dden triumph. Bleeding, hideously mangled,
but still, apparently, full of fighting vigor, he disengaged himself
from the unresisting mass and looked around him proudly. His wild
eyes met those of the hunter, and the hunter had an anxious moment.
But the great beast looked away again at once, and seemed, in fact, to
forget all about the man's existence. He lay down and commenced
licking assiduously at his wounds. Filled with astonishment, and just
now beginning to realize the anguish in his broken arm, the hunter
stole discreetly away.

After an hour or two the puma arose, rather feebly, passed the body of
his slain foe without a glance, and clambered up the slope to the
ledge. He wanted a place of refuge now, a retreat that would be safe
and cool and dark. Up and up he followed the winding of that narrow
trail, and came out at last upon a rocky platform before a
black-mouthed cave. He knew well enough that he had killed the owner
of the cave, so he entered without hesitation.

Here, for two days, he lay in concealment, licking his wounds. He had
no desire to eat; but two or three times, because the wounds fevered
him, he came forth and descended the trail a little way to where he
had seen a cold spring bubbling from the rocks. His clean blood, in
that high, clean air, quickly set itself to the healing of the hurts,
and strength flowed back swiftly into his torn sinews. At dawn of the
third day he felt himself suddenly hungry, and realizing that he must
seek some small game, even though not yet ready for any difficult
hunting, he crept forth, just as the first thin glory of rose light
came washing into the cave. But before he started down the trail he
paused, and stood staring, with some dim half memory, out across the
transparent, hollow spaces, the jumbled hilltops, misty, gray-green
forests, and steel-bright loops of water to which he had at last come
home.

THE MONARCH OF PARK BARREN

THE MONARCH OF PARK BARREN

CHAPTER I

From the cold spring lakes and sombre deeps of spruce forest, over
which the bald granite peak of Old Saugamauk kept endless guard, came
reports of a moose of more than royal stature, whose antlers beggared
all records for symmetry and spread. From a home-coming lumber cruiser
here, a wandering Indian there, the word came straggling in, till the
settlements about the lower reaches of the river began to believe
there might be some truth behind the wild tales. Then--for it was