hing toward him. He was the monarch of the wilderness.
There was nothing in the world that he feared, except those
strange-smelling little beasts on two legs who crept around through the
woods and shot fire out of sticks. This was surely not one of those
treacherous animals, but some strange new creature that dared to shriek
at him and try to drive him out of its way. He would not move. He would
try his strength against this big yellow-eyed beast.

[Illustration: There he stood defiant, front feet planted wide apart.]

"Losh!" cried McLeod; "he's gaun' to fecht us!" and he dropped the
cord, grabbed the levers, and threw the steam off and the brakes on
hard. The heavy train slid groaning and jarring along the track. The
moose never stirred. The fire smouldered in his small narrow eyes. His
black crest was bristling. As the engine bore down upon him, not a rod
away, he reared high in the air, his antlers flashing in the blaze, and
struck full at the headlight with his immense fore feet. There was a
shattering of glass, a crash, a heavy shock, and the train slid on
through the darkness, lit only by the moon.

Thirty or forty yards beyond, the momentum was exhausted and the engine
came to a stop. Hemenway and McLeod clambered down and ran back, with
the other trainmen and a few of the passengers. The moose was lying in
the ditch beside the track, stone dead and frightfully shattered. But
the great head and the vast, spreading antlers were intact.

"Seelver-horrns, sure eneugh!" said McLeod, bending over him. "He was
crossin' frae the Nepissiguit to the Jacquet; but he didna get across.
Weel, Dud, are ye glad? Ye hae killt yer first moose!"

"Yes," said Hemenway, "it's my first moose. But it's your first moose,
too. And I think it's our last. Ye gods, what a fighter!"

NOTIONS ABOUT NOVELS

"You must write a novel," said my Uncle Peter to the young Man of
Letters. "The novel is the literary form in which the psychological
conditions of interest are most easily discovered and met. It appeals
directly to the reader's self-consciousness, and invites him to fancy
how fine a figure he would cut in more picturesque circumstances than
his own. When it simplifies great events, as Stevenson said it must, it
produces the feeling of power; and when it dignifies the commonplace,
as Schopenhauer said it ought to, it produces the sense of importance.
People like to imagine themselves playing on a large stage. The most
humdr