report of a rifle, shot out from the edge of a neighboring thicket. The moose gave a convulsive start, floundered forward on his knees, swayed backward and forward an instant, then fell over broad-side into the bushes with a heavy crash, straightened out, gasped, and died. “Dunno but you’ll think I waited too long, young man,” cried Phillips, now advancing with a quick, leaping step from his covert. “The fact was, I felt, on seeing you getting into such close quarters, that I had better be rather particular about my aim, so as to stop him at once; besides that, I was at first a little out of breath. I had heard the fellow blow when an hundred rods off,--then the woman scream,--then your gun; and, thinking like enough there would be trouble, I legged it for the spot, and got to my stand just as he treed you.” “I feel very grateful to you, Mr. Phillips, for this timely rescue,” responded Claud, recovering his composure. “This, I suppose, is the far-famed moose?” “Yes, and a bouncer at that,” replied the hunter, going up and, placing his foot on the broad and still quivering flank of the huge animal. “Good twenty hands high, and weighs well, not much short of fifteen hundred, I should say.” “But are they often thus dangerous?” asked Claud. “Not very often, perhaps,” rejoined the hunter. “But still the bull moose, at this season of the year, is sometimes, when wounded, about as ugly a customer as you meet with in the woods. This fellow I judge to have been _oncommon_ vicious, as he begun his tantrums before he was touched at all, it seems. I dunno but ’twas the woman put the devil into him, as women do into two-legged animals sometimes,--don’t they, young man?” “The woman? O yes, the young lady,” said Claud, reminded of his duty as a gallant by the remark, though unwilling to appropriate to himself the prophetic joke with which it was coupled. “Where is she? I must go and see to her.” “She has already seen to herself, I guess,” said the hunter. “As I was coming up, I glimpsed her cutting round and running, like a wild turkey, for the clearing, to which the moose had cut off her retreat. She has reached the house by this time, doubtless; for it is hard by, down on the river here, a hundred rods or such a matter.” “Who is she? Do you know the family?” eagerly inquired the young man. “No,” answered the hunter. “They are new-comers in these parts.” “What could have brought her here so far into the woods?” persisted Claud. “The raspberries, very likely,” said the other, indifferently, while taking out and examining the edge of his knife. “But come, we must get this moose into some condition, so that he will keep; then be off to let the settlers know of our luck. And early to-morrow morning, we will, all hands, come up the river in boats, and distribute him. He will make fresh meat enough to supply the whole settlement.”