Page:The Way of the Wild (1923).pdf/274

 larches, balsams, soft maples and osier, with a great growth of laurel. But the ground was rather treacherous, for it was interlaced with dark patches of water covered with green moss. Red Buck knew all these bogs and he carefully avoided them. He had learned them through many a sad flounder in their depths. It was a swamp that few hunters cared to penetrate, so it was with much confidence that the great buck fled to its very heart. He lay down on a mossy hillock under a large larch to await developments. He felt sure as long as he kept quiet he was safe from his pursuers, but he was mistaken. In an hour's time he heard the hounds crying at the edge of the swamp on his trail, but their baying did not stop there. Instead it came steadily on to the very heart of the swamp, and in another half-hour the pack were besieging him again.

True they did not come very close, but it was just menace enough to anger him. So he got warily up and ran for the further side of the swamp.

He would try again what speed could do for