Proutt spoke, this night, of a day’s hunting of the winter before. How, coursing the woods, he had heard a hound’s bay far below him, and had taken post upon a ledge across which he thought the fox would come. “Dan ’uz with me,” he said, in his hoarse loud voice. “I says to Dan: ‘Set’ and he set on his ha’nches, right aside me, cocking his nose down where t’other dog was baying, waiting, wise as an owl. “I had my old gun, with Number Threes in both bar’ls; and me and Dan stayed there, awaiting; and the baying come nearer all the time, till I see the fox would come acrost that ledge, sure. “Cold it was. Wind ablowing, and the snow acutting past my ears. Not much snow on the ground; but it was froze hard as sand. I figured Dan’d get uneasy; but he never stirred. Set where I’d told him to set; and us awaiting. “Time come, I see the fox, sneaking up the ledge at that long, easy lope o’ theirs. Dan see him too. His ears lifted and he looked my way. I says: ‘Set.’ And he let his ears down again, and stayed still. Fox come along, ’bout five rods below us. Crossed over there. So fur away I knowed I couldn’t drop him. Never pulled; and he never saw me; and old Dan set where he was. Never moved a mite. “After a spell, Will Belter’s hound come past; and then come Will himself, cutting down from where he’d been waiting. Says: ‘See a fox go by?’ And I told him I did. He ast why I didn’t shoot; and I says the fox was too fur off. And he says: ‘Where was your dog?’ So I told him Dan was setting right by me.” Proutt laughed harshly, and slapped a triumphant hand upon his knee. “Will wouldn’t believe me,” he declared, “till I showed him tracks, where he wuz, and where the fox went by.” He looked around for their admiration; but no one spoke at all. Only one or two glanced sidewise at each other, and slowly grinned. The tale was all right, except for a thing or two. In the first place, Proutt was no man to let a fox go by, no matter how long the shot; and, in the second place, Dan was known to be a surly dog, not overly obedient, unruly as his master. And, in the third place, this incident, thoroughly authenticated, had happened two years before to another man and another dog, as everyone in the store knew. Proutt had borrowed his tale from a source too close home.... So they knew he lied; but no one cared to tell him so. Only, after a little silence, Nick Westley, the game warden, said with a slow twinkle in his eye: “Proutt, that reminds me of a story my father used to tell.” Proutt grunted something or other, disgusted with their lack of appreciation; and Westley took it for encouragement, and began to whittle slow, fine shavings from a sliver of pine which he held in hand, and told the tale. * * * * * “It was when he was younger,” he explained, “before he was married, while he still lived at home. But I’ve heard him tell the story many a time.