ny a trick had he played on his schoolfellows with his carols
and howls. And his proficiency in this line was a good foundation on
which to work.

"You'll get there, boy," said Herb, surveying him with approval, as he
stood outside the camp-door with the moose-horn to his lips. "Make
believe that there's a moose on the opposite shore of the lake now, and
give the whole call, from start to finish."

Whereupon Dol slowly carried his head to left and right, as he had seen
the guide do on the previous night, raising and lowering the horn until
it had described an enormous figure of eight in the air, while he
groaned, sighed, rasped, and bellowed with a plaintive intensity of
expression, which caused his brother and his friend to shriek with
laughter.

"You'll get there, Kid," repeated the woodsman, with a great triumphant
guffaw. "You'll be able to give a fetching call sooner than either of
the others. But be careful how you use the trick, or you'll be having
the breath kicked out of you some day by a moose's forefeet."

For days afterwards, the birch-bark horn was rarely out of Dol Farrar's
hands. The boy was so entranced with the new musical art he was
mastering, which would be a means of communication between him and the
behemoth of the woods, that he haunted the edges of the forest about the
clearing, keeping aloof from his brother and friend, practising
unceasingly, sometimes under Herb's supervision, sometimes alone. He
learned to imitate every sound which the guide made, working in touching
quavers and inflections that must tug at the heart-strings of any
listening moose. He learned to give the call, squatting Indian fashion,
in a very uncomfortable position, behind a screen of bushes. He learned
to copy, not the cow's summons alone, but the bull's short challenge
too; and to rasp his horn against a tree, in imitation of a moose
polishing its antlers for battle.

And now, for the first time, Dol Farrar of Manchester regarded his
education as complete. He was prouder of this forest accomplishment,
picked up in the wilds, than of all triumphs over problems and 'ologies
at his English school. He had not been a laggard in study, either.

But the finishing of Dol's education had one bad result. If there
happened to be another moose travelling through the adjacent forests, he
evidently thought that all this random calling was too much of a good
thing, had his suspicions aroused, and took himself oft to wilder
solitu