began to moan among the trees. Henry heard
the faint bubble of the water in the spring, and saw beside him the
forms of his two comrades. But they were so still that they might have
been dead. An hour passed and his eyes growing more used to the dimness,
he saw better. There was still nothing at the spring, but by and by Ross
put his hand gently upon his arm, and Henry, as if by instinct, looked
in the right direction. There at the far edge of the forest was a deer,
a noble stag, glancing warily about him.

The stag was a fine enough animal to Ross and Sol, but to Henry's
unaccustomed eyes he seemed gigantic, the mightiest of his kind that
ever walked the face of the earth.

The deer gazed cautiously, raising his great head, until his antlers
looked to Henry like the branching boughs of a tree. The wind was
blowing toward his hidden foes, and brought him no omen of coming
danger. He stepped into the open and again glanced around the circle. It
seemed to Henry that he was staring directly into the deer's eyes, and
could see the fire shining there.

"Aim at that spot there by the shoulder, when he stoops down to drink,"
said Ross in the lowest of tones.

Satisfied now that no enemy was near, the stag walked to the spring.
Then he began to lower slowly the great antlers, and his head approached
the water. Henry slipped the barrel of his rifle across the log and
looked down the sights. He was seized with a tremor, but Ross and
Shif'less Sol, with a magnanimity that did them credit, pretended not to
notice it. The boy soon mastered the feeling, but then, to his great
surprise, he was attacked by another emotion. Suddenly he began to have
pity, and a fellow-feeling for the stag. It, too, was in the great
wilderness, rejoicing in the woods and the grass and the running streams
and had done no harm. It seemed sad that so fine a life should end,
without warning and for so little.

The feeling was that of a young boy, the instinct of one who had not
learned to kill, and he suppressed it. Men had not yet thought to spare
the wild animals, or to consider them part of a great brotherhood, least
of all on the border, where the killing of game was a necessity. And so
Henry, after a moment's hesitation, the cause of which he himself
scarcely knew, picked the spot near the shoulder that Ross had
mentioned, and pulled the trigger.

The stag stood for a moment or two as if dazed, then leaped into the air
and ran to the edge of the