skull,--and he too had harried his last deer.

Two other curs had leaped aside with quick instinct the moment
they saw me, and vanished into the thickets, as if conscious of
their evil doing and anxious to avoid detection. But the third, a
large collie,--a dog that, when he does go wrong, becomes the
most cunning and vicious of brutes,--flew straight at my throat
with a snarl like a gray wolf cheated of his killing. I have
faced bear and panther and bull moose when the red danger-light
blazed into their eyes; but never before or since have I seen
such awful fury in a brute's face. It swept over me in an instant
that it was his life or mine; there was no question or
alternative. A lucky cut of the club disabled him, and I finished
the job on the spot, for the good of the deer and the community.

The big buck had not moved, nor tried to, after his last great
effort. Now he only turned his head and lifted it wearily, as if
to get away from the intolerable smell of his dog enemies that
lay dying under his very nose. His great, sorrowful, questioning
eyes were turned on me continually, with a look that only
innocence could possibly meet. No man on earth, I think, could
have looked into them for a full moment and then raised his hand
to slay.

I approached very quietly, and dragged the dogs away from him,
one by one. His eyes followed me always. His nostrils spread, his
head came up with a start when I flung the first cur aside to
leeward. But he made no motion; only his eyes had a wonderful
light in them when I dragged his last enemy, the one he had
killed himself, from under his very head and threw it after the