CRUST AND LAKE HUNTING. 525 



bounded up from beneath its feet, shaking the snow from his 

 hair. 



Old Sound looked rather humiliated, and seating himself 

 a little distance off, gazed upon his dying conqueror in 

 demure silence. " The cunningest deer" having been baffled 

 in an extraordinary effort to get rid of its noisy foe, had 

 adopted the curious expedient of first beating him down in 

 the snow with its fore-paws, and then deliberately standing 

 on his prostrate body. Deer do some ugly things of this 

 kind occasionally. One of the neighboring hunters, who 

 was passing through the woods on the crust, without any 

 weapon but his pocket-knife, came upon three deer, one of 

 which was an immense buck. 



The buck eyed the man as he came up, until he was within 

 a few yards of him, and then made right at him with his hair 

 turned the wrong way. He knocked the man down in the 

 snow, and commenced very deliberately stamping him to 

 death. He kept it up until the man lay still, and then he 

 would step off a little distance and turn to look at his victim. 

 If the man moved, he would plunge upon him again and give 

 him another pounding, until he was content to lie still. This 

 <ime had been repeated several times ; and the man, whose 

 strength was fast going, felt that he would soon be killed 

 if he could not get out of this scrape in some way for even 

 if he laid still the deer showed no disposition to leave him, 

 and he must freeze to death soon in his cold bed. He now 

 for the first time bethought him of his knife, and at the 

 expense of another pounding, got his hand into the pocket. 



The deer stood off a little distance watching him ; but 

 when he had secured the knife, and managed to work it 

 open with one hand, he made a movement by kicking up the 

 snow with his feet. The buck was on him in an instant, as 

 usual, and the man, urged now to despair, rose upon his 

 elbow, and making three or four savage cuts upwards with 

 his knife, succeeded in reaching the vitals of the buck 



