A CLOSE CALL 137 



night to recuperate. They had killed a nice buck the 

 day before our arrival and had set it up on the shore 

 of the lake for inspection. It was hanging from a 

 trident formed of three poles, and while the rain beat 

 upon it and the wind swayed it to and fro the hunters 

 watched it with admiring eyes ; and well they might, 

 for it was a beauty. 



Now, two of the aforesaid sports were from Wood- 

 bury, N. J., and the other from Boston. The Boston 

 man and one of the Woodbury men were built on the 

 corpulent model, extremely oily, and with a girth that 

 might have rivaled Falstaff's. But they were not 

 sensitive on that point, as some oleaginous men are 

 men to whom the slightest reference or even glance in 

 a stomachward direction would be at once a casus belli. 



Our conversation at dinner turned upon the treat- 

 ment they had been experiencing from their guides. 

 " Do you know," said the Boston man, " I have had 

 the most unpleasant experience rubbed into me by 

 these guides and I don't care to have the operation 

 repeated." 



" What was the nature of the operation ? " I ven- 

 tured to ask. 



"Well, you probably have noticed that I have a 

 good deal of butter in my make-up and I don't care to 

 have it all melted at once, which seemed to be what 

 these guides were after. They told us that the Am- 

 bezuskas meadow was a glorious place to hunt in, and 



