Hours passed and the boy was yet awake. New feelings, vague and undetermined came into his mind but through them all went the feeling of mastery. He, though a boy, was in many respects the chief, and while he need not assert his leadership yet a while, he could never doubt its possession. The light died far down and only a few smoldering coals were left. The blackness of the night, coming ever closer and closer, hovered over his companions and hid their faces from him. The great trunks of the trees grew shadowy and dim. Out of the darkness came a sound slight but not in harmony with the ordinary noises of the forest. His acute senses, the old inherited primitive instinct, noticed at once the jarring note. He moved ever so little but an extraordinary change came over his face. The idle look of luxury and basking warmth passed away and the eyes became alert, watchful, defiant. Every feature, every muscle was drawn, as if he were at the utmost tension. Almost unconsciously his figure sank down farther against the log, until it blended perfectly with the bark and the fallen leaves below. Only an eye of preternatural keenness could have separated the outline of the boy from the general scene. For five minutes he lay and moved not a particle. Then the discordant note came again among the familiar sounds of the forest and he glanced at his comrades. They slept peacefully. His lip curled slightly, not with contempt but with that unconscious feeling of superiority; they would not have noticed, even had they been awake. His hands moved forward and grasped his rifle. Then he began to slip away from the opening and into the forest, not by walking nor altogether by crawling, but by a curious, noiseless, gliding motion, almost like that of a serpent. Always he clung to the shadows where his shifting body still blended with the dark, and as he advanced other primitive instincts blazed up in him. He was a hunter pursuing for the first time the highest and most dangerous game of all game and the thrill through his veins was so keen that he shivered slightly. His chin was projected, and his eyes were two red spots in the night. All the while his comrades by the fire, even the trained foresters, slumbered in peace, no warning whatever coming to their heavy heads. The boy reached the wall of the woods, and now his form was completely swallowed up in the blackness there. He lay a while in the bushes, motionless, all his senses alert, and for the third time the jarring note came to his ears. The maker of it was on his right, and, as he judged, perhaps a couple of hundred yards away. He would proceed at once to that point. It is truth to say that no thought of danger entered his mind; the thrills of the present and its chances absorbed him. It seemed natural that he should do this thing, he was merely resuming an old labor, discontinued for a time.