the way he stood listening to the
baying of the hound, his hand cupped to his ear.

Suddenly the figure crouched; sank to the ground and rolled behind a
fallen log. At the same instant the old dog bounded out of the bushes
and sprang straight at where the man lay concealed.

Thayor waited, not daring to breathe. The old dog had evidently lost
the deer tracks.

Thayor settled once more in his place, now that the mystery was
explained; looked his rifle over, laid it within instant reach of his
hand and gave a low cough in the direction of the concealed figure.
Should the deer charge this way it was just as well to let the man
know where he sat, or he might stop a stray bullet. Quick as the
answering flash of a mirror a line of light glinted along the barrel
of a rifle resting on the fallen log, its muzzle pointed straight at
him.

Thayor shrank behind the drift and uttered a yell. Almost every year
someone had been mistaken for a deer and shot.

At this instant there rang through the forest the stamping splash of
hoofs in the rapids above him; a moment more and he saw the spray fly
back of a boulder. Then he gazed at something that obliterated all
else.

A big buck was coming straight toward him. He came on, walking
briskly, his steel-blue coat wet and glistening, a superb dignity
about him, carrying his head and its branching horns with a certain
fearless pride, and now that he had struck water, wisely taking his
time to gain his second wind.

In a flash the buck saw him, turned broadside and leaped for the clump
of nodding hemlocks.

_Bang! Bang!_ Thayor was shooting now--shooting as if his life
depended upon it. His first shot went wild, the bullet striking
against a rock. The second sent the buck to his knees; in a second he
was up again. It was the fourth shot that reached home, just as
the deer gained the mass of boulders and hemlocks. The buck sprang
convulsively in the air--the old dog at his throat--turned a half
somersault and fell in a heap, stone dead, in a shallow pool. With a
cry of joy the trapper was beside him.

"By Goll! you done well!" Hite declared with enthusiasm. "By Goll!
friend, you done well! I knowed you had him soon's I heard the gun
crack. Thinks I, he ain't liable to git by ye if he comes in whar
I knowed he would. Well, he's consider'ble of a deer, I swan!" he
declared, running his hand over the branching prongs.

"He's a beauty!" cried Thayor.

"Yes, sir, and he'll dress clu