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 
came 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 who 
