howed any blood stains,--looked up quickly at the changed tone.

"You let those sheep of yours alone till the first of October; then I'll
help you round 'em up. Just now they're worth forty dollars apiece
to the state. I'll see that the warden collects it, too, if you shoot
another."

"Sho! Mister, I ain't a-shootin' no deer. Hain't seen a deer round here
in ten year or more. I just took a crack at a pa'tridge 'at kwitted at
me, top o' a stump"--

But as he vanished among the hemlocks, trailing his old gun, I knew that
he understood the threat. To make the matter sure I drove the deer
out of the pond that night, giving them the first of a series of rude
lessons in caution, until the falling leaves should make them wild
enough to take care of themselves.

STILL HUNTING

October, the superb month for one who loves the forest, found me again
in the same woods, this time not to watch and, learn, but to follow the
big buck to his death. Old Wally was ahead of me; but the falling leaves
had done their work well. The deer had left the pond at his approach.
Here and there on the ridges I found their tracks, and saw them at a
distance, shy, wild, alert, ready to take care of themselves in any
emergency. The big buck led them everywhere. Already his spirit, grown
keen in long battle against his enemies, dominated them all. Even the
fawns had learned fear, and followed it as their salvation.

Then began the most fascinating experience that comes to one who haunts
the woods--the first, thrilling, glorious days of the still-hunter's
schooling, with the frost-colored October woods for a schoolroom, and
Nature herself for the all-wise teacher. Daylight found me far afield,
while the heavy mists hung low and the night smells still clung to the
first fallen leaves, moving swift and silent through the chill fragrant
mistiness of the lowlands, eye and ear alert for every sign, and face
set to the heights where the deer were waiting. Noon found me miles away
on the hills, munching my crust thankfully in a sunny opening of the
woods, with a brook's music tinkling among the mossy stones at my feet,
and the gorgeous crimson and green and gold of the hillside stretching
down and away, like a vast Oriental rug of a giant's weaving, to the
flash and blue gleam of the distant sea. And everywhere--Nature's last
subtle touches to her picture--the sense of a filmy veil let down ere
the end was reached, a soft haze on the glowing hilltops