any decent meat into it. Hooray!" he whooped again. "Shouldn't wonder if
these moccasins brought me wonderful luck; one can steal about so
quietly in them."

He had hit upon the supreme advantage which the Indian footwear
possesses over every other for the woodsman. A little later he was to
learn its disadvantage, having, with foreign inexperience, disdained the
extra soles because they were not "Indian" enough for his taste; for the
soft buckskin could not protect from roots and stones a wearer whose
flesh was not hardened to every kind of forest travelling.

But at present Dol bepraised his moccasins; for they had enabled him to
sneak upon his birds, the wildest of the duck tribe, who generally, at a
single hoarse "Quack!" from their leader, will cease their antics in
lake or stream, and disappear like a skimming breeze before a sportsman
can get a fair shot at them.

For a quarter of an hour Dol Farrar sat by this forest pond engaged in
the cheerful occupation of "booming himself," as his friend Cyrus would
have said. He told himself that he had made a pretty smart beginning,
not alone in shooting a brace of black ducks, but in successfully
following a difficult trail on his fourth day in the woods. Henceforth,
he thought, there would be little reason for him to dread the unknown in
this great wilderness.

He reclothed his legs, gathered the stiffening claws of the defunct
quackers in his left hand, picked up his empty "ole fuzzee," which had
done such good service despite its age, and set forth on his return to
camp.