ly anger him that way. 'Sh! When he turns----"

"Bang! bang--bang!" in swift succession.

The great horns tossed, the noble head came round again, then bent,
wavered and disappeared. The tragedy was over.

"I got him! I got him that time! Always shoot that way, never----"

Pierre picked up his paddle and sent the canoe forward at a leap. When
there came no responding movement from his companion he looked back
over his shoulder. Adrian's face had gone white and the eagerness of
his eyes had given place to unspeakable regret.

"What's the matter? Sick?"

"Yes. Why, it was murder! Margot was right."

"Oh! shucks!"

Whereupon Pierre pulled the faster toward the body of his victim.

CHAPTER XIV

SHOOTING THE RAPIDS

Three months earlier, if anybody had told Adrian he would ever be
guilty of such "squeamishness" he would have laughed in derision. Now,
all unconsciously to himself, the influence of his summer at Peace
Island was upon him and it came to him with the force of a revelation
that God had created the wild creatures of His forests for something
nobler than to become the prey of man.

"Oh! that grand fellow! his splendidly defiant, yet hopeless, facing
of death! I wish we'd never met him!"

"Well, of all foolishness! I thought you wanted nothing but the chance
at him yourself."

"So I did. Before I saw him. What if it had been Madoc?"

"That's different."

"The same. Might have been twin brothers. Maybe they were."

"Couldn't have been. Paddle, won't you?"

Adrian did so, but with a poor grace. He would now far rather have
turned the canoe about toward camp, yet railed at himself for his
sudden cowardice. He shrank from looking on the dead moose as only an
hour before he had longed to do so.

They were soon at the spot where the animal had disappeared and
pushing the boat upon the reedy shore, Pierre plunged forward through
the marsh. Adrian did not follow, till a triumphant shout reached him.
Then he felt in his pocket and, finding a pencil with a bit of paper,
made his own way more slowly to the side of his comrade, who, wildly
excited, was examining and measuring his quarry. On a broad leaved
rush he had marked off a hand's width and from this unit calculated
that:

"He's eight feet four from hoof to shoulder, and that betters the
King by six inches. See. His horns spread nigh six feet. If he stood
straight and held them up he'd be fifteen feet or nothing! They spread
more'n six f