me he would
do better.

* * * * *

There were other moose on the lake, all of them as uncertain as the big
cow and her calf. Probably most of them had never seen a man before our
arrival, and it kept one's expectations on tiptoe to know what they
would do when they saw the strange two-legged creature for the first
time. If a moose smelled me before I saw him, he would make off quietly
into the woods, as all wild creatures do, and watch from a safe
distance. But if I stumbled upon him unexpectedly, when the wind brought
no warning to his nostrils, he was fearless, usually, and full of
curiosity.

The worst of them all was the big bull whose tracks were on the shore
when we arrived. He was a morose, ugly old brute, living apart by
himself, with his temper always on edge ready to bully anything that
dared to cross his path or question his lordship. Whether he was an
outcast, grown surly from living too much alone, or whether he bore some
old bullet wound to account for his hostility to man, I could never find
out. Far down the river a hunter had been killed, ten years before, by a
bull moose that he had wounded; and this may have been, as Noel
declared, the same animal, cherishing his resentment with a memory as
merciless as an Indian's.

Before we had found this out I stumbled upon the big bull one afternoon,
and came near paying the penalty of my ignorance. I had been
still-fishing for togue (lake trout), and was on my way back to camp
when, doubling a point, I ran plump upon a bull moose feeding among the
lily pads. My approach had been perfectly silent,--that is the only way
to see things in the woods,--and he was quite unconscious that anybody
but himself was near.

He would plunge his great head under water till only his antler tips
showed, and nose around on the bottom till he found a lily root. With a
heave and a jerk he would drag it out, and stand chewing it endwise
with huge satisfaction, while the muddy water trickled down over his
face. When it was all eaten he would grope under the lily pads for
another root in the same way.

Without thinking much of the possible risk, I began to steal towards
him. While his head was under I would work the canoe along silently,
simply "rolling the paddle" without lifting it from the water. At the
first lift of his antlers I would stop and sit low in the canoe till he
finished his juicy morsel and ducked for more. Then one could slip alon