om behind the door, and stolen
swiftly up to the back pasture.

From a clump of hemlock not fifty yards away came a red flash and a
sharp report. The bull on the near side of the fence sprang into the
air with a gasping cough, and fell. The smaller bull, who knew what
guns meant, simply vanished. It was as if the dusk had blotted him
out, so noiselessly and instantaneously did he sink back into the
thickets; and a moment later he was heard crashing away through the
underbrush in mad flight. As the hunter stepped up to examine his
prize, the boy dropped from the tree, grabbed his birch-bark tube, and
came forward proudly.

"There wasn't any cow at all,--'cept me!" he proclaimed, his voice
ringing with triumph.

The Passing of the Black Whelps

[Illustration: "OVER THE CREST OF THE RIDGE, INKY BLACK FOR AN INSTANT
AGAINST THE MOON, CAME A LEAPING DEER"]

I.

A lopsided, waning moon, not long risen, looked over the ragged crest
of the ridge, and sent long shadows down the sparsely wooded slope.
Though there was no wind, and every tree was as motionless as if
carved of ice, these spare, intricate shadows seemed to stir and
writhe, as if instinct with a kind of sinister activity. This
confusion of light and dark was increased by the patches of snow that
still clung in the dips and on the gentler slopes. The air was cold,
yet with a bitter softness in it, the breath of the thaw. The sound of
running water was everywhere--the light clamour of rivulets, and the
rush of the swollen brooks; while from the bottom of the valley came
the deep, pervading voice of the river at freshet, labouring between
high banks with its burden of sudden flood.

Over the crest of the ridge, inky black for an instant against the
moon, came a leaping deer. He vanished in a patch of young firs. He
shot out again into the moonlight. Down the slope he came in mighty
bounds, so light of foot and so elastic that he seemed to float
through the air. From his heaving sides and wild eyes it was evident
that he was fleeing in desperation from some appalling terror.
Straight down the slope he came, to the very brink of the high bluff
overlooking the river. There he wheeled, and continued his flight up
the valley, his violent shadow every now and then, as he crossed the
spaces of moonlight, projecting grotesquely out upon the swirling
flood.

Up along the river bluff he fled for perhaps a mile. Then he stopped
suddenly and listened, his sensit