MADOC

"If you had one you should not use it! Are you a dreadful hunter?"

Margot had turned upon her guest with a defiant fear. As near as she
had ever come to hating anything she hated the men, of whom she had
heard, who used this wonderful northland as a murder ground. That was
what she named it, in her uncompromising judgment of those who killed
for the sake of killing, for the lust of blood that was in them.

"Yes. I reckon I am a 'dreadful' hunter, for I am a mighty poor shot.
But I'd like a try at that fellow. What horns! What a head! And how
can that fellow in the canoe keep so close to him, yet not finish
him!"

Adrian was so excited he could not stand still. His eyes gleamed, his
hands clenched, and his whole appearance was changed. Greatly for the
worse, the girl thought, regarding him with disgust.

"Finish him? That's King Madoc, Pierre's trained bull-moose. You'd be
finished yourself, I fear, if you harmed that splendid creature.
Pierre's a lazy fellow, mostly, but he spent a long time teaching
Madoc, and with his temper--I'm thankful you lost your gun."

"Do you never shoot things up here? I saw you giving the fox and
herons what looked like meat. You had a stew for supper, and fish for
breakfast. I don't mean to be impertinent, but the sight of that big
game---- Whew!"

"Yes. We do kill things, or have them killed, when it is necessary for
food. Never in sport. Man is almost the only animal who does that.
It's all terrible, seems to me. Everything preys upon something else,
weaker than itself. Sometimes when I think of it my dinner chokes me.
It's so easy to take life, and only God can create it. But uncle says
it is also God's law to take what is provided, and that there is no
mistake, even if it seems such to me."

But there Margot perceived that Adrian was not listening. Instead, he
was watching, with the intensest interest, the closer approach of the
canoe, in which sat idle Pierre, holding the reins of a harness
attached to his aquatic steed. The moose swam easily, with powerful
strokes, and Pierre was singing a gay melody, richer in his unique
possession than any king.

When he touched the shore and the great animal stood shaking his wet
hide, Adrian's astonishment found vent in a whirlwind of questions
that Pierre answered at his leisure and after his kind. But he walked
first toward Margot and offered a great bunch of trailing arbutus
flowers, saying:

"I saw these just as I pushe