heir places at those points of the lake where the deer would be most
likely to take the water, while my guide, Steve M----, and myself went
up Bog River, to start him. The river, a dark, sluggish stream, about
fifty feet wide, the channel by which the Mud Lakes and Little Tupper's
Lake, with its connected lakes and ponds, empty into Tupper's Lake, is a
favorite feeding-ground with the deer, whose breakfast is made on the
leaves of the _Nuphar lutea_ which edge the stream. We surprised one,
swimming around amongst the leaves, snatching here and there the
choicest of them, and when he turned to go out and rose in the water,
as his feet touched bottom, I gave him a ball without fatal effect, and
landing, we put Carlo on the track, which was marked by occasional drops
and clots of blood, and hearing him well off into the woods, and in that
furious and deep bay which indicates close pursuit, we went back to our
boat and paddled upstream to a run-way Steve knew of, where the deer
sometimes crossed the river. We pushed the boat into the overhanging
alders which fringe the banks, leaning out into and over the water, and
listened to the far-off bay of the hound. It died away and was entirely
lost for a few minutes, and then came into hearing from the nearer side
of the ridge, which lay back from the river a hundred rods or so, and I
cocked my rifle while Steve silently pushed the boat out of the bushes,
ready for a start, if the deer should "water." The baying receded again,
and this time in the direction of the lake. The blood we had found on
the trail was the bright, red, frothy blood which showed that the ball
had passed through the lungs, and, as we knew that the deer would not
run long before watering, we were sure that this would be his last turn
and that he was making in earnest for the lake, where some of the boats
would certainly catch him.

The excitement of the hunt had brought me back to a natural state of
feeling, and now, as I lay in the stern of the boat, drifting slowly
down-stream, and looked up into the hazy blue sky, in the whole expanse
of which appeared no fragment of cloud, and the softened sunshine
penetrated both soul and body, while the brain, lulled into lethargy by
the unbroken silence and monotony of forest around, lost every trace of
its midsummer madness,--I looked back to the state of the last evening
as to a curious dream. I asked myself wherein it differed from a dream,
and instantly my daemon rep