“I guess I do remember it,” answered Cyrus, laughing.

“A mighty hungry man I was, too, that evening,” went on Doc; “for I had no food left but one little package of soup-powder and a few beans.  I had been trying all day to get a successful shot at a moose or deer, and muffed it every time.  It wasn’t the lucky side of the moon for me.  Well, you behaved like the Good Samaritan to me, then, Cy; shared your meat and all your stuff, and we slept like twin brothers under my shelter.”

“Yes; and a bear visited our temporary camp in the night!” exclaimed Cyrus, bursting into uproarious mirth over some over-poweringly funny recollection; “he made off with my knapsack, which I had left lying by the camp-fire.  I suppose old Bruin thought he’d find something good in it to eat; but he didn’t.  So he tore my one extra shirt and every article in the pack to shreds, and chewed up the handle of my razor, so that I couldn’t shave again until I got back to civilization, when I was as bristly as a porcupine.”

“Perhaps Bruin tried to shave himself,” suggested Dol.

“At all events, he had wisdom enough not to cut his throat,” answered the story-teller.  “We three—­Doc, my guide, and myself—­were stupidly tired, and slept so soundly that we did not discover the theft nor who the marauder was until the following morning.  Then we found my knapsack gone, and the tracks of a huge bear in some soft earth near our shelter.  We traced his footprints through a bog until we found the spot, not far off, where, overcome by greed or curiosity, he ripped up that strong leather knapsack as if it was papier mache and made hay of its contents.”

The boys had all crowded near to listen.  It was now the social hour for campers.  By the camp-fire more reminiscences followed; and the two guides chimed in it with moose stories, bear stories, panther stories, wild tales of every imaginable and unimaginable kind of adventure, until the lads thought no mythology which they had ever learned could rival in marvels the forest lore.

At this opportune time, Neal suddenly thought of describing, or attempting to describe, that strangest of strange calls which he had heard, after the capsizing of the canoe, on the preceding night, when Cyrus and he were jacking for deer on Squaw Pond.

Joe grunted expressively.  “So help me! it was the moose call!” he ejaculated.  “What say, Doc?”

“I guess it was,” answered Dr. Phil.  “It was either the cow-moose herself calling, or some hunter imitating her with his birch-bark trumpet.  It’s a weird sort of experience, to hear that call for the first time; I shouldn’t wonder if your heart went whack-whack, lad?”

“I only hope he’ll get a chance to hear it again before he goes back to England,” said Cyrus.

Forthwith, the Harvard man proceeded to explain that he was bent on pressing forward for a distance of sixty miles or so, to the heart of the wilderness, to search for moose, but that he intended to do the journey in a leisurely, zigzag fashion, camping for a couple of nights at various points, in order to do the honors of the forest to his English comrades.