It was all over with Neal Farrar's shot. He lowered his rifle, while the
speech, which could no longer be repressed, rattled in his throat before
it broke forth.

"I'll go crazy if I don't speak!" he cried.

At the first word the buck went scudding like the wind through the
forest, doubtless vowing by the shades of his ancestors that he never
would stand to gaze at a light again.

"And--and--I can't shoot the thing while it's looking at me like that!"
the boy blurted out.

"You dunderhead! What do you mean?" gasped Cyrus, breaking silence in a
gusty whisper of mingled anger and amusement. "You won't get a chance to
shoot it or anything else now. You've lost us our meat for to-night."

"Well, I couldn't help it," Neal whispered back. "For pity's sake, what
has been moving this canoe? The quiet was enough to set a fellow mad!
And then that buck stared straight at me like a human thing. I could
see nothing but two burning eyes with white rings round them."

"Stuff!" was the American's answer. "He was gazing at the jack, not at
you. He couldn't see an inch of you with that light just over your head.
But it would have been a hard shot anyhow, for his nose was towards you,
and ten to one you'd have made a clean miss."

"Well," he added, after five minutes of acute listening, "I guess we may
give over jacking for to-night. That first cry of yours was enough to
set a regiment of deer scampering. I'm only half mad after all at your