ts pursuer, and the hound let go its hold. For
an instant the two faced each other. Then the dog sprang at its
opponent's throat, but was met by the sharp spikes of the buck. The
spikes were much more effective weapons than broad antlers, and again
the hound was tossed back.

Made more wary by experience, the dog again darted in, and this time
caught the deer's neck, but not before the spikes had entered its black
sides. The dog did not relax its hold, and the combatants seemed bound
together.

I saw the hound was in danger, and rowed rapidly toward the island. When
I got within shooting distance the deer had fallen to its knees, and I
dared not fire for fear a scattering buckshot should strike the hound.

My boat grounded against the island, and, gun in hand, I sprang ashore.
But neither creature moved; the fight was over. The hound's sharp teeth
had done their work, and the buck's spike-horns, hardly less sharp, had
done theirs. As I stood watching them both animals expired.

The next day two men drove over the rough wood-road, and stopped at the
shanty. One of them left their buck-board and stepped to the door to
speak to me.

He was evidently an educated man, and I detected traces of a German
accent.

"I hear that you found a tall, black hound," he began. "Such a dog left
my shanty on the Lower Saranac nearly a week ago. He looked a little
like a greyhound, and I never knew him to bark."

I told him such a dog had been with me, and described the animal's
death.

The stranger walked with me to the back of the shanty, where Rufe had
nailed the dog's pelt against the side of a shed.

"Poor Wolfram!" he exclaimed. "Who would have expected that a hound from
the fiercest pack in the Black Forest should be killed by one of these
little Adirondack deer?"

It was far to the nearest tavern, and the young man seemed so dismayed
at the dog's death that I urged him to spend the night in my shanty. In
this way I might satisfy my curiosity about the dog.

The Bavarian--for he told me he was of that nationality--gladly accepted
my invitation; and, after he had dined off the venison which his hound
had pulled down, I asked him to explain the dog's peculiarities.

"Both Wolfram and I," he said, "came from Bavaria. The family estate was
at the edge of the far-famed Black Forest, and my father, with his pack
of black hounds, killed many a wolf that lurked in the dark shadows of
the fir trees. But hunting was not a profit