lucky whistle, softly modulated
on his lips, and no more sober burden on his mind than the trail of that
moose?

CHAPTER XXI.

ON KATAHDIN.

"See there, boys, I told you so," said Herb, as the party reached the
ever-to-be-remembered clump of hemlocks, the beginning of the trail
which they were ready to follow up like sleuth-hounds. "There's plenty
of hair; I guess I singed him in two places."

He pointed to some shaggy clotted locks on the grass at his feet, and
then to a small maroon-colored stain beside them.

"Is that blood?" asked Neal.

"Blood, sure enough, though there ain't much of it. But I'll tell you
what! I'd as soon there wasn't any. I wish it had been light enough last
night for me to act barber, and only cut some hair from that moose,
instead of wounding him. It might have answered the purpose as well, and
sent him walking."

"I don't believe it would have done anything of the kind," exclaimed
Dol. "He was far too red-hot an old customer to bolt because a bullet
shaved him."

"Well, I don't set up to be soft-hearted like Cyrus here; and I'm ready
enough to bag my meat when I want it," said the woodsman. "But sure's
you live, boys, I never wounded a free game creature yet, and seed it
get away to pull a hurt limb and a cruel pain with it through the woods,
that I could feel chipper afterwards. It's only your delicate city
fellows who come out here for a shot once a year, who can chuckle over
the pools of blood a wounded moose leaves behind him. Sho! it's not
manly."

A start was now made on the trail, Herb leading, and showing such
wonderful skill as a trailer that the English boys began to believe his
long residence in the woods had developed in him supernatural senses.

"That moose was shot through the right fore-leg," he whispered, as the
trackers reached the edge of the forest.

"How do you know?" gasped the Farrars.

The woodsman answered by kneeling, bending his face close to the ground,
and drawing his brown finger successively round three prints on a soft
patch of earth, which the unpractised eyes could scarcely discern.

"There's no mark of the right fore-hoof," he whispered again presently;
"nothing but _that_," pointing to another dark red blotch, which the
boys would have mistaken for maroon-tinted moss.

A breathless, wordless, toiling hour followed. Through the dense woods,
which sloped steadily upward, clothing Katahdin's highlands, Herb Heal
travelled on, now and a