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Vane of the Timberlands by Harold Bindloss
page 131 of 389 (33%)
seldom see one, unless it's hard pressed by the dogs. There are a good
many in the river, but even the trout fishers, who are about at sunrise
in the hot weather and wade in the dusk, rarely come across them. Are you
going to take a share in the hunt?"

"No," replied Carroll, glancing humorously at his pole. "I don't know
why I brought this thing, unless it was because Mopsy sent me for it.
I'd rather stay and watch with you. Splashing through a river after a
little beast that I don't suppose they'd let an outsider kill doesn't
interest me. I don't see why I should want to kill it, anyway. Some of
you English people have sporting ideas I can't understand. I struck a
young man the other day--a well-educated man by the looks of him--who
was spending the afternoon happily with a ferret by a corn stack,
killing rats with a club. He seemed uncommonly pleased with himself
because he'd got four of them."

"Oh," chided Mabel, "you're as bad as the silly people who call killing
things cruel! I wouldn't have thought it of you!"

Vane laughed.

"I've seen him drop a deer with a single-shot rifle when it was going
through thick brush almost as fast as a locomotive; and I believe that he
once assisted in killing a panther in a thicket where you couldn't see
two yards ahead. The point is that he meant to eat the deer--and the
panther had been taking a rancher's hogs."

"I'm sorry I brought him," Mabel pouted. "He's not a sportsman."

"I really think there's some excuse for the more vigorous sports," Evelyn
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