing of the underwood as the 

 thing, whatever it was, rushed off into the impenetrable 

 blackness of the forest and the night. 



After this the two men slept but little, sitting up by 

 the rekindled fire, but they heard nothing more. In the 

 morning they started out to look at the few traps they had 

 set the previous evening and to put out new ones. By an 

 unspoken agreement they kept together all day, and 

 returned to camp towards evening. 



On nearing it they saw, hardly to their astonishment, 

 that the lean-to had been again torn down. The visitor 

 of the preceding day had returned, and in wanton malice 

 had tossed about their camp kit and bedding, and destroyed 

 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 sitting on guard most of the time. About 



