hatch their young, and care for them and
protect them until they were ready to go out into the world, and then
they would send them away to the south. A few weeks later they would
follow, and next spring they would come back and do it all over again.
That is--they would if he didn't kill them.

He rose from his log, smiling again at the abject look with which Mahng
watched him, and putting one foot on each of the two heavy steel
springs, he threw his weight upon them and crushed them down. Mahng felt
the jaws relax, and suddenly he knew that he was free. The strength came
back with a rush to his weary limbs, and he sprang up, scrambled down
the bank and into the water, and was gone. A few minutes later he
reappeared far down the pond, and rising on the wing he flew away with a
laugh toward the Glimmerglass.

THE MAKING OF A GLIMMERGLASS BUCK

I DON'T know that he was a record-breaker, but he was certainly much
larger and more powerful than the average buck, and he was decidedly
good-looking, even for a deer. There were one or two slight
blemishes--to be described later--in his physical make-up; but they were
not very serious, and except for them he was very handsome and
well-formed. I can't give you the whole story of his life, for that
would take several books, but I shall try to tell you how he became the
biggest buck and the best fighter of his day and generation in the woods
around the Glimmerglass. He was unusually favored by Providence, for
besides being so large and strong he was given a weapon such as very few
full-grown Michigan bucks have ever possessed.

He had a good start in life, and it is really no wonder that he
distanced all his relations. In the first place, he arrived in the woods
a little earlier in the year than deer babies usually do. This was
important, for it lengthened his first summer, and gave more opportunity
for growth before the return of cold weather. If the winter had
lingered, or if there had been late frosts or snow-storms, his early
advent might have been anything but a blessing; but the spring proved a
mild one, and there was plenty of good growing weather for fawns. Then,
too, his mother as in the very prime of life, and for the time being he
was her only child. If there had been twins, as there were the year
before, he would, of course, have had to share her milk with a brother
or sister; but as it was he enjoyed all the benefits of a natural
monopoly, and he grew and pr