the birch
thickets still haunted him, however, and he moved with marvellous
quietness. Not once did his vast antlers and his rushing bulk disturb
the dry undergrowth, or bring the brittle, dead branches crashing down
behind him. The only sound that followed him was that of the shallow
snow yielding crisply under his feet, and a light clicking, as the
tips of his deep-cleft, loose-spreading hoofs came together at the
recovery of each stride. This clicking, one of the most telltale of
wilderness sounds to the woodsman's ear, grew more sharp and insistent
as the moose increased his speed, till presently it became a sort of
castanet accompaniment to his long, hurried stride. A porcupine, busy
girdling a hemlock, ruffled and rattled his dry quills at the sound,
and peered down with little, disapproving eyes as the big, black form
fled by below him.

The snowy surface of the marsh was stained with ghosts of
colour--aerial, elusive tinges of saffron and violet--as the moose
came out upon it. As he swung down its lonely length, his gigantic
shadow, lopsided and blue, danced along threateningly, its head lost
in the bushes fringing the open. When he came to the end of the marsh,
where the wooded slope of the next ridge began, he half paused,
reaching his long muzzle irresolutely toward the tempting twigs of a
young willow thicket; but before he could gather one mouthful, that
nameless fear came over him again, that obscure forewarning of doom,
and he sprang forward toward the cover of the firs. As he sprang,
there was a movement and a flash far down a wooded alley--a sharp,
ringing crack--and something invisible struck him in the body. He had
been struck before, by falling branches, or by stones bounding down a
bluff, but this missile seemed very different and very small. Small as
it was, however, the blow staggered him for an instant; then he
shuddered, and a surge of heat passed through his nerves. But a second
later he recovered himself fully, and bounded into the woods, just in
time to escape a second bullet, as a second shot rang out in vain
behind him.

Straight up the wooded steep he ran, startled, but less actually
terrified now, in fleeing from a definite peril, then when trembling
before a formless menace. This peril was one that he felt he could
cope with. He knew his own strength and speed. Now that he had the
start of them, these slow-moving, relentless man-creatures, with the
sticks that spoke fire, could never