by an irregular line of
hills, sparsely covered with spruce-trees.

Towards these Herb headed, leaving Katahdin away back in the rear.

"'Shaw! I'm afeard they're 'nowhere' by this time," he whispered, when
the hunters reached the rising ground, glancing at Dol, who stepped
lightly beside him.

The boy's lips parted to breathe out compressed disappointment; but his
answer was lost in a sharp whirr! whirr! and a sudden flutter of wings
above his head. His eyes went aloft towards a bough about eight feet
from the ground. So did Herb's, and lit with a new, whimsical hope.

"A spruce partridge!" hissed the guide, his voice thrilling even in its
stealthy whisper. "That's luck--dead sure! The Injuns say, 'The red eye
never tells a lie;'" and the woodsman pointed out the strip of bare red
skin above the beady eyes of the bird, which cuddled itself on its
branch, and looked down at them unfrighted.

Dol Farrar, who in this region of moose-birds and moose-calls could
believe in anything, felt both his spirits and credulity rise together.
He managed to keep abreast of the trained hunter, as the latter, with
swift, stretching, silent steps climbed the hill. And he heard the
hunter's sudden cluck of triumph as he reached the top, and looked down
upon the valley at the other side, the inarticulate sound being followed
by one softly rung word,--

"Caribou!"

"Caribou? They look awfully like quiet Alderney cows, except for the big
antlers!" The amazed exclamation stirred the English boy's tongue, but
he did not make it audible.

Following Herb's example, he stretched himself flat upon his stomach
under a spruce, and stared over the brow of the hill at a forest
pantomime which was being acted in the valley.

Cautiously slipping from tree to tree, Cyrus and Neal, who had lagged a
few steps behind, joined the leaders, and lay low, eagerly gazing too.

On its farther side the hill was yet more sparsely covered, the
scattered spruces showing gaps between them where the lumberman's axe
had made havoc. Through these openings, which were as shafts of light
amid the evergreen's waving play, the hunters saw the sun silver a brown
pool in the valley. A few maples and birches waved their shrivelling
splendors of scarlet and buff at irregular distances from the water. And
in and out among these trees moved in graceful woodland frolic four or
five large animals,--perhaps more,--their doings being plainly seen by
the watchers on the hill