For an instant she stood motionless, presenting a perfect target. It was evident that she had heard the sound of the approaching hunters, but had not as yet located or identified them with her near-sighted eyes. Lennox whirled to find Dan standing very still, peering along the barrel of his rifle. But he didn't shoot. A light danced in his eyes, and his fingers crooked nervously about the trigger, but yet there was no pressure. The deer, seeing Lennox move, leaped into her terror-pace,--that astounding run that is one of the fastest gaits in the whole animal world. In the wink of an eye, she was out of sight. "Why didn't you shoot?" Lennox demanded. "Shoot? It was a doe, wasn't it?" "Good Lord, of course it was a doe! But there are no game laws that go back this far. Besides--you aimed at it." "I aimed just to see if I could catch it through my sights. And I could. My glasses sort of made it blur--but I think--perhaps--that I could have shot it. But I'm not going to kill does. There must be some reason for the game laws, or they wouldn't exist." "You're a funny one. Come three thousand miles to hunt and then pass up the first deer you see. You could almost have been your grandfather, to have done that. He thought killing a deer needlessly was almost as bad as killing a man. They are beautiful things, aren't they?" Dan answered him with startling emphasis. But the look that he wore said more than his words. They trudged on, and Lennox grew thoughtful. He was recalling the picture that he had seen when he had whirled to look at Dan, immediately after the deer had leaped from its bed. It puzzled him a little. He had turned to find the younger man in a perfect posture to shoot, his feet placed in exactly the position that years of experience had taught Lennox was correct; and withal, absolutely motionless. Of all the many things to learn in the wilderness, to stand perfectly still in the presence of game is one of the hardest. The natural impulse is to start,--a nervous reflex that usually terrifies the game. The principle of standing still is, of course, that it takes a certain length of time for the deer to look about after it makes its first leap from its bed, and if the hunter is motionless, the deer is usually unable to identify him as a thing to fear. It gives a better chance for a shot. What many hunters take years to learn, Dan had seemed to know by instinct. Could it be, after all, that this slender weakling, even now bowed down with a terrible malady, had inherited the true frontiersman's instincts of his ancestors? Then all at once Lennox halted in his tracks, evidently with no other purpose than to study the tall form that now was walking up the trail in front of him. And he uttered a little exclamation of amazement. "Listen, Dan!" he cried suddenly. "Haven't you ever been in the woods before?" Dan turned, smiling. "No. What have I done now?"