bare rock on the burned hillside, and there, across a
ravine, we could see the animal lying down, just below the trunk of a
big dead spruce that had fallen. The beast's head and neck were hidden
by some bushes, but the fore-shoulder and side were in clear view,
about two hundred and fifty yards away. McDonald seemed to be inclined
to think that it was a bull and that I ought to shoot. So I shot, and
knocked splinters out of the spruce log. We could see them fly. The
animal got up quickly, and looked at us for a moment, shaking her long
ears; then the huge, unmitigated cow vamoosed into the brush. McDonald
remarked that it was 'a varra fortunate shot, almaist providaintial!'
And so it was; for if it had gone six inches lower, and the news had
gotten out at Bathurst, it would have cost me a fine of two hundred
dollars."

"Ye did weel, Dud," puffed McLeod; "varra weel indeed--for the coo!"

"After that," continued Hemenway, "of course my nerve was a little
shaken, and we went back to the main camp on the river, to rest over
Sunday. That was all right, wasn't it, Mac?"

"Aye!" replied McLeod, who was a strict member of the Presbyterian
church at Moncton. "That was surely a varra safe thing to do. Even a
hunter, I'm thinkin', wouldna like to be breakin' twa commandments in
the ane day--the foorth and the saxth!"

"Perhaps not. It's enough to break one, as you do once a fortnight when
you run your train into Riviere du Loup Sunday morning. How's that, you
old Calvinist?"

"Dudley, ma son," said the engineer, "dinna airgue a point that ye
canna understond. There's guid an' suffeecient reasons for the train.
But ye'll ne'er be claimin' that moose-huntin' is a wark o' neecessity
or maircy?"

"No, no, of course not; but then, you see, barring Sundays, we felt
that it was necessary to do all we could to get a moose, just for the
sake of our reputations. Billy, the cook, was particularly strong about
it. He said that an old woman in Bathurst, a kind of fortune-teller,
had told him that he was going to have '_la bonne chance_' on this
trip. He wanted to try his own mouth at 'calling.' He had never really
done it before. But he had been practising all winter in imitation of a
tame cow moose that Johnny Moreau had, and he thought he could make the
sound '_b'en bon_.' So he got the birch-bark horn and gave us a sample
of his skill. McDonald told me privately that it was 'nae sa bad; a
deal better than Pete's feckless bellow.' We