As the dog was being led through the woods he thought of what a bugaboo he had been to all the small animals and birds that lived there.

“Now, Karr, wouldn’t they be happy in their lairs if they only knew what was awaiting you?” he thought, but at the same time he wagged his tail and barked cheerfully, so that no one should think that he was worried or depressed.

“What fun would there have been in living had I not hunted occasionally?” he reasoned.  “Let him who will, regret; it’s not going to be Karr!”

But the instant the dog said this, a singular change came over him.  He stretched his neck as though he had a mind to howl.  He no longer trotted alongside the game-keeper, but walked behind him.  It was plain that he had begun to think of something unpleasant.

It was early summer; the elk cows had just given birth to their young, and, the night before, the dog had succeeded in parting from its mother an elk calf not more than five days old, and had driven it down into the marsh.  There he had chased it back and forth over the knolls—­not with the idea of capturing it, but merely for the sport of seeing how he could scare it.  The elk cow knew that the marsh was bottomless so soon after the thaw, and that it could not as yet hold up so large an animal as herself, so she stood on the solid earth for the longest time, watching!  But when Karr kept chasing the calf farther and farther away, she rushed out on the marsh, drove the dog off, took the calf with her, and turned back toward firm land.  Elk are more skilled than other animals in traversing dangerous, marshy ground, and it seemed as if she would reach solid land in safety; but when she was almost there a knoll which she had stepped upon sank into the mire, and she went down with it.  She tried to rise, but could get no secure foothold, so she sank and sank.  Karr stood and looked on, not daring to move.  When he saw that the elk could not save herself, he ran away as fast as he could, for he had begun to think of the beating he would get if it were discovered that he had brought a mother elk to grief.  He was so terrified that he dared not pause for breath until he reached home.

It was this that the dog recalled; and it troubled him in a way very different from the recollection of all his other misdeeds.  This was doubtless because he had not really meant to kill either the elk cow or her calf, but had deprived them of life without wishing to do so.

“But maybe they are alive yet!” thought the dog.  “They were not dead when I ran away; perhaps they saved themselves.”

He was seized with an irresistible longing to know for a certainty while yet there was time for him to find out.  He noticed that the game-keeper did not have a firm hold on the leash; so he made a sudden spring, broke loose, and dashed through the woods down to the marsh with such speed that he was out of sight before the game-keeper had time to level his gun.