ve him, a safe post of observation if any moose had answered.

"You may as well light down now," he continued, turning his face up,
though the boys were invisible; "I ain't a-going to try any more music
to-night. I guess we'll stretch ourselves for sleep early, to get ready
for a good day's work to-morrow. An eight-mile tramp will bring us to
the first heavy growth about the foot of Katahdin, and I'll promise you
a sight of a moose there."

His companions dropped to earth; and the four sought the shelter of
their tent, which had been pitched a few hundred yards from the
calling-place. Some dull embers smouldered before it; for Herb, even
while preparing supper, had kept the camp-fire very low, lest any
wandering clouds of smoke should interfere with the success of his
calling.

Now he heaped it high, throwing on without stint withered hemlock boughs
and massive logs, which were soon wrapped in a sheet of flame, making an
isle of light amid a surrounding sea of impenetrable darkness.

Many times during the night the watchful fellow arose to replenish this
fire, so that there might be no decrease in the flood of heat which
entered the tent, and kept his charges comfortable. Once, while he was
so engaged, the placid sleepers whom he had noiselessly quitted were
aroused to terror--sudden, bewildering night-terror--by a gasping cry
from his lips, followed by the leaping and rushing of some brute in
flight, and by a screech which was one defiant note of unutterable
savagery.

"Good heavens! What's that?" said Cyrus.

"Is it--can it--could it be a panther?" stammered Dol.

"Get out!" answered Neal contemptuously. "The panthers have got out long
ago, so every one says."

"A lynx! A Canada lynx, boys, as sure as death and taxes!" panted Herb
Heal, springing into the tent on the instant, with a burning brand in
his hand. "'Tain't any use your tumbling out, for you won't see him.
He's away in the thick of the woods now."

Cyrus gurgled inarticulate disappointment. At the first two words he had
sprung to his legs, having never encountered a lynx.

"The brute must have been prowling round our tent," went on Herb, his
voice thick from excitement. "He leaped past me just as I was stooping
to fix the fire, and startled me so that I guess I hollered. He got
about half a dozen yards off, then turned and crouched as if he was
going to spring back. Luckily, the axe was lying by me, just where I had
tossed it down after chopping