A DEER LEAP. 46 



up my mind to die game. Again sounded that awful 

 scream, and again was it answered from every point 

 of the compass, as if all the demons of the woods were 

 in concert in the horrible din. 



" Cuss the owls," said my guide, as he opened his 

 mouth, in a gape like the entrance of a railroad tunnel, 



" Who's afraid," said I, as I stretched out again 

 upon my bed of boughs for sleep. 



Before the sun rose in the morning, we plunged 

 into the lake for a bath, from the rocky promontory, 

 from which on the previous day, we started on our 

 involuntary cruize across the lake. While perform- 

 ing our ablutions, we noticed a deer, some quarter of 

 a mile or more from us, feeding along the margin of 

 the lake. I took my rifle, stole cautiously to within 

 some twenty rods of him, and resting over a log, 

 fired. He was standing in the edge of the water, di- 

 rectly beneath a rocky bank, three or four feet in 

 height. As my rifle cracked, he leaped at a single 

 bound upon the bank and then back again, some ten 

 feet into the water, dead. The ball had gone through 

 2iis heart, and how he could have made two such des- 

 perate leaps, when thus fatally wounded) was and Still 

 is to me, a mystery. 



