M

ÈRE Coultier, who was at the brook chopping away ice that had formed over the waterhole, was the first to see the moose. He came out of the woods from the northward, taking a course that would have led him between her shanty and the Lemaire's. As he came on, snorting as if in a surly mood, (the sound of his snorts first caused Mère Coultier to look up from her work) he saw the children, Charlo Coultier and Manette Lemaire, playing in the snow. Manette's red coat seemed to turn his surliness to rage, and he made at her; then Mère Coultier screamed.

Antoine Lemaire's young wife, Jeanne, was very busy that morning with her housework, so after the early breakfast she had bundled up Manette, putting on over her dress the little red woolen jacket which Antoine bought in Quebec, and had sent her out to play with Charlo.

She heard Mère Coultier's scream. Running to the door, she flung it open and looked out. The moose (it was the biggest bull-moose she had ever seen, with heavy shaggy neck and shoulders, and immense horns) paid no attention to Charlo Coultier but ran straight at Manette, standing there in her red jacket. He caught her on his horns and tossed her high into the air; then he trotted off into the woods, bellowing loudly as he

went.

Manette lay motionless on the snow, silent, a limp little heap. When the women reached her, they carried her to the Lemaire shanty, and then Jeanne hurried away to tell Antoine.

As she ran along the narrow track in the snow leading to where her husband was at work, the picture of the moose tossing Manette on his horns, kept danc

ing before her eyes, so that she saw nothing else. Antoine's axe-stroke rang sharply through the clear air; his yodel chimed in joyously. When she was near enough she tried to cry out and stop his singing; but she could only gasp.

The wind that blew cold across the clearing did not penetrate here; in the deep wood all was still and almost warm. Antoine, swinging his axe, was too warm; he threw aside, first his jacket, next his shirt of rough blue flannel. As he drove the axe-blade into the side of a tall spruce he showed the swelling muscles of his chest and arms. He stopped work when he saw Jeanne, and she, running to him, threw herself into his arms.

"Manette! Manette!" she sobbed. "The moose has killed her! Come home, quick!”

Antoine caught her up and leaving the axe quivering in the spruce tree's side, and his jacket and blue shirt lying on the snow, started back to the shanty. He ran swiftly and easily; for though Jeanne was tall and no light burden, Antoine Lemaire was taller and stronger than any other chopper in the woods around the seigneury of St. Celestine.

Reaching home he gave Jeanne into the care of Mère Coultier; then kneeled for a moment by the bed where Manette lay. He got up and told Mère Coultier to point out the way the moose went; when she had done so, he started on a run across the snow.

"Antoine! Antoine! take your rifle!" Mère Coultier cried after him. "He's the biggest bull moose you ever saw! And you've no coat on!”

He ran on into the woods, paying no attention to her cries.

There had been several thaws during

the winter, and the snow had melted and packed and frozen until it would bear a man's weight. But it would not bear the moose, and at every step his hoofs sunk through the crust and the soft snow beneath, so that Antoine had no trouble in finding the track or in following it.

It was near noon and the forest creatures that stir abroad in winter had come out to warm themselves in the sun. On the slender branches of a poplar two Canada grouse were budding, looking, in their thick winter plumage, like balls of glossy black and white feathers. Antoine, whose sight was as sharp as an Algonquin hunter's, could see the little red circles around the bird's eyes. A spot on the branch of a tall birch was reddish-yellow, and Antoine saw that it was not a bit of roughened bark, but a marten that was lying there motionless, sunning itself. The snow on top of a big log looked a little higher at one spot,-it was a white hare stretched out as if asleep, the long ears pressed back against its neck.

The antlers of the moose had brushed under the spreading boughs of a balsam, and here Antoine noticed a bit of red woolen cloth. He seized it and thrust it inside his shirt.

Having worked off some ill-nature while in the clearing, the moose was now in almost a pleasant mood, and was not hurrying as he journeyed through the forest. Often he stopped to browse the tender shoots of saplings, and once, as he stood in the snow, a hare came along, hopping close to his heels; with a clever kick the moose sent it flying into the air.

Not long after this incident, while the great animal was journeying leisurely ahead, there was a shout behind him. Looking back he saw Antoine. He halted and wheeled, giving a loud bellow of anger. What was this that dared to be following him, putting him out of temper again? He would catch it and toss it into the air-serving it as he had served the hare, and the girl in the ugly red coat!

But instead of trying to escape, this creature came straight at him;-the moose hesitated, then panic seized him, and he rushed away headlong. He plunged into a snow-laden balsam, and staggering blindly out of the thick bushy branches, ran full against the polished trunk of a yellow birch. The blow knocked him off his feet, and he sprawled in the snow. He got up, and rushed on again.

Antoine, running on the surface of the snow, easily kept up with the floundering moose. For four generations the Lemaires had been coureurs des bois ; and before that, roving soldiers in old France. Sinews of steel had Antoine inherited. He ran close to the moose, slapping the broad side, shouting in the long ears.

"Oh, ho! moose!" he cried. "I have you now! I've caught you, ugly old beast!"

The moose bellowed, and the bellow was like a hoarse, terrified squeal. His coarse hair was wet with sweat, his tongue hung out, his breath came in loud sobs. He could run no further, and stood in the snow trembling, his small eyes dull with dread.

Antoine cuffed the ugly nose with his open hand, and shouted and laughed. He caught hold of the broad horns, and gave them a mighty wrench. The moose staggered; then the long legs gave way, and he fell, his side and shoulder sinking in the snow; without trying to get up, he lay there, panting heavily.

Antoine brushed the snow from a log and sat down, watching the great heaving side. How should he put an end to the moose? Was there any death bad enough for the beast that had killed Manette? The priest said that the dead watch the living, and Antoine wondered if Manette was looking down at him. She had been old enough to take pride in his strength, and now she would be proud of his capture of the bull moose. She used to boast to Charlo Coultier that her father was stronger than his. Then

the thought came to him that she would not like to watch the killing of the moose: he remembered that in the early fall, when the white heifer was to be killed, he had to do it secretly so that she should not know; and that she cried when she found out about it afterwards. She did not want anything to be hurt or to suffer, and would scream at sight of blood. His memory went back through the few years of Manette's life, recalling her gentleness and sweetness. "It came to her through Jeanne," he thought. Jeanne Lemaire's mother was the daughter of a notary, and gently bred.

Antoine was roused by a grouse which came hurtling through the woods, evidently meaning to light on the log where he was sitting. Seeing him it burst away again, making a great bustle, and coming so close that its wing brushed his hand. He started up, and looked around.

The moose still lay in the snow, and

Antoine walked up to it. He noticed what beautiful antlers it had; the seigneur would be very grateful for such a pair, and would give them the place of honor on the wall of his hunting lodge. But Antoine did not hesitate; he slapped the great beast till it struggled to its feet.

"Go!" he cried, cuffing the long, ugly nose. "Go! I'll not hurt you to-day. My poor Manette may be watching, and I would not have her made to feel bad by seeing me kill you. Go free!"

The moose moved away slowly, still weak from his fright and headlong run. Antoine started homeward. It was late afternoon when he reached his shanty. Mère Coultier met him at the door.

"Antoine," she cried, "look happy again! Manette is not much hurt. Go inside; she and Jeanne are there."

He found Manette on the bed, pale and bruised. She laughed when he told how he had cuffed the moose's ugly nose, to punish it for being ill-natured.

ness of some position I was sustaining. This I regard not as evidence of my prowess in dialectic, but as proof that I am less obstinate and blackly prejudiced than most people. For myself, I believe I have never once convinced the persons I argued with: after I had shown them that they were wrong, they thought the same things that they had thought before, though I have often insisted that they should not say so. But without considering this other matter, which is not very important, I am proud to think that I have twice been conquered by argument. I fought hard,

but was finally pierced by the shafts of truth which have a strangely healing effect. One of these cases is nothing to the present purpose, but the other was on a vital matter.

I fell in with Tristram when he was a student of architecture in Paris. Now students of architecture in Paris have a curious custom of working in watches, as one might say-one month on and one month off. The one month they work about twenty hours a day; the other month they have a great deal of leisure. It was in one of these leisure months that I had the pleasure of meeting Tristram. I think the first day I saw him he asked me to breakfast with him.

Breakfast for a student abroad is cof