132 Ways of Wood Folk. 



their game was concealed. Mitchell started to creep 

 across the thicket, but scarcely had the echoes 

 answered when, in front of them, a second challenge 

 sounded sharp and fierce ; and they saw, directly 

 across the open, the underbrush at the forest's edge 

 sway violently, as the bull they had long suspected 

 broke out in a towering rage. He was slow in 

 advancing, however, and Mitchell glided rapidly 

 across the thicket, where a moment later his excited 

 hiss called his companion. From the opposite fringe 

 of forest the second bull had hurled himself out, and 

 was plunging with savage grunts straight towards 

 them. 



Crouching low among the firs they awaited his 

 headlong rush ; not without many a startled glance 

 backward, and a verv uncomfortable sense of beine 

 trapped and frightened, as Mitchell confessed to me 

 afterward. He had left his gun in camp ; his em- 

 ployer had insisted upon it, in his eagerness to kill 

 the moose himself. 



The bull came rapidly within rifle-shot. In a 

 minute more he would be within their hiding place; 

 and the rifle sight was trying to cover a vital spot, 

 when right behind them — at the thicket's edge, it 

 seemed — a frightful roar and a furious pounding of 

 hoofs brought them to their feet with a bound. A 

 second later the rifle was lying among the bushes, 



