en she stretched out her long, ungainly head
and uttered her harsh call, he answered with a soft, caressing bellow.
But at almost the same instant her call was answered by another and a
very different voice; and a tall bull-moose strode out arrogantly upon
the sand.

The black bull's heart swelled with wrath and longing. With a roar he
charged down from the bluff; and the moose, diverted from his wooing,
turned to meet the assault. But he was no match for this dreadful
black bulk that descended upon him with the resistlessness of doom. He
went down at the first crash, a pathetic sprawl of long limbs and
long, ineffective, beautiful antlers; and barely escaping with his
life, he fled away into the thickets. Then, satisfied with his
victory, the black bull lifted his head and turned to the watching
cow.

The cow, after the manner of her kind appreciating a conqueror,
awaited somewhat doubtfully his approach. But when he was within a
few feet of her, wonder and interest gave way to terror. His bulk, his
blackness, his square, mighty head, his big, blazing eyes, and short,
thick muzzle filled her with repulsion and amazement. His voice, too,
though unmistakably caressing and persuasive, was too daunting in its
strangeness. With a wild snort, she turned and fled into the woods
with a speed that he could not hope to match.

After this experience the black bull's loneliness grew almost
intolerable, and his temper so bad that he would go raging up and down
the woods in search of bears to chase. The winter cooled him down
somewhat, and in the spring his temper was not so raw. But he was now
troubled with a spirit of wandering, and kept ranging the woods in
every direction, only returning to the young green of the water-meadow
once or twice a day.

One afternoon, however, there came a change. He was browsing irritably
near the bank when he heard voices that made him look up sharply. A
canoe was passing up-stream, poled by two men. It passed slowly,
surging against the current. As he looked at the men, a dreadful
memory stirred within him. He recalled the loud report which had
driven him mad with fear on that day when the red cow disappeared. He
remembered an appalling sight on the beach of that lower meadow which
he had never visited since. His eyes went red. With a grunt of fury,
he thundered down the bank and out knee-deep into the current.

The men in the canoe were astonished, and hastily pushed over toward
the other s