His friends are proud of stating that up to the present Cyrus had proceeded well in his friendly acquaintance with wild creatures, his desire being to study their habits when alive rather than to pore over their anatomy when dead.  And he has always reaped a plentiful harvest of fun during his trips, declaring that he has “the pull over fellows who go into the woods for killing,” seeing that he can thoroughly enjoy the escape of a game animal if he can only catch a sight of it, and perceive how its pluck or cunning enables it to baffle pursuing man.  There are those who call Cyrus a sportsman of the best type.  Perhaps they are right.

Yet in the year of our story, when he had just attained his majority, this student of forest life is still unsatisfied, because he has not been able to obtain a good view of the behemoth of American woods, the ignis fatuus of hunters,—­the mighty moose.

Once only, when paddling on a still pond with his experienced guide for company, the latter suddenly closed the slide of the jack-lamp, hiding its light.  At the same moment a dark, splendid monster, tall as a horse and swinging a pair of antlers five feet broad, suddenly appeared upon the bank, near to which the canoe lay in black shadow.  The hunters dared not breathe.  It was at a season of year when the Maine law exacts a heavy fine for the killing of a moose; and even the guide had no desire to send his bullets through the law, though he might have riddled the game without compunction.

For a minute or two the creature halted at the pond’s brink, magnified in the mirror of moonlit water into a gigantic, wavering shape.  Then with slow, solemn tread he walked along the bank ahead, gave a loud snort something like the snort of a war-horse, made a crunching, chopping noise with his jaws, resembling the sound of a dull axe striking against wood, plunged into the lake, and swam across to the opposite shore.

“If we had fired, he might have come for us full tilt,” whispered the guide so softly that his words were like a gliding breath.  “And then I tell you we’d have had a narrow squeak.  He’d have kicked the canoe into splinters and us out o’ time in short order.”

“But a moose won’t charge unless he’s attacked, will he?” asked Cyrus, later in the night, when a couple of quacking black ducks which had received a dose of lead were lying silent at his feet, and the hunters were returning to camp with food.

“Not often,” was the reply.  “Only at this time o’ year, if they’ve got a mate to defend, you can’t say for sure what they’ll do.  They won’t always fight either, even if they’re wounded, when they can get a chance to bolt.  But a moose, if he has to die, will be sure to die game, with his face to his enemy; and so will every wild animal that I know.  I’ve even seen a shot partridge flutter up its feathers like a game-cock at the fellow who dropped it.”