et practice this morning. Because I can't run very fast," she
added with another delightful shudder.

Delancy, at her anxious request, modestly assured her that he would
"plug" the first boar that showed his tusks; and Geraldine laughed and
made Rosalie promise to do the same.

"You're both likely to have a shot," she said as the sleigh drew up on a
stone bridge and Miller and Kemp came over and saluted--big, raw-boned
men on snow-shoes, wearing no outer coats over their thin woollen
shirts, although every thermometer at Roya-Neh recorded zero.

Gun-cases were handed out, rifles withdrawn, and the cases stowed away
in the sleigh again. Fur coats were rolled in pairs, strapped, and slung
behind the broad shoulders of the guides. Then snow-shoes were
adjusted--skis for Geraldine; Miller walked westward and took post;
Kemp's huge bulk closed the eastern extremity of the line, and between
them, two and two at thirty paces apart, stood the hunters, Duane with
Rosalie, Geraldine with Delancy, loading their magazines.

Ahead was an open wood of second growth, birch, beech, and maple;
sunlight lay in white splashes here and there; nothing except these
blinding pools of light and the soft impression of a fallen twig varied
the immaculate snow surface as far as the eye could see.

"Forward and silence," called out Geraldine; the mellow swish of
snow-shoes answered her, and she glided forward on her skis, instructing
Delancy under her breath.

"The wind is right," she said. "They can't scent us here, though deeper
in the mountains the wind cuts up and you never can be sure what it may
do. There's just a chance of jumping a pig here, but there's a better
chance when we strike the alder country. Try not to shoot a sow."

"How am I to tell?"

"Sows have no tusks that show. Be careful not to mistake the white
patches of snow on a sow's jowl for tusks. They get them by rooting and
it's not always easy to tell."

Delancy said very honestly: "You'll have to control me; I'm likely to
let drive at anything."

"You're more likely to forget to shoot until the pig is out of sight,"
she whispered, laughing. "Look! Three trails! They were made last
night."

"Boar?"

"Yes," she nodded, glancing at the deep cloven imprints. She leaned
forward and glanced across the line at Miller, who caught her eye and
signalled significantly with one hand.

"Be ready, Delancy," she whispered. "There's a boar somewhere ahead."

"How can you tel