One by one they crashed through the brush and joined him, and stood staring. No need for questions. Ten square yards of deep-trodden, reeking mud and crushed grass, a trampled cap, and here and there a rag of brown duck; a silver-mounted flask shining in a little pool of bloody water; a stockless rifle-barrel, bent and soiled, sticking upright; beyond all a huge, hairy body, and below it a suggestion of another body and a blood-stained face, that even through its terrible disfigurement seemed to scowl with grim determination. Throwing off their coats, they dragged the dead moose aside and strove to raise Moeran's body, but in vain. Something held it; the right leg was broken and they found the foot fast fixed in a forked root the treacherous slime had concealed. In the right hand was firmly clutched the haft of his hunting knife, and in the moose's throat was the broken blade. The veteran almost smiled through his tears as they worked to loosen the prisoned foot, and muttered, “Caught like a bear in a trap; he'd have held his own with a fair chance.” Carrying the poor, stamped, crushed body to the shade, they laid it upon the moss and returned to read the story of the fearful battle. To their hunter's eyes it read as plainly as printed page. The great bull, sore from his previous wound, had sought the swamp. Moeran had trailed him to the edge and knocked him down the first shot, and after reloading had run forward to bleed his prize. Just as he got within reach the bull had struggled up and charged, and Moeran had shot him through the second time. Then he had apparently dodged about in the sticky mud and struck the bull terrific blows with the clubbed rifle, breaking the stock and bending the barrel, and getting struck himself repeatedly by the terrible forefeet of the enraged brute. To and fro, with ragged clothes and torn flesh, he had dodged, the deadly muskeg behind and on either side, the furious bull holding the only path to the saving woods. At last he had entrapped his foot in the forked root, and the bull had rushed in and beaten him down, and as he fell he struck with his knife ere the tremendous weight crushed out his life. The veteran picked up the rifle-barrel, swept it through a pool and examined the action, and found a shell jammed fast. In despairing voice he said, “Oh, boys, boys, if that shell had but come into place our friend had won the day, but he died like the noble fellow he was!” With rifles and coats they made a stretcher and carried him sadly out to the lake. “_He would get that moose, or stay in the woods forever!_” THE MYSTERY OF A CHRISTMAS HUNT, By Talbot Torrance [Illustration: 9129] “Clug!” The wad went home in the last shell, and as I removed it from the loader and finished the fill of my belt I heaved a sigh of profound relief at the completion of a troublesome job.