ve soul. Then
he concluded that what he wanted was not only vengeance, but a supply
of deer's meat to compensate for the lost cabbages.

Rushing into the house, he snatched down his old muzzle-loader from
the pegs where it hung on the kitchen wall. After the backwoods
fashion, the gun was kept loaded with a general utility charge of
buckshot and slugs, such as might come handy in case a bear should try
to steal the pig. Being no sportsman, Coxen did not even take the
trouble to change the old percussion-cap, which had been on the tube
for six months. It was enough for him that the weapon was loaded.

Down the other slope of the hill, where the buck could not see him,
Coxen hurried at a run, and gained the cover of the thick woods. Then,
still running, he skirted the fields till the cabbage patch came once
more in sight, with the marauder still enjoying himself in the midst
of it.

At this point the long-dormant instinct of the hunter began to awake
in Sam Coxen. Everything that he had ever heard about stalking big
game flashed into his mind, and he wanted to apply it all at once. He
noted the direction of the wind, and was delighted to find that it
came to his nostrils straight from the cabbage patch.

He went stealthily, lifting and setting down his heavy-booted feet
with a softness of which he had never guessed himself capable. He
began to forget his indignation and think only of the prospect of
bagging the game--so easily do the primeval instincts spring to life
in a man's brain. Presently, when within about a hundred yards of the
place where he hoped to get a fair shot, Coxen redoubled his caution.
He went crouching, keeping behind the densest cover. Then, growing
still more crafty, he got down and began to advance on all fours.

Now it chanced that Sam Coxen's eyes were not the only ones which had
found interest in the red buck's proceedings. A large black bear,
wandering just within the shelter of the forest, had spied the buck
in the open, and being curious, after the fashion of his kind, had sat
down in a thicket to watch the demolition of the cabbages.

He had no serious thought of hunting the big buck, knowing that he
would be hard to catch and troublesome if caught. But he was in that
investigating, pugnacious, meddlesome mood which is apt to seize an
old male bear in the autumn.

When the bear caught sight of Sam Coxen's crawling, stealthy figure,
not two paces from his hiding-place, his first impuls