. Spalding sighted him long and, as he
averred, carefully with his rifle. The deer fed and fed on, and we
waited anxiously to hear the crack of the rifle, and see the deer go
down; but still the boat glided on unnoticed by the animal that was
feeding in unsuspecting security. At length he raised his head, threw
forward his long ears, gazed for a second intently at his enemies, and
then appreciating his danger, snorted like a warhorse and plunged in a
seeming desperation of terror towards the shore. He had ran a few rods
when Spalding let drive at him, as he confessed, at random. The ball
went wide of the mark, and the game dashed, with more desperate
energy, and whistling and snorting like a locomotive, into the brush
that lined the banks. It was Spalding's third shot in all his life at
a deer, and he insisted, gravely enough, that he did not fire while
the game was standing broadside to him, on account of his desire to
give the animal a chance for his life. The truth is, that Spalding had
a bad, a very bad attack of the aforesaid Buck fever.

The Doctor, by rotation, now became the leading marksman. He was cool
and calm, as if going to perform some delicate surgical operation. We
soon came in sight of a buck feeding in a shallow pasture, and the
boat glided quietly within fifteen rods of it. The Doctor's hand was
firm, and his aim steady. There was about him none of that nervous
agitation which is so apt to disturb the first efforts at deer
slaying. The boat came to a pause a moment, when his rule rang out
quick and sharp, waking the echoes of the mountains around and
reverberating along the shore. At the crack of the rifle, the buck
leaped high into the air, and plunged madly towards the bank, up which
he dashed with a prodigious bound, made a single jump among the tall
grass, and disappeared from the sight. The Doctor was greatly
mortified, supposing he had missed. He declared solemnly that he had
taken steady and sure aim just back of the fore-shoulders of the deer,
had a perfect sight upon it, and that it did not fall in its tracks,
could only be owing to its bearing a charmed life. The boatman,
however, knew that the animal, from its actions, was mortally wounded.
He said nothing, but paddled quietly to the shore, and there, just
over the bank, in the tall grass and weeds, lay the noble buck, stone
dead. He had gone down and died without a struggle. A proud man was
the Doctor, as he passed his hunting-knife across