h of hoofs that could disembowel at a single blow,
it is a desperate test of nerve. Slowly, gently, a finger compresses
itself about the trigger.

But something happens. The moose flounders in its rush. It is the
ungainly roll of a rudderless ship. It stumbles. A second, and its mad
rush ends. With a curious gasping sigh it plunges to the earth.

And the man? With his undischarged weapon lowered from his shoulder, and
the sharp crack of some stranger's rifle ringing in his ears, he stares
about him in utter and complete bewilderment.

Marcel's bewilderment was swiftly passing. Hot, impulsive resentment was
quick to take its place. All his mind and heart had been set upon that
kill. He had been robbed. Someone had robbed him in the very moment of
his victory, a victory which had cost him nine days of an arduous trail.

There was no sign. No sign anywhere. The silence of the world about him
was complete, that silence which no earthly agency ever seems to have
power to break up seriously. Like the fallen moose his angry eyes
searched the shadowed aisles for the intruder upon whom to vent his
hasty wrath. But like that other there only remained disappointment to
add to the fire of his anger. He seemed alone in the primordial world.
And yet he knew that other eyes, human eyes, were observing his every
movement.

At last he abandoned his search, and turned again to the creature
stretched in the stillness of death upon the mouldering carpet of the
forest. The bitterness of regret had replaced his impulsive heat.
Perhaps, even the philosophy of the hunter had yielded him resignation.
At any rate he quickly became absorbed in the splendid qualities of the
fallen monarch. And that which he beheld stirred anew his youthful
enthusiasm.

It was an old bull, hoary with age, and scarred with the wounds of a
hundred battles. It was truly a king in a world where might alone
prevails. He moved up to the wide-spreading antlers supporting the regal
head, as if to refuse it the final degradation of complete contact with
the soil. An exclamation of appreciation broke from him. His gaze was
fixed upon a minute, blood-rimmed puncture just behind the right eye. It
was the wound where the intruder's bullet had crashed into the
infuriated creature's brain.

"Gee! That's a swell shot!" he muttered, speaking his thought aloud,
with the habit bred of the great silences.

"But I'm sorry--now."

No echo of the forest could have startled mor