nd to have a last try at turning our luck.

"This time we took our positions with great care, among some small
spruces on a joint that ran out from the southern meadow. I was farthest
to the west; McDonald (who had also brought his gun) was next; Billy,
with the horn, was farthest away from the point where he thought the
moose would come out. So Billy began to call, very beautifully. The long
echoes went bellowing over the hills. The afternoon was still and the
setting sun shone through a light mist, like a ball of red gold.

"Fifteen minutes after sundown Silverhorns gave a loud bawl from the
western ridge and came crashing down the hill. He cleared the bushes two
or three hundred yards to our left with a leap, rushed into the pond,
and came wading around the south shore toward us. The bank here was
rather high, perhaps four feet above the water, and the mud below it was
deep, so that the moose sank in to his knees. I give you my word, as he
came along there was nothing visible to Mac and me except his ears and
his horns. Everything else was hidden below the bank.

"There were we behind our little spruce trees. And there was
Silverhorns, standing still now, right in front of us. And all that Mac
and I could see were those big ears and those magnificent antlers,
appearing and disappearing as he lifted and lowered his head. It was a
fearful situation. And there was Billy, with his birch-bark hooter,
forty yards below us--he could see the moose perfectly.

"I looked at Mac, and he looked at me. He whispered something about
predestination. Then Billy lifted his horn and made ready to give a
little soft grunt, to see if the moose wouldn't move along a bit, just
to oblige us. But as Billy drew in his breath, one of those fool flies
that are always blundering around a man's face flew straight down his
throat. Instead of a call he burst out with a furious, strangling fit of
coughing. The moose gave a snort, and a wild leap in the water, and
galloped away under the bank, the way he had come. Mac and I both fired
at his vanishing ears and horns, but of course----"

"All Aboooard!" The conductor's shout rang along the platform.

"Line's clear," exclaimed McLeod, rising. "Noo we'll be off! Wull ye
stay here wi' me, or gang awa' back to yer bed?"

"Here," answered Hemenway, not budging from his place on the bench.

The bell clanged, and the powerful machine puffed out on its flaring way
through the night. Faster and faster c