metimes?"

"That you have," was the general response. "_We_ couldn't tell any
difference between your noise and the real thing."

"But she wasn't a patch on the bull-moose in appearance," lamented Dol.

"No more she was, boy. Most female forest creatures ain't so
good-looking as the males! And that's queer when you think of it, for
the girls have the pull over us where beauty is concerned. We ain't in
it with 'em, so to speak."

There was a big gale of laughter over Herb Real's gallant admiration for
the other sex, and the sigh which accompanied his expression of it. He
joined in the mirth himself, though he walked off to make camp,
muttering:--

"Sho! You city fellows think that because I'm a woodsman I never heard
of love-making in my life."

"Perhaps there is a little girl at some settlement waiting for a home to
be fixed up out of guide's fees," retorted Cyrus.

And the three shouted again for no earthly reason, save that the
stimulus of forest air and good circulation was driving the blood with
fine pressure through their veins, and life seemed such a glorious,
unfolding possession--full of a wonderful possible--that they must hold
a sort of jubilee.

Herb, who perhaps in his lonely hours in the woods did cherish some
vision such as Cyrus suggested, was so infected with their spirit, that,
as he swung his axe with a giant's stroke against a hemlock branch, he
joined in with an explosive:--

"Hurrup! Hur-r-r-rup!"

This startled the trio like the bursting of a bomb, and trebled their
excitement; for their guide, when abroad, had usually the cautious,
well-controlled manner of the still-hunter, who never knows what chances
may be lurking round him which he would ruin by an outcry.

"Quit laughing, boys," he said, recovering prudence directly he had let
out his yell. "Quit laughing, I say, or we may call moose here till
crack o' doom without getting an answer. I guess they're all off to the
four winds a'ready, scared by our fooling."

CHAPTER XIX.

TREED BY A MOOSE.

"I told you so, boys," breathed the guide two hours later, with an
overwhelming sigh of regret, after he had given his most fetching calls
in vain. "I told you so. There ain't anything bigger'n a buck-rabbit
travelling. That tormented row we made scared every moose within
hearing."

Herb was standing on the ground, horn in hand, screened by the great
shadows of a clump of hemlocks; the three were perched upon branches
high abo