other animals grazed elsewhere, and the boys began to fear that they had
left some traces of their work which revealed it to the wily beasts. On
one day, for an hour or two, their hearts were in their mouths. There
issued from the forest to the westward the stately Irish elk. It moved
forward across the valley to the waters on the other side, and, after
drinking its fill, began feeding directly toward the tree clump. It
reached the immediate vicinity of the pitfall and stood beneath the
trees, fairly outlined against the opening beyond, and affording
to the almost breathless couple a splendid spectacle. A magnificent
creature was the great elk of the time of the cave men, the Irish elk, as
those who study the past have named it, because its bones have been found
so frequently in what are now the preserving peat bogs of Ireland. But
the elk passed beyond the sight of the watchers, and so their bright
hopes fell.

The crispness of full autumn had come, one morning, when Ab and Oak met
as usual and looked out across the valley to learn if anything had
happened in the vicinity of the pitfall. The hoar frost, lying heavily on
the herbage, made the valley resemble a sea of silver, checkered and
spotted all over darkly. These dark spots and lines were the traces of
such animals as had been in the valley during the night or toward early
morning. Leading everywhere were heavy trails and light ones, telling the
story of the night. But very little heed to these things was paid by the
ardent boys. They were too full of their own affairs. As they swung into
place together upon their favorite limb and looked across the valley,
they uttered a simultaneous and joyous shout. Something had taken place
at the pitfall!

All about the trap the surface of the ground was dark and the area of
darkness extended even to the little bank of the swamp on the riverside.