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 drama that was preparing; and instantly, too, he realized that in the enactment of that drama he might find an opportunity even better than this one. Only for a moment did he see the river king clearly. No sooner had the great saurian mounted the dike than he sank on his belly amid the tall dark-green rushes bordering it on both sides. These hid his head and most of his body from Mayfield's view, but the woodsman knew that the monster was lying on the low flattened ridge of the narrow bank, his head facing the quarter from which the dogs would come.

Mayfield figured the chances rapidly. He did not wish to lose a hound; yet he was keen to see what would happen. A few minutes more would tell the story. The dogs were nearing the break at the peninsula's lower end, and the deer must be swimming the break or already running along the dike. Myrtles extended in a dense hedge to within twenty feet of the place where the giant gator lay in ambush, and Sandy Jim could not see the deer until it had passed the last of these. He waited, every muscle taut, his rifle raised halfway to his shoulder.

A long-bodied, gray-brown shape shot into view from behind the last of the myrtles. Mayfield straighteged suddenly in his seat and muttered an exclamation of amazement. Beyond a shadow of a doubt it was the flat-horned buck. His antlers