“Hush! Let’s listen.”
They listened. A curious, irregular tramping round broke the stillness.
Gypsy stood up quickly, and put the gun into position upon her shoulder.
“It isn’t Tom and Mr. Hallam,—then there would be two. This is only one, and it doesn’t sound like a man, I declare.”
“Oh, it’s a bear, it’s a bear! We shall be eaten up alive,—oh, Gypsy, Gypsy!”
“Keep still! I can shoot him if it is; but I know it isn’t; just wait and see.”
The curious sound came nearer; tramped through the underbrush; crushed the dead twigs. Gypsy’s finger was on the trigger; her face a little pale. She thought the idea of the bear all nonsense; she did not know what she feared; the very mystery of the thing had thoroughly frightened her.
“Keep still, Sarah; you hit me. I don’t want to fire till I see.”
“Oh, it’s coming, it’s coming!” cried Sarah, starting back with a scream. She clung, in her terror, to Gypsy’s arm; jerked it; the trigger snapped, and a loud explosion echoed and re-echoed and reverberated among the trees.
It was followed by a sound the most horrible Gypsy had heard in all her life.