oved forward at a
brisk stride, ready to check himself on the instant and block the
enemy's side stroke. Within a couple of yards of his opponent he
stopped short. The latter stood motionless, antlers lowered as before,
apparently quite willing to lock horns. But the white bull would not
be lured into a rush. Fiercely impatient he stamped the ground with a
broad, clacking forehoof.

Just at this moment, as if in response to the challenge of the hoof,
the stranger charged like lightning. But almost in the same motion he
swerved aside, seeking again to catch his adversary on the flank.
Swift and cunning as he was, however, the white bull was this time all
readiness. He whirled, head down. With a sharp, dry crash the two sets
of antlers came together, and locked.

That this should have happened was the irremediable mistake of the
slim stranger. In that close encounter, fury against fury, force
against force fairly pitted, his speed and his agility counted for
nothing. For a few seconds, indeed, in sheer desperation he succeeded
in withstanding his heavier and more powerful foe. With hind feet
braced far back, haunches strained, flank heaving and quivering, the
two held steady, staccato grunts and snorts attesting the ferocity of
their efforts. Then the hind foot of the younger bull slipped a
little. With a convulsive wrench he recovered his footing; and again
the struggle hung at poise. But it was only for a few moments.
Suddenly, as if he had felt his opportunity approach, the white bull
threw all his strength into a mightier thrust. The legs of his
adversary seemed to crumple up like paper beneath him.

This would have been the end of the young bull's battlings and
wooings; but as his good luck would have it, it was at the very edge
of the shelf that he collapsed. Disengaging his victorious antlers,
the conqueror thrust viciously and evisceratingly at the victim's
exposed flank. The latter was just struggling to rise, with precarious
foothold on the loose-turfed brink of the steep. As he writhed away
wildly from the goring points, the bushes and turf crumbled away, and
he fell backwards, rolling and crashing till he brought up, battered
but whole, in a sturdy thicket of young firs. Regaining his feet he
slunk off hurriedly into the dark of the woods. And the victor,
standing on the brink in the white glare of the moonlight, "belled"
his triumph hoarsely across the solemn spaces of the night.

II

A sound of foot