Indeed, the wrathful king of forests seemed in no hurry to cut short his pantomime.  He ramped and raged, tearing from one tree to another, expending paroxysms of force in vain attempts to overturn one or the other of them.  The ground seemed to shake under his thundering hoofs.  His eyes were full of green fire; his nostrils twitched; the black tassel or “bell” hanging from his shaggy throat shook with every angry movement; his muffle, the big overhanging upper lip, was spotted with foam.

As he gulped, grunted, snorted, and roared, his uncouth, guttural noises made him seem more than ever like a curious creature of earth’s earliest ages.

“We came pretty near to being goners, Dol, I tell you!” carolled Cyrus again from his high perch in the hemlock, carrying on a by-play with the enemy between each sentence.  “How in the name of wonder did you manage such a call?  It would have moved the heart-strings of any moose.  I was lying flat, you know, peeping through a little gap in the bushes, and you had scarcely taken the horn from your mouth when I saw the old fellow come stamping out of the woods.  My! wasn’t he a sight?  He stood for a minute looking about for the fancied cow; then he bellowed, and started towards the knoll.  I knew we had better run for our lives.  As soon as he saw us he gave chase.”

“And ‘the fancied cow’ should go tumbling down the knoll like a rolling jackass, and smash that grand horn to bits!” lamented Dol, who now sat serenely on his bough, with a firm clasp of the hemlock trunk, and a reckless enjoyment of the situation which far surpassed his companion’s.

Cyrus began to have an occasional twinge of uneasiness about the possible length of the siege, after his first exuberance subsided; but the younger boy, his short terror overcome, had no misgivings.  He coquetted with the moose through a thick screen of foliage, shook the branches at him, gibed and taunted him, enjoying the extra fury he aroused.

But suddenly the old bull, having kept up his wild movements for nearly an hour, resolved on a change of tactics.  He stood stock-still and lowered his head.

“Goodness!  He has made up his mind to ‘stick us out!’” gasped Cyrus.

“What’s that?” said Dol.

“Don’t you see?  He’s going to lay siege in good earnest—­wait till we’re forced to come down.  Here’s a state of things!  We can’t roost in these trees all night.”

The hemlocks were throwing ever-lengthening shadows on the grass.  A slow eclipse was stealing over everything.  The motionless moose became an uncouth black shape.  Garst muttered uneasily.  His fingers tingled for his rifle—­a very unusual thing with him.  His eyes peered through the creeping darkness in puzzled search for some suggestion, some possibility of escape.