“At the sound of the shot and the fall of their trusted leader, the herd scattered in panic, breasting down the walls of their paths and floundering off through the deep snow.  The two men stared after them with interest, but made no motion for another shot, for it was against the New Brunswick law to kill a cow moose, and if the farmer had indulged himself in such a luxury it would have cost him a hundred pounds by way of a fine.

“Among the fleeing herd appeared a little fawn-colored beast, utterly unlike any moose calf that the farmer or his man had ever heard of.  It was tremendously nimble at first, bouncing along at such a rate that it was impossible to get a really good look at it.  But its legs were much too short for such a depth of snow, and before it had gone fifty yards it was quite used up.  It stopped, floundered on another couple of yards, and then lay down quite helplessly.  The two men hurried up.  It turned upon them a pair of large, melting, velvet eyes—­frightened, indeed, but not with that hopeless, desperate terror that comes to the eyes of the wild creatures when they are trapped.

“’Well, I’ll be jiggered if that ain’t old Blossom’s calf that we made sure the bear had carried off!’ cried the farmer, striding up and gently patting the calf’s ribs.  ‘My, but you’re poor!’ he went on.  ’They hain’t used yer right out here in the woods, have they?  I reckon ye’ll be a sight happier back home in the old barn.’”

Uncle Andy knocked the ashes out of his pipe and stuck it back in his pocket.

“That’s all!” said he, seeing that the Child still looked expectant.

“But,” protested the Child, “I want to know—­”

“Now, you know very well all the rest,” said Uncle Andy.  “What’s the use of my telling you how the calf was taken back to the settlement, and got fat, and grew up to give rich milk like cream, as every good Jersey should?  You can think all that out for yourself, you know.”

“But the moose cow,” persisted the Child.  “Didn’t she feel dreadful?”

“Well,” agreed Uncle Andy, “perhaps she did.  But don’t you go worrying about that.  She got over it.  The next spring she had another calf, a real moose calf, to look after, you know.”

CHAPTER X

WHAT HE SAW WHEN HE KEPT STILL

The Child was beginning to feel that if he could not move very soon he’d burst.

Of course, under Uncle Andy’s precise instructions he had settled himself in the most comfortable position possible before starting upon the tremendous undertaking of keeping perfectly still for a long time.  To hold oneself perfectly still and to keep the position as tirelessly as the most patient of the wild creatures themselves—­this, he had been taught by Uncle Andy, was one of the first essentials to the acquirement of true woodcraft, as only such stillness and such patience could admit one to anything like