I saw the hound was in danger, and rowed rapidly toward the island.  When I got within shooting distance the deer had fallen to its knees, and I dared not fire for fear a scattering buckshot should strike the hound.

My boat grounded against the island, and, gun in hand, I sprang ashore.  But neither creature moved; the fight was over.  The hound’s sharp teeth had done their work, and the buck’s spike-horns, hardly less sharp, had done theirs.  As I stood watching them both animals expired.

The next day two men drove over the rough wood-road, and stopped at the shanty.  One of them left their buck-board and stepped to the door to speak to me.

He was evidently an educated man, and I detected traces of a German accent.

“I hear that you found a tall, black hound,” he began.  “Such a dog left my shanty on the Lower Saranac nearly a week ago.  He looked a little like a greyhound, and I never knew him to bark.”

I told him such a dog had been with me, and described the animal’s death.

The stranger walked with me to the back of the shanty, where Rufe had nailed the dog’s pelt against the side of a shed.

“Poor Wolfram!” he exclaimed.  “Who would have expected that a hound from the fiercest pack in the Black Forest should be killed by one of these little Adirondack deer?”

It was far to the nearest tavern, and the young man seemed so dismayed at the dog’s death that I urged him to spend the night in my shanty.  In this way I might satisfy my curiosity about the dog.

The Bavarian—­for he told me he was of that nationality—­gladly accepted my invitation; and, after he had dined off the venison which his hound had pulled down, I asked him to explain the dog’s peculiarities.

“Both Wolfram and I,” he said, “came from Bavaria.  The family estate was at the edge of the far-famed Black Forest, and my father, with his pack of black hounds, killed many a wolf that lurked in the dark shadows of the fir trees.  But hunting was not a profitable business, and there was nothing better for me, a younger son, to do than to become a soldier or to emigrate.

“While a mere lad I came to America, and, as an importer of German goods, have been fairly successful.  My inherited love of hunting has not been lost, and I spend a part of each autumn in the Adirondacks.

“A year ago, my brother, the present head of the family, sent me a pup from his kennel of wolf-dogs.  For the purpose of giving the poor animal a change from city streets, I brought him to my cottage on Saranac Lake.  But I did not expect to hunt with the dog, for I supposed he had a spirit above the game of this region.

“Several days ago a deer was chased near my door, and Wolfram put after it.  We could not tell which way he had gone, for my father’s wolf-dogs were not taught to bark, as among the great firs of the Black Forest horsemen can follow the chase, which seldom goes out of sight.