As I looked at him that evening, I noticed he did not have the long ears and heavy jaws of the common American deer or foxhound. His long, sharp nose and slender proportions indicated the blood of the Scotch staghound, or that of some large breed of greyhound.
But this cross had not made him more delicate or less fierce. Even Rufe was afraid to handle him roughly, for, unless treated with every consideration, the great hound snarled, and showed rows of savage teeth. He ruled over the other dogs with a cool assumption of more aristocratic breeding.
The morning after the deer was driven to water and the black hound had proved his swiftness and persistence, Rufe again went into the woods for the purpose of starting deer with the two hounds, or "putting out the dogs," as it is called; but this morning it was the guide's intention to put the dogs on separate tracks. They differed too much in speed to be useful when following the same deer.
I took my station at my favorite stand, a runway which reaches the lake where a deep, narrow bay collected the waters before they were discharged into the river which flowed into the St. Lawrence.
One side of this bay was nearly separated from the lake by a long, sharp point of land, and near the bay's farther shore was a little island, a green, bushy spot amid the blue waters.
The bay was a favorite place for the pursued deer to take to the water in their endeavor to baffle the hounds following their tracks, and from my station on the long point I could watch and command the entire bay.
Before daybreak Rufe had led the hounds into the wood, and it was not much later when I pushed my light boat against the point, and sprang ashore.
It was a still, crisp, November morning, and the rising sun had not yet melted the hoar-frost from the alder bushes that grew at the water's edge.
Gauzy wisps of mist hovered by the shores, and shrouded the evergreens on the little island. The snow-sprinkled forest looked white and weird through the veils of mist.
Small flocks of ducks threaded their way across the foggy surface of the bay, going from their resting-places on the river to feed among the wild rice marshes of the lake.