matter of note among his fellows. When ever his farm duties permitted, he roamed the woods, shooting what small game was needed for the home table, but finding his greatest pleasure in studying the wild life of the great timbered stretches that enclosed the settlement. Of all the wild

persistently he sought to accustom the buck to his presence. Whenever he came upon his track, easily distinguishable by its size, he trailed him with the silent efficiency of an Indian. When, finally, Old Scarside was sighted, Lonny drew as near to him as cover and wind permitted, and watched him long and admiringly. Then, leaving his rifle on the ground, he would silently rise and show himself, all his movements quiet and restrained and his manner casual. Up would come the buck's head with a snort of surprise at the sudden apparition. Usually he would bound away the instant Lonny showed himself. Sometimes, when Lonny stood forth while the buck's eyes were turned aside, Scarside would suddenly become aware of an alien figure standing astonishingly close where no figure had been an instant before, and, snorting and stamping petulantly, with eyes and nose would seek to penetrate the mystery. Then, suspicion overcoming curiosity, he would wheel and plunge swiftly from the spot.

wood folk, the scar-sided whitetail deer held first place in his interest. Noiselessly he ranged the feeding-grounds and runways that he had come to know were used by "his buck," and often his careful stalking was rewarded by a sight of the noble animal. His great wish was to overcome the buck's instinctive fear, in the boyish hope that eventually he would succeed in reëstablishing an understanding with his one-time friend. And very patiently and

But gradually, very gradually, the painstaking methods of the young woodsman began to have their effect on the buck. The casual approach, unthreatening manner, and eyes that never fixed themselves disquietingly upon his own, were strangely at variance with what his experience had taught him of the ways of the man tribe, though sometimes the evidence carried on

a veering puff of wind would unmistakably proclaim the intruder a member of it. And as time went on, a growing familiarity with this seemingly harmless individual, smaller in stature than his other persecutors and never bearing that abhorrent instrument of noise and flame associated with these enemies, slowly wore down the fine edge of his fear. Often he would stand and stamp and snort for minutes, merely backing off slowly as Lonny advanced upon him inch by inch. Then, as a quiver of muscles rippled the sheen of his coat and signaled a break for cover, Lonny would stay him with a bleated. "Mah!" And for an instant longer the wondering buck would tarry, to puzzle out the meaning of this, before discretion sent him bounding away into the green forest depths. Later, when the buck's departure was still longer delayed, Lonny would utter soothing words to him.

"You ain't afeard o' me, are you, old feller? 'Member when you an' me was babies, you licked my hand. We 're friends still, ain't we? Now, don't get skeery an' cut an' run-I ain't a-goin' to harm you!"

Awed and fascinated by the softly spoken words, Scarside would stand a-quiver, then run back a few steps and halt, half hidden, in a near-by thicket, pawing and whistling, his big liquid eyes never leaving this strangely ingratiating one of the enemy kind. In the dim recesses of his brain did some faint memory stir at the voice that, in the first days of his life, spoke to him. in the universal language of infant brotherhood? Or perhaps some remnant of that early curiosity of his concerning man creatures remained to weaken the ancestral dread.

The buck's whistling, Lonny chose to interpret as a reply to his own remarks.

"Remember, do you? Well, then don't be so bashful. I ain't never a-goin' to hurt you, Old Scarside-it 's all along o' that scar that you got away from me when you were jest a little feller. You ain't forgotten, have you? Well, good-by then, if you 're a-goin'."

When Lonny described his adventures

in friendliness with the deer, Laban scoffed amusedly at his son's firm belief in Scarside's memory of the early incident.

"A deer hain't got no memory-don't you ever believe it. He's jest gittin' used to you an' your quiet ways, like any wild critter will ef you show yourself often enough an' don't pay special attention to 'em at first. He 's jest curious about you, an' a deer 's as curious a critter as any

woman.

"But ef he's your deer, like you claim, you better learn him to keep out o' the clearin's," Laban continued, his whimsical tone changing to half-angry seriousness as he thought of the devastated field of rutabagas he had just visited. "The pesky critter 's gittin' to be a blame nuisance, eatin' up half the crops. Last night he liked to spile the hull 'baga patch, tromplin' what he did n't eat. I ain't a-goin' to stand him much longer. Ef he don't quit ruinin' the fields, I'll put a bullet inter his big carcass!"

"Don't you never do it, Pa!" burst out Lonny. "He's only takin' what he thinks is rightly his'n, an' we oughter be able to spare a few 'bagas an' such like. He is my deer, and I won't stand to have him hurted!"

Laban grumbled in his throat and turned away. The generous-hearted farmer was troubled by the knowledge that Old Scarside's continued depredations had reached the unbearable stage. Fences were as nothing to him, and his despoiling of growing crops was now a matter of almost nightly occurrence. The countryside was becoming inflamed against the big buck, who left his sign manual in each invaded area in the form of tracks that in size resembled those of a calf.

Leaving the boy protesting against the threat, Laban strode off on his way to a neighbor's to assist in raising a new barnframe. A short cut could be made by paddling across the lake that lay between the farmstead: the trail to this leading over a hard-wood ridge, beyond which stretched the broad sheet of water. On the shelving beach his birch-bark lay among the bushes, and, noting as he shoved it in

that a stiff breeze was blowing in his face, he decided to weight the bow with a small rock. Otherwise, the light craft would expose so much free-board to the gale that he would have difficulty in keeping its prow in the wind's eye. Bending forward, he was about to deposit the rock carefully in the canoe, when his design was rudely frustrated. His next conscious thought was that the Wendigo-that demon of northern Indian legend which seizes men in its talons and bears them off on journeys through space had savagely snatched at him and sent him whirling dizzily through the air.

Back in the timber of the ridge a big, nobly antlered buck, the pride—and bane -of the Swiftwater country, had watched the striding man with arrogant eyes, eyes that for the moment held no glint of fear. The fever of the sweethearting time was in his blood this crisp November morning, and dread of man was forgotten in the swift anger that blazed within him when his trysting was disturbed. Stiffly he stood for a moment in his screen of bushy hemlock, neck swollen with the madness in his veins, bloodshot eyes glaring upon the unsuspecting interloper. Then, intent upon vengeance, he followed after the figure noisily descending the slope. His progress was a series of prancing steps, though his feet fell cunningly without sound, and he shook his magnificent head threateningly.

He was only a few paces behind when the man, reaching the shore, suddenly swerved to look about; and the buck froze for a moment before the expected stare of those disconcerting eyes. But the man's gaze did not lift from the ground. He picked up something and turned his back again and bent over at the water's edge.

The opportunity was too tempting. The buck plunged forward, his lowered head aimed at the crouching figure, and drove at it with all the power of his hardmuscled body. The impact was terrific and the result startling no less to the object of his attack than to the deer. For the man, with a grunt of astonishment, shot from the shore, turning upside down as he went, and out of the splash that followed

emerged not the man, but what appeared to be a smooth brown log, that trembled and rolled crazily among the wavelets and gave forth weird, muffled bellowings!

The backwoodsman, lifted into the air by the amazing assault from the rear, had let go the rock (which at the instant was poised above the canoe) as his hands instinctively reached for the gunwales. As he catapulted into the lake, his grasp on the birch-bark turned it over on him, and he found himself upright in the water, his face above the surface, but in darkness. For a moment utter bewilderment possessed him; then, realizing that he was standing in over five feet of freezing water, his head in the hollow of his capsized canoe, to which he still clung tenaciously, he burst into language and sought to extricate himself.

With a wrench of his arms, he threw the canoe over and turned a wrathful glare toward the bank. Hot indignation choked him momentarily as his eyes fell on the author of his plight pawing the gravel and shaking his antlers in invitation to combat. Then he found his voice.

"Ye confounded, tarnation critter!" sputtered Laban, at a loss for adequate words with which to express his feelings. "So 't was you butted me into the lake! Ye 'll pay fer this-with a bullet through yer hide afore ye 're a day older, ye scarsided imp o' Satan!" He shook his fist at the animal and started to scramble up the steep bottom, continuing his abuse vigorously. But half-way up he came to a stop, perplexed. What should he do when he reached the bank? reached the bank? The buck plainly was in a fighting mood, and no unarmed man was a match for those driving, keen-rimmed hoofs and dagger-like antler-points. Scarside stood his ground, stamping and snorting and lowering his head in challenge.

Laban wondered angrily if he would have to stand there waist-deep in the icy lake until some one came to drive the buck away-and to witness his humiliation! The blood rushed to his bronzed and bearded cheeks at the thought, though he was now shivering to his marrow with the combined cold of water and wind.

In desperation, he suddenly made a great splashing and waved his arms wildly about his head, then gave a piercing yell.

This inexplicable behavior of his victim had its effect on the buck. Irresolutely he fell back a few steps, startled by the wild commotion; and at the terrifying sound that followed, his ardor for battle. died. His madness cooling as suddenly as aroused, with a snort of dismay, Scarside whirled in his tracks and dashed off through the trees.

Grim of visage, but with chattering teeth, Laban climbed out of the water, beached his canoe, and hurried homeward, flailing his great arms against his body to restore the circulation of the sluggish blood. Half-way home, he met Lonny coming over the trail.

"Was that you that yelled, Pop? Sounded like some one was terribly hurted, or somethin'. What in time 's the matter, anyway? Upset?" Lonny gazed wonderingly at the dripping, angry-faced figure of his father.

"Yes, somethin' happened; but you need n't blat it 'round 'mongst the neighbors. An' somethin' else 's goin' to happen, too, mighty soon!"

As his father related his adventure with Old Scarside, Lonny had difficulty in repressing the chuckles that rose to his lips. He covered his mouth with his hand to hide the grin that would persist.

""T ain't no laughin' matter," protested Laban, noting the action. "Ef I don't catch pneumony from it, I'll be lucky. Jest as soon as I c'n get some dry duds on, I'm a-goin' to take the rifle an' trail that blame' critter till I git him. 'T ain't enough fer him to be destroyin' the crops; he 's started to attack folks, an' he's too dangerous to let live."

He clamped his mouth on his resolution; and Lonny knew that the big buck of the Swiftwater country was doomed.

The scar-sided buck, resting on a mossy knoll in the depths of the spruce wood, raised his head to a suspicious odor that drifted down the wind. He rose to his feet and ran with the breeze for a short

distance, then swung around and headed back, paralleling his trail. He halted in a clump of tangled low growth a few rods from it, and waited. Soon a man came swinging along, silent footed, carrying that dreaded black stick, his eyes bent on the ground, but now and again lifting to scan the surrounding bush. Manifestly, as the evidence of nose and eyes indicated, this was the same human so lately visited with his displeasure; and some elemental intuition that reprisal was to be expected warned him that he must be discreet.

When the man had passed, the buck quietly withdrew from his hiding-place and bounded off at right angles to the trail. A mixture of wariness and confidence guided his actions during the succeeding hours. He well knew the danger of giving the man a glimpse of himself in circumstances like these, but his great craft, so often successfully exercised, and his long immunity from harm had bred in him a confidence in his powers that stayed his flight to the barest necessity of keeping out of range. Doggedly the hunter followed, untangling the puzzles of the trail so cunningly woven, his skill the fruit of many a previous stalking of the wily old buck. But whereas on these other occasions he had been content to consider himself the victor in the contest of wits when he finally had come within easy shooting distance of his quarry, bravely withstanding the itch of his trigger-finger, this time. there would be a different ending to the hunt.

As the pursuit lengthened, familiar landmarks apprized the backwoodsman that the buck was circling back toward the settlement. This was fortunate, for the afternoon was waning; and furthermore, it afforded him the opportunity of cutting across to the runways along the ridge where, logically, the buck would pass. And then, the finish!

Laban put his plan into operation. If he hurried, he could attain a vantage-point on a rise of ground commanding the flank of the ridge, and here he would have an ideal chance for a shot as the buck swept across the burning that gashed its forested