"'If I don't kill nothin',' he said to himself, 'I'll get home before they wake up; and if I do kill somethin', pa will be so pleased an' proud he'll forgive me.' He little thought then he was leavin' home forever. He opened the door softly, an' in half an hour he was off on the mountain, 'longside of a great big lake. Pretty soon he heard a sound, and through the darkness he see two big eyes, flamin' like fire, a-lookin' at where he was. It was that moose up there as was a-lookin' at him. For a minute he was scart to death, but he soon recovered, upped with his gun, an' fired—only he was too excited, and he didn't do any more than graze the moose's cheek. You can't see the scar. It's been mended. It was a tarrable exciting moment, for in a jiffy the moose was after him, head down. Pop tried to run, but couldn't. He stumbled, an' just as he stumbled he felt the big moose's breath hot on the back of his neck. He thought he was a goner for sure; but he wasn't, as it turned out, for as he rolled over and the moose tried to butt him to death, pop grabbed holt of his horns, and the first toss of his head the moose gave landed pop right between 'em, sittin' down as comfortably fixed as though he was in a rockin'-chair. If you'll look at the antlers you'll see how there's a place in between 'em scooped out just right for a small boy to sit in. That's where pop sat, hangin' on to those two upper prongs, with, his legs dangling down over the moose's cheeks."
"Phe-e-e-ew!" whispered Bob. "He was in a fix, wasn't he? What did the moose do?"
"Him?" said Sandboys. "He was absolutely flummoxed for a minute, and then he began to run. Pop held on. He had to. He didn't want to go travellin', but there warn't anything else he could do, so he kept holt. That moose run steady for three days, down over the Canadian border into Maine, takin' a short-cut over Maine into New Hampshire, droppin' dead with weariness two miles from Littleton, where I cum from. That let pop out. The moose was dead, and he wasn't afraid any more; so he climbed down, walked into Littleton, and sold the animal's carkiss to a man there, who cut off its head, and sent it up here to this hotel, an' it's been here ever since. Pop took the money and tried to get back home with it; but there wasn't enough, so he worked about Littleton until he had enough; and just then he met my mother, fell in love with her, married her, and settled down right there; and that's how it is that that moose-head is responsible for my bein' here. If the animal hadn't run away with dad, he'd never have met my mother, and I'd have been nowhere."
"It's very interesting," said Bob. "But I should think he'd have sent word to his father that he was all right."
"Oh, he did," said Sandboys; "and a year or two later the whole family came down and joined him, leavin' Canady and its French names forever."
And here the narrative, which might have been much longer, stopped, for the cross old lady near the elevator sent word that that "talkin' must stop," because while it was "goin' on" she "couldn't hear what tune it was the trumpeter was blowin'."