“Trout,” she told him; and he came to see the fish in a close-packed mass; and he exclaimed at them, and watched while she put them into the stream below where he had been kneeling. He asked her why she did it, and she told him. At the same time she looked toward where he had knelt, wondering what he saw there. She could see only some deep-imprinted moose tracks; and moose tracks were so common in the swamp that it was not worth while to kneel to study them.
He saw her glance, and said, “I was looking at those tracks. Moose, aren’t they?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“They told me there were moose in here,” he said. “I doubted it, though. So far south as this.”
“There are many moose in the swamp,” she declared.
He asked, “Have you ever seen them?”
She smiled a little. “Once in a while. A cow moose wintered in our barn two years ago.”
He slapped his thigh lightly. “Then this is the place I’m looking for,” he exclaimed.
She asked softly, “Why?” She was interested in the man. He was not like John, not like anyone whom she had known; except, perhaps, Dane Semler. A man of the city, obviously. “Why?” she asked.
“I want to get some pictures of them,” he explained. “Photographs. In their natural surroundings. Wild. In the swamp.”