hind him. Surely there was a movement
among the young spruce tops. Almost as smoothly as a mink slips from a
rock the boy slipt down from his too conspicuous perch and crouched
behind the fence. Peering between the rails he saw a tall, dark shape,
with gigantic head, vast antlers, and portentous bulk of shoulder,
step noiselessly from the thicket and stand motionless. With a heart
that throbbed in mingled exultation and terror, the boy realized that
he had called a bull-moose.

Huge as seemed its stature to the boy's excited vision, the moose was
in reality a young and rather small bull, who had been forced by
stronger rivals to go unmated. Driven by his restless desire, he had
wandered beyond his wonted range. Now he stood like a statue, head
uplifted, peering on every side to catch sight of the mate whose voice
had so resistlessly summoned him. Only his wide ears moved, waving
inquisitively. His nostrils, ordinarily his chief source of
information, were dulled almost to obtuseness by that subtly acrid
perfume of the smoke.

The boy in his fence corner, with a gray stump beside him, shrank
within himself and stared through half-closed eyes, trembling lest the
mighty stranger should detect him. He had a very reasonable notion
that the mighty stranger might object to the deception which had been
practised upon his eager emotions, and might not find the old rail
fence much barrier to his righteous wrath. For all his elation, the
boy began to wish that he had not been in such haste to learn
moose-calling. "Don't call till you've some idea who'll answer!" was a
rule which he deduced from that night's experience.

It is possible that the bull, during those few minutes while he stood
waiting and watching, saw the dim figure of the boy behind the fence.
If so, the figure had no concern for him. He caught nothing of the
dreaded man-smell; and he had no reason to associate that small,
harmless creature with the mate to whose calling he had sped so
eagerly. But there was no doubt that the calling had come from this
very place. Was it possible that the cow, more coquettish than her
kind are apt to be, had hidden herself to provoke him? He came closer
to the fence, and uttered a soft grumble in his throat, a sound both
caressing and appealing. "My! how disappointed he'll be!" thought the
boy, and devoutly wished himself safe at home.

At this trying moment came relief from an unexpected quarter. That
distant threshing of the b