204 HUNTING CAMPS. 



versed as we walked. Jack was in the lowest of low spirits, 

 and suggested gloomily that the stags had all " gone on the 

 Labrador " ! This keen fellow's one fault is that he grows 

 dejected unless he is constantly seeing game. I tried to 

 comfort him by saying that our luck would probably come 

 as Hardy's had, but he only shook his head. We walked 

 on in silence, following a deer-path that wound over the 

 sandy ridge and in and out of the little groups of spruces and 



jumpers. Then Jack began, " I wonder if Mr. Hardy " 



But he got no further, for there was a crash in the thicket 

 below us, and a large yellow stag dashed out of it. We 

 were at the moment high above him, upon the slope of a 

 barren. From that angle his horns seemed very widespread, 

 palmated and heavy in beam, and curiously like those of a 

 certain type of Norwegian elk. 



Feeling pretty sure the head was such a one as I wanted, 

 I fired just as the stag disappeared among the trees. It was 

 a snap shot, and I was sure I had missed him. I said as 

 much to Jack as we ran forward, and he agreed. We pushed 

 through the drogue of trees after him, and emerging from 

 them we saw a deep valley full of spruces and flanked by a 

 low hillside, but nowhere a trace of the deer. Then a stick 

 cracked, and the stag burst out of the spruces on the oppos- 

 ing ridge nearly four hundred yards away. I managed to 

 fire all the shots in the magazine before he reached cover. 

 " Under him ! Under him ! " said Jack ; but this time I 

 did not think so, for I imagined the caribou had staggered. 

 And so it turned out, for presently we came upon blood 

 splashed on the trees and mosses. Another hundred yards 

 was covered with much caution ; then we saw there was no 

 more need of caution, for at the foot of a little hummock the 

 stag was lying quite dead, with three shots in him, while the 

 fourth had hit his horn. As I had taken the one hundred 

 yards sight, both the white and black of it, the fact that I 

 had found the range was one of the luckiest of chances. The 



