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 the throat of the deer, and gazed upon its broad antlers, now in the velvet, pointing to the course of the ball right through its vitals, in on one side and out on the other.  We had venison for the next four-and-twenty hours, and we disturbed the deer no more that afternoon.

The deep baying of the stag-hounds, as we entered the little lake, apprised us of the location of our tents, and we were glad to reach them, and stretch our limbs upon the bed of boughs beneath them, for the day had been warm, and our journey a weary one.  Our pioneer had made the entire journey the day before, though he had to pass over all the carrying-places three times.  We found that he had killed two deer, and had the meat from them, cut into thin slips, undergoing the process of “jerking,” in a bark smokehouse erected near the tents.  He had also a beautiful string of trout ready for our supper, taken in a way peculiarly his own.  He had used neither bait nor fly.

After supper, as we sat looking out over the lake in front of our tents, the Doctor inquired of our pioneer how he had taken his fish, as he had with him neither rod nor flies, and there was no bait to be found in the woods proper for trout.

“Why,” said he, “I got lonesome yesterday, all alone up here in the woods, waiting for you, and I thought I’d take a look around the shore of the lake, thinking I might find a gold mine, or a pocketful of diamonds, or something of that sort; so I took my rifle and the two dogs, and started on an explorin’ voyage.  I didn’t find any gold, but I found, just across there by those