hat inhabited it; he would have been much more
comfortable and at ease beside the cabin stove. He couldn't much with
comfort at Bill's regular pace: he was rather out of breath and
irritated after the first two hundred rods. Most of all, he was
savagely conscious of the fact that Virginia was not giving him a
rightful share of her attention. For the time being she seemed to have
forgotten his presence. He was resentful, wishing disaster upon the
hunt, eager to turn back.

"The rule is silence, from now on," Virginia answered his first remark.
"Bill says we're in a game country."

The answer didn't satisfy him. But his heart suddenly leaped when Bill
glanced back in warning and pointed to an entrancing wilderness picture,
a hundred yards in front.

In a little glade and framed by the forest stood a large bull caribou,
flashing and incredibly vivid against the snow. There is no animal in
all North American fauna, even the bull elk, that presents a more
splendid figure than that huge member of the deer family, Osburn's
caribou. His mane is snow white, his back and sides a glossy brown,
his eye flashes, and his antlers--in the season that he carries
them--stream back like young trees. The bull did not stir out of his
tracks, yet he gave the impression of infinite movement and pulsing,
quivering vitality. He shook and threw his head, he lifted his fore
foot nervously, and framed by the winter forest he was a sight never to
forget. Incidentally he made a first-class target,--one that seemed
impossible to miss.

"I'll take him," Harold shouted. "Let me take him."

In a flash Harold realized that here was his opportunity: in one stroke,
one easy shot, he could turn the day's ignominy into triumph. He could
focus Virginia's admiration upon himself. But the impulse had even
deeper significances. It was not the way of sportsmen, wandering in
file on mountain trails, to clamor for the first shot at game. Whatever
is said is usually in solicitation to a companion to shoot; and Virginia
felt oddly embarrassed. Harold's gun leaped to his shoulder.

But in the fields of sport there is always a penalty for extreme
eagerness. There is a retributive justice for those that attempt to
grasp opportunities. Harold was afraid that Bill might raise and shoot,
thus rubbing him of his triumph, and he pressed back against the trigger
just a fifth of a second too soon. The target looked too big to miss,
but his bullet flun