CHAPTER V. 



I GET A SHOT. 



THE physiologies used to tell me when I went to school the number 

 of bones in the human body. I've forgotten the exact count, as 

 the scientific sharps made it, but I venture the statement that 

 every single, solitary one of my bones and I felt as if there were at 

 least a thousand, ached in its own individual and peculiar style, when 

 Albert called me for my second day's stalk. 



Honestly I believe my getting out of bed sounded like the swinging 

 of a barn door on extra rusty hinges. But I made it somehow, and 

 afterwards crowded puffed and aching feet into unyielding shoes, that 

 once large, seemed grown as diminutive as Cinderella's own. Don't 

 make any mistake; they didn't look like Cinderella's slippers. They 

 just felt that way. Not that the shoes were small, but the feet were 

 large. 



I got out to the pony, of course after breakfast, and after two or 

 three essays, into the saddle. The personnel of the party was the same 

 as the day before. Our path the same. As I rode and felt the 

 warming rays of the morning sun beating upon my back I gradually 

 felt a little better, but when we came to the same old spot where the 

 dismount had been made the day before there were very few muscles 

 in my body which did not cry aloud as I began my trudge up the hill, 

 the established three paces behind Donald. 



But, blessed be the scheme of things which gives compensation, and 

 vouchsafes accommodation on the part of mankind to all and various 

 necessities ! As I walked and grew warm I ceased to hurt here and there 

 and I won the crest with much less labor than the day before. It was 

 not altogether easy, but there was a plain gain. Of course the stalker 

 had stopped to spy from convenient points as we went up, and at the 

 top he told me there was a chance to stalk a stag which lay further 

 on and below us. I said as before, "Whatever you say. You lead and 

 I will follow." 



