es. Then, when I moved not,
having no desire to kill a doe but only to watch the beautiful creature,
she turned, glided a few steps, and went bounding away along the ridge.

Old Wally came in a little while, not following the trail,--he had no
skill nor patience for that,--but with a woodsman's instinct following
up the general direction of his game. Not far from where the doe had
first appeared he stopped, looked all around keenly, then rested his
hands on the end of his long gun barrel, and put his chin on his hands.

"Drat it all! Never tetched 'im again. That paowder o' mine hain't
wuth a cent. You wait till snow blows,"--addressing the silent woods
at large,--"then I'll get me some paowder as is paowder, and foller the
critter, and I'll show ye--"

Old Wally said never a word, but all this was in his face and attitude
as he leaned moodily on his long gun. And I watched him, chuckling, from
my hiding among the rocks, till with curious instinct he vanished down
the ridge behind the very thicket where I had seen the doe flash out of
sight a moment before.

When I saw him again he was deep in less creditable business. It was a
perfect autumn day,--the air full of light and color, the fragrant
woods resting under the soft haze like a great bouquet of Nature's own
culling, birds, bees and squirrels frolicking all day long amidst the
trees, yet doing an astonishing amount of work in gathering each one his
harvest for the cold dark days that were coming.

At daylight, from the top of a hill, I looked down on a little clearing
and saw the first signs of the game I was seeking. There had been what
old people call a duck-frost. In the meadows and along the fringes of
the woods the white rime lay thick and powdery on grass and dead leaves;
every foot that touched it left a black mark, as if seared with a hot
iron, when the sun came up and shone upon it. Across the field three
black trails meandered away from the brook; but alas! under the fringe
of evergreen was another trail, that of a man, which crept and halted
and hid, yet drew nearer and nearer the point where the three deer
trails vanished into the wood. Then I found powder marks, and some brush
that was torn by buck shot, and three trails that bounded away, and a
tiny splash of deeper red on a crimson maple leaf. So I left the deer
to the early hunter and wandered away up the hill for a long, lazy,
satisfying day in the woods alone.

Presently I came to a low brus