each palm was like an enormous silver fish-fork with twenty prongs.
Then he went out of my sight for a minute as he passed around a little
bay in the southwest corner, getting nearer and nearer to Billy. But I
could still hear his steps distinctly--slosh, slosh, slosh--thud, thud,
thud (the grunting had stopped)--closer came the sound, until it was
directly behind the dense green branches of a fallen balsam-tree, not
twenty feet away from Billy. Then suddenly the noise ceased. I could
hear my own heart pounding at my ribs, but nothing else. And of
Silverhorns not hair nor hide was visible. It looked as if he must be a
Boojum, and had the power to

"'Softly and silently vanish away.'

"Billy and Mac were beckoning to me fiercely and pointing to the green
balsam-top. I gripped my rifle and started to creep toward them. A
little twig, about as thick as the tip of a fishing-rod, cracked under
my knee. There was a terrible crash behind the balsam, a plunging
through the underbrush and a rattling among the branches, a lumbering
gallop up the hill through the forest, and Silverhorns was gone into
the invisible.

"He had stopped behind the tree because he smelled the grease on
Billy's boots. As he stood there, hesitating, Billy and Mac could see
his shoulder and his side through a gap in the branches--a dead-easy
shot. But so far as I was concerned, he might as well have been in
Alaska. I told you that the way we had placed ourselves was a fool
arrangement. But McDonald would not say anything about it, except to
express his conviction that _it was not predestinated we should get
that moose_."

"Ah didna ken auld Rob had sae much theology aboot him," commented
McLeod. "But noo I'm thinkin' ye went back to yer main camp, an' lat
puir Seelverhorrns live oot his life?"

"Not much, did we! For now we knew that he wasn't badly frightened by
the adventure of the night before, and that we might get another chance
at him. In the afternoon it began to rain; and it poured for
forty-eight hours. We cowered in our shelter before a smoky fire, and
lived on short rations of crackers and dried prunes--it was a hungry
time."

"But wasna there slathers o' food at the main camp? Ony fule wad ken
eneugh to gae doon to the river an' tak' a guid fill-up."

"But that wasn't what we wanted. It was Silverhorns. Billy and I made
McDonald stay, and Thursday afternoon, when the clouds broke away, we
went back to the pond to have a last try at