Slowly, silently, foot by foot, and sometimes inch by inch, the canoe stole up the currentless channel, the guide never raising his paddle, but pushing with it cautiously against the soft bottom and lily-roots. It was a good piece of canoe work, worthy even of Moeran's noted skill, and he thoroughly appreciated it. By motions of his hand he indicated when to halt and advance, while his eyes scanned sharply every yard of marsh revealed by the windings of the channel. Not the slightest sound marked their progress until they had almost entered the open water in the center of the pond, and were creeping past the last fringe of tall grass. Suddenly Moeran's hand signaled a halt, and the canoe lost its slow, forward motion. He looked and looked, staring fixedly at a point some twenty yards distant, where the growth of grass was thin and short and the lily-pads denser than usual, and as he gazed with a strange concentration, a wild light flashed in his eyes until they fairly blazed with exultant triumph. Straight before him among the faded greens and bewildering browns of the lily-pads was a motionless, elongated brown object very like the curved back of a beaver, and a foot or more from it, in the shadow of a clump of grass, something shone with a peculiar liquid gleam. It was an eye--a great, round, wild eye--staring full into his own--the eye of a moose--and the curving object like the back of a beaver was naught else than the enormous nose, or muffle, of a full-grown bull. Something like a sigh came from it, and then it slowly rose higher and higher until the head and neck were exposed. The big ears pointed stiffly forward, and the nose twitched and trembled for an instant as it caught the dreaded taint; then with a mighty floundering and splashing the great brute struggled to his feet. It was a grewsome spectacle to see this uncouth creature uprise from a place where it seemed a muskrat could hardly have hidden. For a few seconds he stood still. [Illustration: 0116] “Shoot! Shoot!” Moeran simply picked up the rifle and brought it level. “Load! 'Tain't loaded--the lever--quick!”