with slow, solemn tread he walked along the bank ahead, gave a loud
snort something like the snort of a war-horse, made a crunching,
chopping noise with his jaws, resembling the sound of a dull axe
striking against wood, plunged into the lake, and swam across to the
opposite shore.

"If we had fired, he might have come for us full tilt," whispered the
guide so softly that his words were like a gliding breath. "And then I
tell you we'd have had a narrow squeak. He'd have kicked the canoe into
splinters and us out o' time in short order."

"But a moose won't charge unless he's attacked, will he?" asked Cyrus,
later in the night, when a couple of quacking black ducks which had
received a dose of lead were lying silent at his feet, and the hunters
were returning to camp with food.

"Not often," was the reply. "Only at this time o' year, if they've got a
mate to defend, you can't say for sure what they'll do. They won't
always fight either, even if they're wounded, when they can get a
chance to bolt. But a moose, if he has to die, will be sure to die game,
with his face to his enemy; and so will every wild animal that I know.
I've even seen a shot partridge flutter up its feathers like a game-cock
at the fellow who dropped it."

Well, this memorable glimpse of his mooseship was obtained in the year
before our story. And now, in the beginning of October, young Garst was
off into Maine wilds again, having arranged to "do" the forest
thoroughly after his usual fashion, seeing all he could of its countless
phases of life, and finally to meet this same guide--a dare-devil fellow
who was reported to have had adventures in moose-hunting such as other