lump of these bushes there stood two horses motionless, as if
chiselled in stone, and with their heads drooping low, as if sound
asleep. Directly under the noses of these horses lay two men, each
wrapped in a blanket, with his head pillowed on his saddle, and his
rifle close at his side. Both were also sound asleep.

About a mile distant from the spot on which those sleepers rested, there
grew another small bush, and under its sheltering boughs, in the
snuggest conceivable hole, nestled a grouse, or prairie hen, also sound
asleep, with its head lost in feathers, and its whole rotund aspect
conveying the idea of extreme comfort and good living. Now, we do not
draw the reader's attention to that bird because of its rarity, but
because of the fact that it was unwittingly instrumental in influencing
the fortunes of the two sleepers above referred to.

The sun in his upward march overtopped a prairie wave, and his rays,
darting onward, struck the bosom of the prairie hen, and awoke it.
Looking up quickly with one eye, it seemed to find the glare too strong,
winked at the sun, and turned the other eye. With this it winked also,
then got up, flapped its wings, ruffled its feathers, and, after a
pause, sprang into the air with that violent _whirr-r_ which is so
gladdening, yet so startling, to the ear of a sportsman. It was
instantly joined by the other members of the covey to which it belonged,
and the united flock went sweeping past the sleeping hunters, causing
their horses to awake with a snort, and themselves to spring to their
feet with the alacrity of men who were accustomed to repose in the midst
of alarms, and with a grunt of surprise.

"Prairie-hens," muttered the elder of the two--a big, burly
backwoodsman--as he turned towards his companion with a quiet smile.
"It was very thoughtful on 'em to rouse us, lad, considerin' the work
that lies before us."

"I wish, with all my heart, they didn't rise quite so early," replied
the younger man, also a stout backwoodsman, who was none other than our
hero March Marston himself; "I don't approve of risin' until one wakes
in the course of nature; d'ye see, Bounce?"

"I _hear_; but we can't always git things to go 'xactly as we approves
of," replied Bounce, stooping down to arrange the embers of the previous
night's fire.

Bounce's proper name was Bob Ounce. He styled himself, and wrote
himself (for he could write to the extent of scrawling his own name in
angularly