The moan of an expiring northwester was faintly heard from the tops of the magnificent forest pines. Three sportsmen, while it was yet early, met at their trysting place, to perpetrate a raid against the deer! They were no novices, those huntsmen; they had won trophies in many a sylvan war, and they now took the field "of malice prepense" with all the appliances of destruction at their beck—practiced drivers of the pack, often proved, and now refreshed by three days rest. Brief was their interchange of compliment; they felt that such a day was not to be trifled away in talk; and they hallooed their hounds impatiently into the drive—yet not as greenhorns would have done. "Keep clear of the swamps" was the order of the drivers—"leave the close covers—ride not where the ice crackles under the horse's hoof, but look closely into the sheltered knolls, where you will find the deer sunning themselves after the last night's frost." The effect of this order was soon evident, for in the second knoll entered by the hounds a herd of deer were found thawing themselves in the first beams of the ascending sun. Ho! what a burst! with what fury the hounds dash in among them! Now they sweep along the thickets that skirt the drive and climb the summit of that elevated piny ridge—destined one day to become a summer settlement and to bear the name of———. But not unforeseen or unprovided for was the run which the deer had taken. Frisky Geordy was in their path, and crack went the sound of his gun, and loud and vaunting was the twang of his horn that followed the explosion! And now the frozen earth reechoed to the tramp of horses hoofs, as the huntsmen hurried to the call that proclaims that a deer has fallen. There was Geordy, his gun against a pine, his knee upon the still heaving flank of a pricket buck, his right hand clenched upon his dripping knife, his left flourishing a horn, which ever and anon was given to his mouth and filled the air with its boastful notes.
