no queerness in the frank, kindly face that met mine when
the stranger came out of the bush a half hour later.--

"Th' ould baste! he's had me perrched up in that three there, like a
blackburrd, the last tin hours; an' niver a song in me throat or a bite
in me stomach. He wint just as you came--I thought I could returrn his
compliments wid a bullet," he said, apologetically, as he passed me back
the rifle.

Then, sitting by his fire, he told me his story. He had just lit his
fire that morning, and was taking off his wet stockings to dry them,
when there was a fierce crashing and grunting behind him, and a bull
moose charged out of the bushes like a fury. The cruiser jumped and
dodged; then, as the bull whirled again, he swung himself into a tree
and sat there astride a limb, while the bull grunted and pushed and
hammered the ground below with his sharp hoofs. All day long the moose
had kept up the siege, now drawing off cunningly to hide in the bushes,
now charging out savagely as the timber cruiser made effort to come down
from his uncomfortable perch.

A few minutes before my approach a curious thing happened; which seems
to indicate, as do many other things in the woods, that certain
animals--perhaps all animals, including man--have at times an unknown
sixth sense, for which there is no name and no explanation. I was still
half a mile or more away, hidden by a point and paddling silently
straight into the wind. No possible sight or sound or smell of me could
have reached any known sense of any animal; yet the big brute began to
grow uneasy. He left his stand under the tree and circled nervously
around it, looking, listening, wigwagging his big ears, trying the wind
at every step, and setting his hoofs down as if he trod on dynamite.
Suddenly he turned and vanished silently into the brush. McGarven, the
timber cruiser, who had no idea that there was any man but himself on
the lake, watched the bull with growing wonder and distrust, thinking
him possessed of some evil demon. In his long life in the woods he had
met hundreds of moose, but had never been molested before.

[Illustration]

With the rifle at full cock and his heart hot within him, he had
followed the trail, which stole away, cautiously at first, a long
swinging stride straight towards the mountain.--"Oh, 'tis the quare
baste he is altogether!" he said as he finished his story.

AT THE SOUND OF THE TRUMPET

[Illustration]

It was now near t