he never stirred so much as an eyelid. Then he glided swiftly back, with
a faint, puzzled, questioning _kwit-kwit?_ to where his flock were
waiting. A low signal that I could barely hear, a swift movement--then
the flock thundered away in scattered flight into the silent, friendly
woods.

Ten minutes later I was crouched in some thick underbrush looking up
into a great spruce, when I could just make out the leader standing by
an upright branch in sharp silhouette against the glowing west. I had
followed his swift flight, and now lay listening again to his searching
call as it went out through the twilight, calling his little flock to
the roosting tree. From the swamp and the hillside and far down by the
quiet lake they answered, faintly at first, then with clearer call and
the whirr of swift wings as they came in.

But already I had seen and heard enough; too much, indeed, for my peace
of mind. I crept away through the swamp, the eager calls following me
even to my canoe; first a plaint, as if something were lacking to the
placid lake and quiet woods and the soft beauty of twilight; and then a
faint question, always heard in the _kwit_ of a partridge, as if only I
could explain why two eager voices would never again answer to roll call
when the shadows lengthened.

[Illustration]

Umquenawis The Mighty

[Illustration]

Umquenawis the Mighty is lord of the woodlands. None other among the
wood folk is half so great as he; none has senses so keen to detect a
danger, nor powers so terrible to defend himself against it. So he fears
nothing, moving through the big woods like a master; and when you see
him for the first time in the wilderness pushing his stately, silent way
among the giant trees, or plunging like a great engine through
underbrush and over windfalls, his nose up to try the wind, his broad
antlers far back on his mighty shoulders, while the dead tree that
opposes him cracks and crashes down before his rush, and the alders
beat a rattling, snapping tattoo on his branching horns,--when you see
him thus, something within you rises up, like a soldier at salute, and
says: "Milord the Moose!" And though the rifle is in your hand, its
deadly muzzle never rises from the trail.

[Illustration: "PLUNGING LIKE A GREAT ENGINE THROUGH UNDERBRUSH AND OVER
WINDFALLS"]

That great head with its massive crown is too big for any house. Hung
stupidly on a wall, in a room full of bric-a-brac, as you usually see