“There’s never two of them in a tree,” said McQuaigh, “so we may go to sleep now.” We did so, and I slept soundly for two or three hours, Jean Baptiste kept watch as before, employing himself, until his turn came for sleeping, in dressing the carcass of the bear, from which, in the morning, we were supplied with hot chops for breakfast. If we did not consider them unsavory, it was perhaps because our appetites were too good to be very discriminating. We could not persuade Blungle to touch them. He was possessed of an abstract idea that it was unchristian to eat a bear. At first he positively refused to accompany us any further, but on McQuaigh expressing a friendly hope that he would get safe out of the woods if he attempted to return alone, he made up his mind that the lesser of two evils was to stick to the party. He made a solemn vow, however, that should he ever live to see the Zoological Gardens again, he would carefully avoid even a glance at the bears. After breakfast, we resumed our course, keeping close to the track as on the preceding day. We had not gone far when, on descending a steep bank, we heard a rustling sound proceed from a thicket on the margin of a tolerably sized stream which lay across our path. “It’s but the little one,” said McQuaigh, whose keen eye caught a momentary sight of a deer, which was immediately lost again to him in the thicket. “Make ready for action.” We were, of course, all excitement, and Blungle obeyed the injunction by deliberately levelling his rifle at Jean Baptiste, who was a little in advance of us, with a view to driving the deer from his hiding place. McQuaigh, observing this movement, with a sudden wave of his arm elevated the muzzle into the air, just as Blungle drew the trigger, and the ball went whistling through the trees, cutting off several twigs in its course.