, blocking the
faint path; and as you stop short and shrink behind the nearest tree, a
huge head and antlers swing toward you, with widespread nostrils and
keen, dilating eyes, and ears like two trumpets pointing straight at
your head--a bull moose, _sh!_

For a long two minutes he stands there motionless, watching the new
creature that he has never seen before; and it will be well for you to
keep perfectly quiet and let him surrender the path when he is so
disposed. Motion on your part may bring him nearer to investigate; and
you can never know at what slight provocation the red danger light will
blaze into his eyes. At last he moves away, quietly at first, turning
often to look and to make trumpets of his ears at you. Then he lays his
great antlers back on his shoulders, sticks his nose far up ahead of
him, and with long, smooth strides lunges away over the windfalls and is
gone.

So every day the little trail had some new surprise for you,--owl, or
hare, or prickly porcupine rattling his quills, like a quiver of arrows,
and proclaiming his Indian name, _Unk-wunk! Unk-wunk!_ as he loafed
along. When you had followed far, and were sure that the loitering trail
had certainly lost itself, it crept at last under a dark hemlock; and
there, through an oval frame of rustling, whispering green, was the
loneliest, loveliest little deer-haunted beaver pond in the world, where
Quoskh lived with his mate and his little ones.

The first time I came down the trail and peeked through the oval frame
of bushes, I saw him; and the very first glimpse made me jump at the
thought of what a wonderful discovery I had made, namely, that little
herons play with dolls, as children do. But I was mistaken. Quoskh had
been catching frogs and hiding them, one by one, as I came along. He
heard me before I knew he was there, and jumped for his last frog, a big
fat one, with which he slanted up heavily on broad vans--with a hump on
his back and a crook in his neck and his long legs trailing below and
behind--towards his nest in the hemlock, beyond the beaver pond. When I
saw him plainly he was just crossing the oval frame through which I
looked. He had gripped the frog across the middle in his long beak, much
as one would hold it with a pair of blunt shears, swelling it out at
either side, like a string tied tight about a pillow. The head and short
arms were forced up at one side, the limp legs dangled down on the
other, looking for all the world