by familiar stratagems. His curiosity and his
confidence disappeared completely.

[Illustration: "RUNNING IN THE SHALLOW WATER TO COVER HIS SCENT"]

The buck set off in a straight line for the river, now perhaps a
half-mile distant. Reaching it, he turned down the shore, running in
the shallow water to cover his scent. It never occurred to him that
his enemy was trailing him by sight, not by scent; so he followed the
same tactics he would have employed had the pursuer been a wolf or a
dog. A hundred yards further on he rounded a sharp bend of the stream.
Here he took to deep water, swam swiftly to the opposite shore, and
vanished into the thick woods.

Two or three minutes later the man came out upon the river's edge. The
direction his quarry had taken was plainly visible by the splashes of
water on the rocks, and he smiled grimly at the precaution which the
animal had taken to cover his secret. But when he reached the point
where the buck had taken to deep water the smile faded. He stopped,
leaning on his gun and staring across the river, and a baffled look
came over his face. Realizing, after a few moments, that he was beaten
in this game, he drew out his charge of buckshot, reloaded his gun
with small duckshot, and hid himself in a waterside covert of young
willows, in the hope that a flock of mallard or teal might presently
come by.

THE WINDOW IN THE SHACK

THE attitude in which the plump baby hung limply over the woman's left
arm looked most uncomfortable. The baby, however, seemed highly
content. Both his sticky fists clutched firmly a generous "chunk" of
new maple-sugar, which he mumbled with his toothless gums, while his
big eyes, widening like an owl's, stared about through the dusk with a
placid intentness.

From the woman's left hand dangled an old tin lantern containing a
scrap of tallow candle, whose meagre gleam flickered hither and
thither apprehensively among the huge shadows of the darkening wood.
In her right hand the woman carried a large tin bucket, half filled
with fresh-run maple-sap. By the glimmer of the ineffectual candle,
she moved wearily from one great maple to another, emptying the
birch-bark cups that hung from the little wooden taps driven into the
trunks. The night air was raw with the chill of thawing snow, and
carried no sound but the soft tinkle of the sap as it dript swiftly
into the birchen cups. The faint, sweet smell of the sap seemed to
cling upon the darkness. Th