f mourners in whose
ranks a pale ghost or two mingled, the spectres being slim white-birch
trees.

The opposite bank presented a similar scene.

It was amid such surroundings that Neal Farrar heard for the second time
in his life the weird sound of the moose-hunter's call. He was a strong,
well-balanced young fellow; yet here again he knew the sensation as if
needles were pricking him all over, which he had felt once before in
these wilds, while his heart seemed to be performing athletic sports in
his body.

Cyrus and Dol confessed afterwards that they were "all shivers and
goose-flesh" as the call rose upon the night air.

After he had shipped his oars, and laid them down, Herb Heal noiselessly
turned his body to face the bow, and took up the birch-bark horn which
lay beside him. He breathed into it anxiously once or twice, then
paused, drew in all the air which his big lungs could contain, put the
trumpet again to his lips with its mouth pointing downward, and began
his summons.

The first part of the call lasted half a minute, or so, without a break.
During its execution the hunter moved his neck and shoulders first to
the left, then to the right, and slowly raised the horn above his head,
the rolling, plaintive sounds with which he commenced gathering power
and pitch with the ascending motion. As the birch trumpet pointed
straight upward, they seemed to sweep aloft in a surging crescendo, and
boom among the tree-tops.

Carrying his head again to the left and right, Herb gradually lowered
the horn until it was once more pointed towards the bottom of the boat,
having in its movements described in the air a big figure of eight. The
call sank with it, and died away in a lonely, sighing, quavering grunt.

Two seconds' pause, two slow, great throbs of the boys' hearts, so loud
that they threatened to burst the stillness.

Then the call began again, low and grumbling. Again it rose, swelled,
quavered, and sank, full of lonely longing.

A third time it surged up, and ended abruptly in a wild, ear-splitting
roar, which struck the tops of distant hills, and rolled off in
thunder-like echoes among them.

Silence followed. Not a gasp came from Herb after his efforts. Cyrus and
the Farrars tried to still their heaving chests, while each quick breath
was an expectation.

An answer! Surely it was an answer! The boys never doubted it; though
the responding sound they caught was only a repetition of that far-away
chop