t to baffle pursuing man.
There are those who call Cyrus a sportsman of the best type. Perhaps
they are right.

Yet in the year of our story, when he had just attained his majority,
this student of forest life is still unsatisfied, because he has not
been able to obtain a good view of the behemoth of American woods, the
_ignis fatuus_ of hunters,--the mighty moose.

Once only, when paddling on a still pond with his experienced guide for
company, the latter suddenly closed the slide of the jack-lamp, hiding
its light. At the same moment a dark, splendid monster, tall as a horse
and swinging a pair of antlers five feet broad, suddenly appeared upon
the bank, near to which the canoe lay in black shadow. The hunters dared
not breathe. It was at a season of year when the Maine law exacts a
heavy fine for the killing of a moose; and even the guide had no desire
to send his bullets through the law, though he might have riddled the
game without compunction.

For a minute or two the creature halted at the pond's brink, magnified
in the mirror of moonlit water into a gigantic, wavering shape. Then
with slow, solemn tread he walked along the bank ahead, gave a loud
snort something like the snort of a war-horse, made a crunching,
chopping noise with his jaws, resembling the sound of a dull axe
striking against wood, plunged into the lake, and swam across to the
opposite shore.

"If we had fired, he might have come for us full tilt," whispered the
guide so softly that his words were like a gliding breath. "And then I
tell you we'd have had a narrow squeak. He'd have kicked the canoe into
splinters and us out o' time in short order."

"But a moose won't charge unless he's attacked, will he?" asked Cyrus,
later in the night, when a couple of quacking black ducks which had
received a dose of lead were lying silent at his feet, and the hunters
were returning to camp with food.

"Not often," was the reply. "Only at this time o' year, if they've got a
mate to defend, you can't say for sure what they'll do. They won't
always fight either, even if they're wounded, when they can get a
chance to bolt. But a moose, if he has to die, will be sure to die game,
with his face to his enemy; and so will every wild animal that I know.
I've even seen a shot partridge flutter up its feathers like a game-cock
at the fellow who dropped it."

Well, this memorable glimpse of his mooseship was obtained in the year
before our story. And now, in the