d have been a hard shot anyhow, for his nose was towards you,
and ten to one you'd have made a clean miss."
"Well," he added, after five minutes of acute listening, "I guess we may
give over jacking for to-night. That first cry of yours was enough to
set a regiment of deer scampering. I'm only half mad after all at your
losing a chance at such a splendid buck. It was something to see him as
he stooped to drink in the glare of the jack, a midnight forest picture
such as one wants to remember. Long may he flourish! We wouldn't have
started out to rid him of his glorious life if we weren't half-starved
on flapjacks and ends of pork. Let's get back to camp! I guess you felt
a few new sensations to-night, eh, Neal Farrar?"
CHAPTER II.
A SPILL-OUT.
Indeed, shocks and sensations seemed to ride rampant that night in
endless succession; a fact which Neal presently realized, as does every
daring young fellow who visits the Maine wilderness for the first time,
whatever be his object.
Ere turning the canoe towards home, Cyrus drove it a few feet nearer to
shore, again warily listening for any further sound of game. Just then
another wild, whooping scream cleft the night air; and, on looking
towards the bank, Neal beheld his owlship, who had finished the
squirrel, seated on an aged windfall,[1] one end of which dipped into
the water.
[Footnote 1: A forest tree which has been blown down.]
The gray bird on the gray old trunk formed a second thrilling midnight
picture, but at this moment young Farrar was in no mood for studying
effects. He felt rather unstrung by his recent emotions; and, though he
was by no means an imaginative youth, he actually took it into his head
half seriously that the whooping, hooting thing was taunting him with
making a failure of the jacking business. Without pausing to consider
whether the owl would furnish meat for the camp or not, he let fly at
him suddenly with his rifle.
The fate of that ghostly, big-eyed creature will be forever one of those
mysteries which Neal Farrar would like to solve. Whether the heavy
bullet intended for deer laid him open--which is improbable--or whether
it didn't, nobody had a chance to discover. Being unused to birch-bark
canoes, the sportsman gave a slight lurch aside after he had discharged
his leaden messenger of death, startled doubtless by the loud,
unexpected echoes which reverberated through the forest after his shot.
"Hold on!" cried Cyrus,
|