bs, which needs must follow his tears, came heaving up
from his breast and shook his crouching little figure. Yet he did but
sulk as one who, while glum with all the world besides, is far from
being at peace with his own heart. His tear-wet face he still kept
buried in his cap, not daring to remove it from his eyes, lest they
should encounter those of the thing who stood in the moccasins, whom he
felt to be watching him all this time from up there in the clear,
unshadowed air. At the end of less than half an hour he was roused from
his unquiet thoughts by the sound of a slow, heavy tramp, at no great
distance off, followed immediately by a slight stir in the leaves and
grass near-by, which caused him to start; and, before he was aware, he
had dropped the cap from over his eyes. The moccasins had turned quite
'round, with their toes another way, as if the ear of him who stood in
them had been caught by the same sound, and he would inform himself of
the cause. Sprigg looked in the direction thus indicated, when an object
met his gaze, which caused his eyes to grow big and round, then stand
fixed in their sockets.

What the boy and the thing in the moccasins saw there was a bison
bull--and a huge beast he was. That bull of the wilderness, and of as
wild and savage an aspect, too, as you would care to behold, even within
the secure enclosure of a menagerie. His hair was long and curled, and
of dun or tawny color. A hump he had on his shoulders, which gave his
neck a downward slope to the head, and his back a downward slope to the
tail--his tail, but a short brush of a thing, scarcely reaching to his
hocks. Horns, he had, too--black horns, long and strong, and tapering to
a sharper point than is the case with horned cattle, generally speaking.
But the feature to which the monster chiefly owed his singular wildness
of appearance was his mane, which, in shaggy luxuriance, flowed from
neck, shoulders and breast, covering the legs to the knees, and veiling
the face almost to the very nose.

Now, had he seen all this in the yard at home, himself stationed on the
porch, with pap on one side, Black Bess in hand, ready to shoot; Pow-wow
on the other, ready to spring at the first intimation of hostile design
on the part of his bullship, our hero would have clapped his hands and
pronounced it a grander sight than any the old show bill could boast,
always excepting, of course, the Indian boy and Shetland pony. But
there, in that desol