turning our luck.

"This time we took our positions with great care, among some small
spruces on a point that ran out from the southern meadow. I was
farthest to the west; McDonald (who had also brought his gun) was next;
Billy, with the horn, was farthest away from the point where he thought
the moose would come out. So Billy began to call, very beautifully. The
long echoes went bellowing over the hills. The afternoon was still and
the setting sun shone through a light mist, like a ball of red gold.

"Fifteen minutes after sundown Silverhorns gave a loud bawl from the
western ridge and came crashing down the hill. He cleared the bushes
two or three hundred yards to our left with a leap, rushed into the
pond, and came wading around the south shore toward us. The bank here
was rather high, perhaps four feet above the water, and the mud below
it was deep, so that the moose sank in to his knees. I give you my
word, as he came along there was nothing visible to Mac and me except
his ears and his horns. Everything else was hidden below the bank.

"There were we behind our little spruce-trees. And there was
Silverhorns, standing still now, right in front of us. And all that Mac
and I could see were those big ears and those magnificent antlers,
appearing and disappearing as he lifted and lowered his head. It was a
fearful situation. And there was Billy, with his birch-bark hooter,
forty yards below us--he could see the moose perfectly.

"I looked at Mac, and he looked at me. He whispered something about
predestination. Then Billy lifted his horn and made ready to give a
little soft grunt, to see if the moose wouldn't move along a bit, just
to oblige us. But as Billy drew in his breath, one of those tiny fool
flies that are always blundering around a man's face flew straight down
his throat. Instead of a call he burst out with a furious, strangling
fit of coughing. The moose gave a snort, and a wild leap in the water,
and galloped away under the bank, the way he had come. Mac and I both
fired at his vanishing ears and horns, but of course----"

"All aboooard!" The conductor's shout rang along the platform.

"Line's clear," exclaimed McLeod, rising. "Noo we'll be off! Wull ye
stay here wi' me, or gang awa' back to yer bed?"

"Here," answered Hemenway, not budging from his place on the bench.

The bell clanged, and the powerful machine puffed out on its flaring
way through the night. Faster and faster came the big explosi