we saw where
they led down a steep, long, dark aisle between pines and spruces to a
dense black thicket below. The saddle was about twenty feet wide, and on
each side of it rose steep rocks, affording most effective stands for a
hunter to wait and watch.

We rested then, and listened. There was only a little wind, and often
it fooled us. It sounded like the baying of hounds, and now like the
hallooing of men, and then like the distant peal of a horn. By and bye
Copple said he heard the hounds. I could not be sure. Soon we indeed
heard the deep-sounding, wild bay of Old Dan, the course, sharp, ringing
bay of Old Tom, and then, less clear, the chorus from the other hounds.
Edd had started them on a trail up this magnificent canyon at our feet.
After a while we heard Edd's yell, far away, but clear: "Hi! Hi!" We
could see a part of the thicket, shaggy and red and gold; and a mile or
more of the opposite wall of the canyon. No rougher, wilder place could
have been imagined than this steep slope of bluffs, ledges, benches, all
matted with brush, and spotted with pines. Holes and caves and cracks
showed, and yellow blank walls, and bronze points, and green slopes, and
weathered slides.

Soon the baying of the hounds appeared to pass below and beyond us, up
the canyon to our right, a circumstance that worried Copple. "Let's go
farther up," he kept saying. But I was loath to leave that splendid
stand. The baying of the hounds appeared to swing round closer under us;
to ring, to swell, to thicken until it was a continuous and melodious,
wild, echoing roar. The narrowing walls of the canyon threw the echoes
back and forth.

Presently I espied moving dots, one blue, one brown, on the opposite
slope. They were Haught and his son Edd slowly and laboriously climbing
up the steep bluff. How like snails they climbed! Theirs was indeed a
task. A yell pealed out now and then, and though it seemed to come from
an entirely different direction it surely must have come from the
Haughts. Presently some one high on the rim answered with like yells.
The chase was growing hotter.

"They've got a bear up somewhere," cried Copple, excitedly. And I
agreed with him.

Then we were startled by the sharp crack of a rifle from the rim.

"The ball's open! Get your pardners, boys," exclaimed Copple, with
animation.

"Ben, wasn't that a.30 Gov't?" I asked.

"Sure was," he replied. "Must have been R.C. openin' up. Now look
sharp!"

I gazed ever