f his
skin, dashed with blackish tints, harmonized and blended well with the
hue of the bark, so that at a distance, to an unpracticed eye, he
appeared like a huge excrescence on the tree, or a large butt of a
branch that had lodged in its fall.

The young man did not hesitate what to do. He had come prepared for
meeting with wild animals, and felt too much confidence in himself to
fear the encounter. He approached so as to be just without reach of
the spring of the creature, and levelling his piece, while he could
see the cougar shut its eyes and cling closer to the limb, fired. The
sound of the gun rang through the ancient forest, and in an instant
the beast, jumping from the limb, fell at his feet. So sudden was
this, that Arundel had hardly time to withdraw the weapon from his
shoulder, before the animal had made the spring. The first impulse of
the youth on finding the ferocious brute thus near, was to club his
gun and strike it on the head; and now he discovered that it was
wounded in one of the forward legs, which hung helplessly down. But
the wound, instead of disabling or intimidating, only inflamed the
ferocity of the creature. It made repeated attempts to jump upon its
foe, which, in spite of the crippled condition of its leg and the loss
of blood, Arundel found it difficult to elude. Active as he was, and
though he succeeded occasionally in inflicting with his hunting-knife
a wound upon the beast, he soon began to suspect that, notwithstanding
he had thus far escaped with some inconsiderable scratches, the powers
of endurance of the formidable forest denizen were likely to exceed
his own. The combat had lasted some time, when, as the young man
endeavored to avoid the leap of the panther by jumping to one side,
his feet struck against some obstacle and he fell upon his back. In an
instant the enraged beast, bleeding from its many wounds, was upon his
prostrate person, and his destruction appeared inevitable. With a
desperate effort, he struck with the hunting-knife at the panther, who
caught it in its mouth, the blade passing between its jaws and
inflicting a slight wound at the sides, so slight as not to be felt,
and stood with its unhurt paw upon his breast, powerless to do
mischief with the other, and glaring with eyes of flame upon its
victim. At the instant when the panther, shaking the knife out of its
mouth, was about to gripe, with open jaws, the throat of the young
man, it suddenly bounded with a cr