"'What's the matter?' cried my wife, springing up in an ecstasy of terror.

"'Drive out that dog,' I replied.

"'What dog?' she inquired.

"'There,' I replied, 'that dog there, in the clock with his great staring, glassy eyes; drive him out!'

"She lighted the gas, and as it flashed up, there stood the old clock, the pendulum swung back and forth, the ticking went on, and its white old-fashioned face, looked out in calm serenity; but the dog was gone. It was all natural as life. The lighting of the gas had frightened the cur back to his yard, and as the forty-fourth tick ceased, his bow wow! was heard again, and it lasted while the pendulum swung back and forth just fifteen times. I took a cooling draft, and counted in feverish agony forty-four, and fifteen, till the daylight came creeping in at the windows, filling with sepulchral greyness the room. The barking ceased, and I slept only to dream of snarling curs and 'dirty dogs' for an hour.

"Through all Tuesday I lay tossing with pain. Fever was in every pulse; my brain was seething, burning lava. I thought and dreamed of nothing but mangy curs and 'dirty dogs.' The night gathered again, and the rumbling of the carriages and the thousand voices that break the stillness of a thronged city, died away into silence. The lights were extinguished, but again that horrible bark! bark! broke the hush of midnight, and worse than all, the quickened senses of fever heard it answered from away over on Arbor Hill; and again away up in State street; and yet again over in Lydius, and still again away down by the river. The East, the North, the West and the South had a voice, and it was all concentrated in a ceaseless, senseless, idiotic bark. I counted again the tickings of the clock, and each swing of the pendulum ended in a bark! As I lay there in the silence and desolation, the restless, tossing anguish of fever, those dogs gathered together in State at the crossing of Eagle, just above my boarding-house, and barked! They came under my windows, and barked! They looked in between the curtains, and barked! They came into my room, and there on the sofa, on the rocking-chair, on the table, on the mantelpiece, on the ottoman, on the stove, and on the top of the old clock, was a dog; and each barked! and barked! I saw them all through the darkness, plain as if it were noonday. They were 'dirty dogs,' filthy brutes, ill-favored mangy curs all, and there they sat and barked at the clock, barked at the mirror, at the stove, barked at one another and at me, with the same monotonous, meaningless, idiotic bow, wow! as of old.

"I had two rifles and a double-barrelled fowling-piece, sitting in the corner of the parlor adjoining our sleeping-room, the gifts of valued friends. My wife, wearied with the day's watching, had sunk into slumber on the bed beside me. I woke her gently.

"'Make no noise,' I said, 'but bring me the guns; do it carefully.'

"'What on earth do you want of the guns?' she inquired in alarm.

"'Don't you see those infernal dogs?' I answered, 'bring me the guns, and I'll make short work with the howling curs.'

"'Why, husband,' said she, 'there are no dogs here,' and as she lighted the gas the curs vanished away. But I saw them in the darkness. It was only when the light flashed through the room, that they fled from it, and I heard them barking in response to each other through all the long night, till the dawn crept over the world again.

"Years ago, I saved a boy from the meshes of the law, in which his evil ways had involved him. I admonished him of the end towards which he was hastening. I showed him that the path he was treading led to destruction, and he left it, as he said, forever. He apprenticed himself to a useful trade, and is now an intelligent mechanic. Out of his time, an industrious, sober youth of two and twenty, supporting by his industry, his mother and sister in comfort and respectability. He heard of my sickness, and on Wednesday morning called to see me, proffering his services as a nurse and watchman, prompted by gratitude for the past. I declined his kindness for the present, as I told him casually of the dog whose midnight barking was killing me. He called again on Thursday morning. The barking had ceased. He inquired if I had been troubled with the yelping of that senseless cur, and I answered truly that I had not, that I had slept soundly, and woke with a softened pulse and a cooled brain.

"'Well,' said he, 'I thought you would rest easier. I looked into the yard as I came along, and saw a dead dog lying there. I thought may be he had barked himself to death.'

"I did not at the time take in the full meaning, the hidden import of his words. I dropped away into slumber, and dreamed of the dog that barked himself to death. I saw him vanish by piecemeal at each successive bark, until nothing but his jaws were left, and as his last bark was uttered, these, too, vanished away, and then all was still.

"I awoke, and thought that a dose of 'dog-buttons,' or a taste of strychnine, administered with a tempting bit of cold steak, or a piece of fresh lamb, or a bone of mutton carefully dropped in his way, might have aided the operation. Be that as it may, whatever of debt may have existed between my young friend and myself for past kind it is all wiped out by the news he brought me, that a 'dead dog lay in the yard over the way.'"



CHAPTER VIII.

STONY BROOK—A GOOD TIME WITH THE TROUT—RACKETT RIVER—TUPPER'S LAKE—A QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED.

The next morning we started down Stony Brook, towards the Rackett River, intending to pitch our tents at night on the banks of Tupper's Lake, twenty-three miles distant. Before leaving the Spectacle Ponds, we visited a little island at the north end of the middle pond, containing perhaps half an acre. This island has a few Norway pines upon it, is of a loose sandy soil, and at the highest portion is some twenty feet above the level of the water. It is a great resort for turtle in the season of depositing their eggs. We found thousands of their eggs, some on the surface and some buried in the sand, and if one in a dozen of them brings forth a turtle, there will be no lack of the animal in the neighborhood. Stony Brook is a sluggish, tortuous stream, large enough to float our little boats, and goes meandering most of the way for five miles among natural meadows, overflowed at high water, or thinly timbered prairie, when it enters the Rackett. I discovered on a former visit to this wilderness, when the water was very low, a spring that came boiling up near the centre of the stream, with a volume large enough almost to carry a mill. It was at a point where a high sandy bluff, along which the stream swept, terminated. As we approached this spot, I suggested to Spalding, who was in the bow of the boat, to prepare his rod and fly. We approached carefully along the willows on the opposite shore, until in a position from which he could throw in the direction I indicated. In the then stage of the water, there was no appearance of a spring, or any indication marking it as a spot where the trout would be at all likely to congregate, and Spalding was half inclined to believe that I was practising upon his want of knowledge of the habits of the fish of this region. I had said nothing about the spring, or the habit of the trout in gathering wherever a cold stream enters a river, or a spring comes gushing up in its bed.

"I don't believe there's a trout within half a mile of us," he said, as he adjusted his rod and fly.

"Never mind," I replied, "throw your fly across towards that boulder on the bank, and trail it home, and you'll see."

"Well," said he, "here goes;" and he threw in the direction indicated.

The fly had scarcely touched the water when a trout, weighing a pound or over, struck it with a rush that carried him clear out of the water. After a little play he was landed safely in the boat, and another, and another, followed at almost every throw. Not once did the fly touch the water that it was not risen to by a fish.

"By Jove!" said Spalding, as he handed me the landing-net to take in his third or fourth trout, "this is sport. You use the net, and I'll trail them to you. Let us make hay while the sun shines. The other boat will soon be along, and Smith will be for dipping his spoon into my dish. I want to astonish him when he comes."

We had secured eight beautiful fish when the Doctor and Smith rounded the point above us. We motioned them back, and their boat lay upon its oars. Spalding kept on throwing his fly and trailing the trout to me to secure with the landing-net."

"Hallo!" shouted Smith, "hold on there; fair play, my friends, give me a hand in," and he fell to adjusting his rod and flies.

"Keep back, you lubber," replied Spalding; "what do you know about trout-fishing? You'll frighten them all away by your awkwardness."

"No you don't!" shouted Smith, his rod now adjusted. "Drop down, boatman, and we'll see who is the lubber. Wait, Spalding! Don't throw, if you are a true man, until we can take a fair start, and then the one that comes out second best pays the piper."

The boat dropped down to the proper position, and the Doctor, who was seated in the stern, held it in place by pressing his paddle into the sand at the bottom, while the boatman handled the landing net.

"Now!" exclaimed Smith, as the flies dropped upon the water together above the cold spring. There was no lack of trout, for one rose to the fly at every cast.

"I say," said the Doctor, "how many have you in your boat?"

"Sixteen," I replied, after counting them.

"We've got eight, and I bar any more fishing. The law has reached its limit. No wanton waste of the good things of God, you know."

The rods were unjointed and laid away, and such a string of trout as we had, is rarely seen outside of the Saranac woods. We procured fresh grass in which to lay our fish, and green boughs to cover them, and floated on down the stream, entering the Rackett at nine o'clock. The Rackett is a most beautiful river. To me at least it is so, for it flows on its tortuous and winding way for a hundred or more miles through an unbroken forest, with all the old things standing in their primeval grandeur along its banks. The woodman's axe has not marred the loveliness of its surroundings, and no human hand has for all that distance been laid upon its mane, or harnessed it to the great wheel, making it a slave, compelling it to be utilitarian, to grind corn or throw the shuttle and spin. It moves on towards the mighty St. Lawrence as wild, and halterless, and free, as when the Great Spirit sent it forward on its everlasting flow. The same scenery, and the same voices are seen and heard along its banks now as then; and, while man, in his restlessness, has changed almost everything else, the Rackett and the things that pertained to it when the earth was young, remain unchanged. But this will not be so long. Civilization is pushing its way even towards this wild and, for all agricultural purposes, sterile region, and before many years even the Rackett will be within its ever-extending circle. When that time shall have arrived, where shall we go to find the woods, the wild things, the old forests, and hear the sounds which belong to nature in its primeval state? Whither shall we flee from civilization, to take off the harness and be free, for a season, from the restraints, the conventionalities of society, and rest from the hard struggles, the cares and toils, the strifes and competitions of life? Had I my way, I would mark out a circle of a hundred miles in diameter, and throw around it the protecting aegis of the constitution. I would make it a forest forever. It should be a misdemeanor to chop down a tree, and a felony to clear an acre within its boundaries. The old woods should stand here always as God made them, growing on until the earthworm ate away their roots, and the strong winds hurled them to the ground, and new woods should be permitted to supply the place of the old so long as the earth remained. There is room enough for civilization in regions better fitted for it. It has no business among these mountains, these rivers and lakes, these gigantic boulders, these tangled valleys and dark mountain gorges. Let it go where labor will garner a richer harvest, and industry reap a better reward for its toil. It will be of stinted growth at best here.

"I like these old woods," said a gentleman, whom I met on the Rackett last year; "I like them, because one can do here just what he pleases. He can wear a shirt a week, have holes in his pantaloons, and be out at elbows, go with his boots unblacked, drink whisky in the raw, chew plug tobacco, and smoke a black pipe, and not lose his position in society. Now," continued he, "tho' I don't choose to do any of these things, yet I love the freedom, now and then, of doing just all of them if I choose, without human accountability. The truth is, that it is natural as well as necessary for every man to be a vagabond occasionally, to throw off the restraints imposed upon him by the necessities and conventionalities of civilization, and turn savage for a season,—and what place is left for such transformation, save these northern forests?"

The idea was somewhat quaint, but to me it smacked of philosophy, and I yielded it a hearty assent. I would consecrate these old forests, these rivers and lakes, these mountains and valleys to the Vagabond Spirit, and make them a place wherein a man could turn savage and rest, for a fortnight or a month, from the toils and cares of life.

We entered TUPPER'S LAKE towards six o'clock, and saw our white tents pitched upon the left bank, some half a mile above the outlet, where a little stream, cold almost as icewater, comes down from a spring a short way back in the forest. This lake, some ten miles long, and from one to three in width, is one of the most beautiful sheets of water that the eye of man ever looked upon. The scenery about it is less bold than that of some of the other lakes of this region. The hills rise with a gentle acclivity from the shore; behind them and far off rise rugged mountain ranges; and further still, the lofty peaks of the Adirondacks loom up in dim and shadowy outline against the sky. From every point and in every direction, are views of placid and quiet beauty rarely equalled; valleys stretching away among the highlands; gaps in the hills, through which the sunlight pours long after the shadows of the forest have elsewhere thrown themselves across the lake; islands, some bold and rocky, rising in barren desolation, right up from the deep water; some covered with a dense and thrifty growth of evergreen trees, with a soil matchless in fertility; and some partaking of both the sterile and productive; beautiful bays stealing around bold promontories, and hiding away among the old woods. These are the features of this beautiful sheet of water, which none see but to admire, none visit but to praise; and it lies here all alone, surrounded by the old hills and forests, bold bluffs, and rocky shores, all as God made them, with no mark of the hand of man about it, save in a single spot on a secluded bay, where lives a solitary family in a log house, surrounded by an acre or two, from which the forest has been cleared away.

"Will somebody tell me," said Smith, as we sat on the logs in front of our tent after supper, smudging away the musquitoes with our pipes, "will somebody tell me what we came into this wilderness among these musquitoes, and frogs, and owls for? Mind you, I am not discontented; I enjoy it hugely; but what I want to know is why I do so? I desire to understand the philosophy of the thing."

"As the question involves, in some sense, a physiological fact," replied the Doctor, "it comes within the range of my professional duties to understand and be able to answer it, for you must know that the enjoyments of this region are primarily physical. Now I've a theory which is this—that every man has a certain amount of vagabondism in his composition that will be pretty certain to break out in spots occasionally. At all events it is so with me, and from my observation of men, I am strong in the faith that it is so with every one who is neither more nor less than human. It is all a mistake to suppose that I come off here, enduring a heap of hardship and toil, simply for the love of fishing and hunting, though I confess to a weakness to a certain extent that way. The charm of this region consists in the fact, that it is the best place to play the vagabond, and in which to do the savage for a season, that I know of. You can go bareheaded or barefooted, without a coat or neckerchief, get as ragged and untidy as you please, without subjecting yourself to remark, or offending the nice sense of propriety pertaining to conventional life. You are not responsible for what you say or do, provided always that you do not offend against the abstract rules of decency, or the requirements of natural decorum. You can lay around loose; the lazier you are the better the boatman in your employ likes it. If you choose to drift leisurely and quietly under the shadow of the hills along the shore, examining the rocks that lie there like a ruined wall, or explore the beautiful and secluded bays that hide around behind the bluffs, or lay off under the shade of the fir trees on the islands, or smoke your cigar or pipe by the beautiful spring that comes bubbling up by the side of some moss-covered boulder, or from beneath the tangled roots of some gnarled birch or maple, you can do any or all of these, and have a man to help you for twelve shillings a day and board, or you can do it just about as well alone.

"You remember LONESOME ROCK, in the Lower Saranac, a great boulder that lifts its head some ten or fifteen feet above the surface, away out near the middle of the lake, around which the water is of unknown depth. This rock, which is always dark and bare, is, as you will remember, of conical shape, sharp pointed at the top, and stands up about the size of a small hay-stack, in the midst of the waters. Do you remember the account that somebody gives in a ragged but terse kind of verse, of the 'gentleman in black,' who, as he walked about,

'Backward and forward he switched his long rail, As a gentleman switches his cane?'

And of whose dress it was facetiously said:

'His coat was red and his breeches were blue, With a hole behind for his tail to stick through.'

another author said of him on one of his fishing excursions, that

'His rod, it was a sturdy mountain oak, His line, a cable which no storm e'er broke, His hook he baited with a dragon's tail, And sat upon a rock and bob'd for whale!'

Well, like the ebony gentleman, you can, if you choose, sit upon Lonesome Rock enjoying your meditations, and bobbing, not for whale, for whatever other fish may be found in the Lower Saranac, I believe there are no whale; but you can bob for trout; whether you will catch any or not will depend very much on circumstances. It is a capital place to cast the fly from, or to sink your hook with a bait, and if the trout do not choose to bite, whose fault is that, I should like to know?

"And this reminds me of an anecdote told me by a gentleman I met in June of last year, on the Rackett River among the black flies, of an adventure he met with on Lonesome Rock last season. He had been trolling around the lake in a boat alone, without much success, and concluded he would try deep fishing from this rock, as he had heard that the trout were in the habit of congregating around its base. So he rowed to the rock, and, as he supposed, secured his boat, and climbing up its side seated himself on his boat cushion, on the top. He caught one fine fish at the first throw, and took it for granted that he was going to have a good time of it among the trout. When he mounted the rock, about eleven o'clock, the sky was overcast, and he caught three or four trout of good size in the course of half an hour; but the sun coming out bright and clear, the fish altered their minds, and refused to have anything more to do with his hook. He finally concluded to give up the business, and seek the cooling shadows of the forest trees along the shore. But his boat was gone; and upon looking around he saw it drifting before a light breeze a quarter of a mile distant. Now when you remember that all around the lake was a wilderness, save a single spot at the head of the bay, where Martin's house stands, three or four miles distant, and when you remember also that no boat might be passing during the next twenty-four hours, you will comprehend that his position was none of the pleasantest. There he sat upon the top of his rock, with scarcely room to turn around, with a wide sweep of deep water between him and the nearest land, the fish utterly refusing to bite, and the sun blazing down upon him with heat like a furnace, as it crept with its snail's pace across the sky. At first he was inclined to smile at his ridiculous situation, all alone there on the rock; but as the wind died away, and the sun poured his burning rays right down upon him, and he panted and sweat under its sweltering influences, he began to feel a little more serious. Hours glided away, and the sun crept slowly along down the heavens, but still no boat made its appearance.

"The sun hid itself behind the hills on the West, and still he was alone. The shadows crept up the mountain peaks that stand up like grim giants away off in the East, and twilight began to throw its grey mantle over the lake; still he was alone. The darkness began to gather around him; the forests along the shore to lose their distinctness and to stand in sombre and shadowy outline above the water; still no prospect of relief presented itself. The twilight faded from the West, the stars stole out in the heavens, the milky way stretched its belt of light across the sky, and there he sat alone still on his rock, the night dews falling around him, and the night voices of the forest coming solemnly out over the water. Things had now assumed a serious aspect. He could not stretch his limbs save by standing erect, and it seemed inevitable that he must watch the stars during the night, as he had watched the sun during the day. To sleep there was out of the question. There was no room for a sleeping posture, and the danger of rolling down the rock into the water kept him wide awake. At length the pleasant sound of oars, and voices in jolly converse, fell upon his ear, and he shouted. Two sportsmen were returning from the Upper Lakes, and right welcome was the answer they returned to his call. He was glad enough to be released from his rock, upon which, as he said, 'he had made up his mind that he should be compelled to roost, like a turkey on the ridge of a barn, for the night.'

"To go back from this digression," continued the Doctor, "I repeat that every man has a vein of the vagabond, a streak of the savage in him, which can never be clean wiped out. Educate him, polish him as you may, it will be in him still, and he will love to go off into the old woods at times, to lay around loose for a season, vagabondising among the wild and savage things of the wilderness. It is but indulging the original instincts of our nature. True, he will not relish his savage ways a great while. His old habits will lead him back to civilization, to the luxury of a well-furnished room, the quiet of an easy chair, and the repose of a soft bed. In a word to 'clean up' and shave and dress, so that when he looks into a glass he will see the shadow of a gentleman."



CHAPTER IX.

HUNTING BY TORCH LIGHT—AN INCOMPETENT JUDGE—A NEW SOUND IN THE FOREST—OLD SANGAMO'S DONKEY.

Spalding and Martin went out upon the lake after dark, with one of the boats, to hunt by torch light. This is done by placing a lighted torch, or a lamp upon a standard, placed upright in the bow of the boat, and so high that a man seated or lying upon the bottom of the craft, will have his head below it. He must himself be in someway shaded from the light, which must be cast forward so that both the hunter and the boatman will be in the shadow. A very common method is to make a box, a foot or less square, open, or with a pane of glass on one side; a stick three or four feet long is run through an auger hole in the top and bottom, and wedged fast, which forms a standard; the other end of the stick is run through a hole on the little deck on the forward part of the boat, and placed in a socket formed for the purpose in the bottom, and is wedged at the deck, so as to make it steady. The open or glass front of the box is turned forward, and a common japan lamp placed in a socket prepared for it in the box. This of course throws the light forward, while the occupants of the boat are in the shadow. The hunter sits, or more commonly lies at length on a bed of boughs in the bottom of the boat, with his rifle so far in front that the light will fall upon the forward sight. An experienced boatman will paddle silently up to within twenty feet of a deer that may be feeding along the shore. The stupid animal will stand, gazing in astonishment at the light, until the boat almost touches him.

"That Hank Martin," said Cullen, one of the boatmen, as the hunters disappeared into the darkness, "is a queer boy in his way. You will notice that when he straightens up, and takes the kinks out of him, he stands six feet and over in his stockings, and his arms hang down to his knees. He's the strongest man in these woods, and tolerably active when there's occasion for it. He is a droll, good-natured, easy tempered chap, and don't get angry at trifles. He is fond of a joke himself, and will stand having a good many sticks poked at him without getting riled; but when he does get his back up, it's well enough to stand out of his way, and not step on his shadow. He never struck a man but once in real earnest, and that was over in Keeseville, and on that occasion the people said the town clock had struck one. The fellow he struck went eend over eend, and then went down, and when he went down he laid still—he didn't come to tine.

"But what I was going to tell you is, that Hank and I were down at Plattsburgh last fall, and a big fellow who had taken quite as much red eye as was for his good, undertook to pick a quarrel with Hank and give him a beating. Hank, as I said, being a peaceable man, and much more given to fun than to fighting, kept good-natured, and avoided a scrimmage as long as he could. But his patience and his temper at last caved in, and seizing his opponent by the neck with his left hand, and thrusting him down upon the ground, he began very deliberately to cuff him with his right, in a way that seemed anything but pleasant to the individual upon whom his cuffs were bestowed. 'Enough! enough!' cried his assailant. 'Let up! enough! enough!' 'Hold your tongue, you scoundrel!' replied Hank, as he kept on pommeling his enemy, 'hold your tongue, I tell you! You ain't a judge of these things! I'll let you know when you've got enough.' When he'd given him what he thought was about right, he lifted him on to his feet, and, holding him up face to face with himself a moment, 'There,' said he, 'look at me well, so that you'll know me when I come this way again; and when you see my trail, you'd better travel some other road.'"

"Speaking of Plattsburgh," said the Doctor, "reminds me of an incident which occurred to a friend and myself, over in the Chataugay woods, between the Chazy and the Upper Chataugay lakes. I was spending a few days at Plattsburgh, and hearing a good deal of the trout and deer in and about those lakes, my friend and myself concluded to pay them a flying visit. On the banks of the Chazy and near the outlet, a half-breed, that is, half French and half Indian, had built him a log cabin, and cleared about an acre of land around it. His live stock consisted of two homely, lean, and half-starved dogs, and as ragged and ill-looking a donkey as could be found in a week's travel. The half-breed was a sort of half fisherman and half hunter, excelling in nothing, unless it be that he was the laziest man this side of the Rocky Mountains. He succeeded, occasionally, in killing a deer in the forest, and when he did so, he would lead his donkey to the place of slaughter, and bring in the carcase on the long-eared animal's back.

"We were passing from the Chazy to Bradley's Lake, and had sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree to take a short breathing spell. It was a warm afternoon, and the air was calm; not a breath stirred the leaves on the old trees around us; the forest sounds were hushed, save the tap of the woodpecker on his hollow tree, or an occasional drumming of a partridge on his log. It was drawing towards one of those calm, still, autumnal evenings of which poets sing, but which are to be met with in all their glory only among the beautiful lakes that lay sleeping in the wild woods, and surrounded by old primeval things. The path wound round a densely wooded and sombre hollow, the depths of which the eye could not penetrate, but from out of which came the song of a stream that went cascading down the rocks, and rippling among the loose boulders that lay in its course. Beyond us, through an opening in the trees, we could see the lake, sparkling and shining in the evening sunbeams, and we were talking about the beauty of the view, and the calmness and repose that seemed resting upon all things, when, of a sudden, there came up from that shadowy dell a sound, the most unearthly that ever broke upon the astonished ear of mortal man. I have heard the roar of the lion of the desert, the yell of the hyena, the trumpeting of the elephant, the scream of the panther, the howl of the wolf. It was like none of these; but if you could imagine them all combined, and concentrated into a single sound, and ushered together upon the air from a single throat, shaped like the long neck of some gigantic ichthiosaurus of the times of old, you would have some faint idea of the strange sounds that came roaring up from that hollow way. My friend was a man of courage, and, like myself, had been around the world some; had spent a good deal of time, first and last, in the woods, was familiar with most of the legitimate forest sounds, and had heard all the ten thousand voices that belong in the wilderness, but we had never before listened to a noise like that.

"We looked to our rifles and at one another, and it may well be that our hats sat somewhat loosely upon our heads, from an involuntary rising of the hair. 'What, in the name of all that is mysterious,' cried my friend, in amazement, 'is that?' 'It is more than I know,' I replied, as I placed a fresh cap on my rifle. After a few minutes, the sounds were repeated, and the hills seemed to groan with affright as they sent them back in wavy and quavering echoes from their rugged sides.

"'We must understand this,' said my friend, as he led the way with a cautious and stealthy movement towards the depths of the hollow, whence the sounds came, and there, by the stream, on a little sand-bar, stood old Sangamo's donkey, by the side of a deer. Old Sangamo himself was stretched at full length on the bank, fast asleep. How he could have slept on, with such an infernal roaring as that donkey made in those old woods, six or eight miles outside of a fence, is more than I can comprehend. But he did sleep through it all, and was wakened only by a punch in the ribs with the butt of my rifle, instigated by pity for the poor donkey that was being eaten up by the flies. We helped him to load the carcass of the deer on the back of his donkey, and saw him move off lazily towards home. I have heard a good many strange noises in my day, but never, on any other occasion, have I listened to anything to be at all compared with the noise made by the braying of old Sangamo's donkey in the Chataugay woods."

As the Doctor concluded his story, the sharp crack of Spalding's rifle broke the stillness of the night, and went reverberating among the hills, and dying away over the lake. It was but a short distance from our camp, in a little bay hidden away around a wooded promontory below us. In a few minutes, the light was seen, rounding the point that hid the bay from our view, and, as the boat landed in front of our tents, Spalding and Martin lifted from it a fine two year old deer, shot directly between the eyes.



"There," said Spalding, "is the biggest, or what was the biggest fool of a deer in these woods. Do you believe that he stood perfectly still, gazing in stupid astonishment at our light, until we were within a dozen feet of him, when I dropped him with that ball between the eyes?"

"No," replied Smith, "I really don't believe any such thing."

"It is true, notwithstanding your lack of faith," said Spalding.

"Do you say that as counsel, or as a gentleman?" inquired Smith.

"Look you, Mr. Smith," said Spalding, "you are drawing a distinction not warranted by the authority of the books—as if a lawyer could not tell the truth like a gentleman. I say it as both."

"Very well," remarked Smith, "then I must believe it, of course. But understand, Hank Martin, it will be my turn to-morrow night." And so the matter was settled that the next night hunting was to be done by Smith.

"H——," said the Doctor, as I was stealing quietly out of the tent, in the twilight of the next morning, so as not to awaken my companions, "where now?"

"I'm going to take some trout for breakfast, with our venison," I replied.

"And where do you propose to take them?" he inquired. "Come with me, and I'll show you. I looked the place out last evening, and if you've done sleeping, we'll have some sport."

"Agreed," said he, and we paddled around the point into a little bay, at the head of which a small, but cold stream entered the lake. The Doctor sat in the bow, and, having adjusted his rod, I steered the boat carefully, close along the shore, to within reach of the mouth of the brook, and directed him to cast across it. The moment his fly touched the water, half a dozen fish rose to it together. It was eagerly seized by one weighing less than a quarter of a pound, which was lifted bodily into the boat. He caught as fast as he could cast his fly. They were the genuine brook trout, none of them exceeding a quarter Of a pound in weight. In half an hour, we had secured as many as we needed for breakfast, and paddled back to take a morning nap while the meal was being prepared.

The sweetest fish that swims is the brook trout, weighing from a quarter of a pound down. Rolled in flour, or meal, and fried brown, they have no equal. The lake and river trout, weighing from two to ten pounds, beautiful as they are, have not that delicacy of flavor which belongs to the genuine brook trout. Boiled, when freshly caught, they are by no means to be spoken lightly of. They have few equals, cooked in that way, but as a pan fish, they are not to be compared with the genuine brook trout.



CHAPTER X.

GRINDSTONE BROOK—FOREST SOUNDS—A FUNNY TREE, COVERED WITH SNOW FLAKES.

We crossed over towards a deep bay on the west shore, to where a stream comes cascading down the rocks, and leaping into the lake, as if rejoicing at finding a resting-place in its quiet bosom. The spot where this stream enters, is in the deep shadow of the old forest trees that reach their leafy arms far out from the ledges on which they grow, forming an arch above, and shutting out the sunlight. Here the trout congregate, to enjoy the cool water that comes down from the hills above. We approached it carefully, and Smith, by way of experiment, cast his fly across the current where the stream enters the lake. It was seized by a beautiful fish weighing, perhaps, two pounds. We did not need him, for the place where we proposed to pitch our tents for the night would afford us all the fish required, and after lifting him into the boat with the landing-net and releasing the hook from his jaw, we returned him to the lake again.

Two miles from the head of the lake, on the east side, is a deep bay at the head of which enters a little brook that comes creeping along for a mile among the tangled roots of ancient hemlocks and spruce, singing gaily among the loose stones, sometimes disappearing entirely beneath bridges of moss, and sometimes sparkling in the sunlight, on its way to the lake. This little stream we found swarming with speckled trout of the size of minnows, and at its mouth the large trout congregated. As we rounded one of the points that shut out the view of this bay from the lake, we saw two deer feeding quietly upon the lily pads along the shore, some quarter of a mile from us. We dropped quietly back behind the point, where Smith and one of the boatmen prepared to take a shot at them. Martin took his seat in the stern with his paddle, and Smith lay stretched at length along the bottom of the boat upon boughs prepared for the occasion, with his rifle resting upon the forward end of the boat. It was broad daylight, and to paddle up within shooting distance of a deer under such circumstances, in plain view of an animal the most wary, is a delicate job, but it may be done. I have more than once been thus paddled within thirty yards of a deer while feeding in the water. The wind must be blowing from the deer to the hunter, or the scent will alarm the animal, and he will go snorting and bounding away.

Smith and Martin passed silently out into the bay, and moved slowly towards where the deer were feeding. The boat in which we sat was permitted to float out to a position from which we could see the sportsmen as they approached the game. Slowly but steadily they moved, the paddle remaining in the water, sculling the little craft along as if it were a log drifting in the water. The deer occasionally raised their heads, looking all around, evidently regarding the boat as a harmless thing floating in from the lake. After gazing thus about them they stooped their heads again, and went on feeding, as if no danger were near them. The hunters drifted within seventy or eighty yards of the game, when a column of white smoke shot suddenly up from the bow of the boat, and the report of Smith's rifle rang out sharp and clear over the lake. We saw where the ball struck the water just beyond the deer, passing directly under its belly, possibly high enough to graze its body. At the flash and report of the rifle, the animal leaped high into the air, bounded in affright this way and that for a moment, and then straightened itself for the woods. We heard his snort as he went crashing up the hillside.

Reader, should you ever drift out to this beautiful lake, you will find on the ridge just above where Bog River comes tumbling, and roaring, and foaming over the rocks into the lake, the charred remains of a campfire, built against a great log that was once the trunk of a tall forest tree. If you should visit it within a year or two, you will perhaps notice some forked stakes standing a few feet from the place of the fire, and a bed of withered and dry boughs (now fresh and green). Well, our tents were stretched over those stakes, those boughs were our bed, and those charred chunks are the remains of our campfire, that sent a sepulchral light among the forest trees around.

The sounds that come upon the ear during the night in a far off place like this, are peculiar. The old owl hoots mournfully, the frogs bellow hoarsely along the reedy shore, while the tree toads are quavering from among the branches of the scrubby trees that grow along the rocky banks; the whippoorwill pipes shrilly in the forest depths; the breeze murmurs among the foliage of the tall old pines, while the everlasting roar of the waters, as they go tumbling down the rocks, is always heard. However diversified these sounds may be, they all invite to repose. They fall soothingly upon the ear, and though all are distinctly heard, yet strange as it may seem, there is a strong impression upon the mind of the deep silence pervading the forest. This impression is doubtless occasioned by the utter dissimilarity between the voices one hears in the day, from those which fall upon the ear in the night time. The former are all joyous and happy, full of gladness and merriment, full of life and animation; the latter solemn, deep, profound, lulling to the senses; not sorrowful nor sad, yet still such as form a calm and quiet lullaby, under the influence of which one glides away into slumber, and sleeps quietly until dawn. Then the voice of gladness breaks so tumultuously on the ear, that he must be a sluggard indeed who can resist their wakening influences. How beautifully the sun went down behind the hills, lighting up the western sky, and the fleecy clouds floating in the heavens with a blaze of glory, throwing a mantle of silver over the tall ranges and mountain peaks that loomed up in solemn grandeur away in the east; and how stilly, silently the stars came out from the depths above, and how brightly and truthfully they were given back from away down in depths beneath the placid waters. We had taken half a dozen beautiful trout from the foot of the falls where the current shoots out into the lake. We had eaten them too, and were sitting in front of our tents smoking our evening pipes.

"Spalding," said the Doctor, "How I wish our little boys were out here with us. How they would enjoy themselves among these lakes and rivers. It is a hard lot that the children of our cities have in life. They struggle up to man and womanhood against fearful odds, and the wonder is, that they do not perish in their infancy; that they are not blasted, as the blossoms are, when the cold east wind sweeps over the earth."

"You are right, my friend," replied Spalding. "I should like to have our little boys, and girls too, for that matter, with us for a few days out here on these lakes. It would be a lifetime to them, measuring time by the enjoyment it would afford them. Still their city habits might make them tire of this freedom in a week. You and I enjoy it longer, because it brings back old memories and relieves us from the toils of business and the restraints of conventional life. You are right too in saying that the lot of our city children is a hard one. To live imprisoned between long rows of brick walls, breathing an atmosphere charged with the exhalations of ten thousand cooking stoves, the dust of forges and the smoke of furnaces, machine shops, gas works, filthy streets, and the thousand other manufactories of villainous smells; where the summer air has no freshness, no forest odors, or sweetness gathered from fields of grain, the meadows, or the pastures. To tramp only on stone sidewalks. To know nothing of the pleasant paths beneath the spreading branches of old primeval trees; no soft grass for their little feet to press; never to wander along the streams or the little brooks; to be strangers always to the beautiful things spread out everywhere in the country in the summer time. I always feel sad when I see the pale faces of the little children of the great cities, and marvel how so many of them grow up to be men and women. It is a hard lot to be cooped up in the city, vegitating, as it were, in the shade, where there is no grass for their little feet to press, no fences to climb, or fields to ramble over, or brooks to wade, or running water on which to float chips, and wherein to watch the little chubs and shiners dancing and playing about, or fresh pure air to breathe, or birds to listen to. It is a thousand pities that the cities could not be emptied every summer of their little people into the free and open country, where they could run about, and sport and play, and have free range and plenty of elbow-room. It would make them so much healthier and happier, so much more cheerful; their voices of gladness would ring out so much more joyously in the morning, and their songs be so much more sweet at night."

I remember an anecdote told me of a little child, born in the great metropolis, who had never, until her fifth summer, been outside of the paved streets of New York. Her mother had friends residing in one of the up-river towns, owning a beautiful farm overlooking the Hudson, and in early May she paid them a visit, taking her little daughter with her. Mary, of course, was delighted. Like a bird freed from its cage, she flew about here, there, everywhere, in-doors and out, among the chickens and the pigs, the turkeys and the lambs, enjoying to the full the thousand new things that her eyes rested upon all around her, and her young spirits in wild commotion under the bracing influences of the country air. "Mother! mother!" she exclaimed, as she came dashing into the parlor, her beautiful curls floating wildly over her shoulders, and her bright eyes wide open with wonder; "Mother I mother! come out here, quick! and see this funny tree, all covered over with snow-flakes, and how sweet it smells all around it." It was a plum tree in full blossom. That little child had never seen the beautiful spring blossoms on the fruit trees.

"I have no children of my own," remarked Smith, "and, therefore, may not be regarded as the best authority in regard to the manner of treating, or rearing children; but I have often wondered at the very great mistakes people sometimes make in regard to them. There are parents who mean no wrong, and yet who make no scruple of deceiving them in reply to their simple questionings, forgetting, or regardless of the fact, that a false answer to their innocent inquiries put in good faith, and in the earnest pursuit of truth, may plant an error in their minds, which may take years of experience, and often a painful amount of ridicule to eradicate. I knew a little boy years ago, a thoughtful, philosophic child, who speculated in his simplicity upon what he saw, as great philosophers do, in their wisdom, upon the various phenomena of Nature. His father, had a great barn, above which, as was the fashion long ago, perched upon a staff, a few feet above the ridgepole, was a weather-cock, fashioned out of a piece of board in the shape of a rooster. 'Father,' said the little boy, one day, 'what makes that rooster always point his head one way when the cold wind blows, and the other way when it is warm and pleasant?' 'He always looks towards the place where the wind comes from,' replied the father; 'when he gets too warm, and the sun is too hot for him, he turns his tail to the south, and the north wind is sure to come down, cold and chill, to cool him off.' 'Does he call the cold wind, father, and will it come when he looks, that way?' was the next inquiry. 'Certainly,' replied his father, carelessly. That was a wrong and a foolish answer.

"That little boy, relying in his simple faith upon the wisdom and truthfulness of his father, believed for a long time, that the weathercock on the top of the barn, could bring the cold north, or the warm south wind, by turning upon its perch. He was cured of his error only by being laughed at for his simplicity. Parents should never deceive their children by a careless or a wrong answer to the simple questions put to them by these little searchers after knowledge."

"I remember," said the doctor, "and it is one of the earliest incidents which my recollection has treasured, that I was out one evening in autumn, with a boy older than myself, gathering hazel nuts. The sun had sunk behind the hills, and the shadows of twilight were gathering in the valley. It was a beautiful and calm evening, the solemn stillness of which, was only broken by the 'tza! tza!' of thousands of katydids among the bushes. I asked my companion what it was that made the noise I heard, and he, supposing that I referred to sounds that came up occasionally from the lake, after listening for a moment, answered that it was made by the wild geese. In my simplicity I believed it, and it was not until I caught, the next season, a katydid while it was in the act of singing, that I discovered that the music among the hazel bushes was not made by the wild geese."

"I never respect a man or woman," said Spalding, "whose heart does not warm towards little children, who takes no pleasure nor interest in their society, who has no patience to listen to their simple thoughts expressed in their simple way. 'Mother,' said a little child of four or five years of age, one evening when the summer air was warm, and the skies were bright above, as she sat beside her mother, on a bench beneath the spreading branches of the tall old elms in front of the house; 'mother, what makes the stars come out, only after the dark has come down, and why don't the moon go up into the sky like the sun in the day time?' I listened anxiously for the reply. I knew the kind heart of that mother, how truthful it was, and how earnest and pure in its affection for its gentle and only darling. 'Sit here upon my lap, Mary,' said the mother, 'and I will try and explain it all so that you will understand it.' And she told the little child how God made the sun to rule the day, and the moon and the stars to rule the night; how that the stars were always in the sky, but how the superior brightness of the sun put them out in the day time; how the stars, that twinkled like little rush-lights in the heavens, were great worlds, a thousand times larger than this earth, made and placed away up in the sky, by the same great and good God who made the world we live in. Little Mary was silent and attentive to the simple lecture, until it was finished, and then asked, so simply and confidingly, that I could not help smiling to think that the mind of childhood should be running upon a subject, and seeking a solution of the same question which has puzzled the profoundest philosophers through all time: 'Mother,' said the little one, 'are there people in the moon and in the stars, them great worlds that look to us so like candles in the sky?' 'That question, my child,' said the mother, 'I cannot answer.' 'I believe,' said the child, that there are people in the moon, and in all the stars.' 'Why?' asked her mother. 'Because I don't believe God would make such big and beautiful worlds without making people to live in them.' What more has the profoundest philosopher who ever lived said, to prove that those mighty worlds which are seen in the heavens at night, that are scattered all through the universe of God, rolling forever on their everlasting rounds, are peopled by living, moving, sentient beings?"



CHAPTER XI.

A CONVENTION BROKEN UP IN A BOW—THE CHAIRMAN EJECTED.

We sent forward our boatman with the luggage early in the morning, up Bog River towards Mud Lake, the source of the right branch of that river, lying some thirty miles deeper in the wilderness, counting the sinuosities of the stream, and said to be the highest body of water in all this wild region. We were to spend the day on Tupper's Lake, and follow him the next morning. Our boatman built for our accommodation, a brush shanty in the place of our tents. We rowed about this beautiful sheet of water, exploring its secluded bays and romantic islands, trying experiments with the trout wherever a stream came down from the hills, and trolling for lake trout while crossing the lake. Near the shore, on the west bank, perhaps half a mile from the falls, is one of the coldest, purest and most beautiful springs that I ever met with. It comes up into a little basin some six or eight feet in diameter, by two or three in depth. The bottom is of loose white sand which is all in commotion, by the constant boiling up of the clear cold water. From this basin a little stream goes rippling and laughing to the lake. Towards evening we returned to our shanty with abundance of fish for supper and breakfast, taken, as I said, in simply trying experiments as to where they were to be found in the greatest abundance.

If any sportsman who may drift out this way, is fond of taking the speckled trout—little fellows, weighing from a quarter of a pound down, the same he meets with in the streams of Vermont, in Massachusetts, in Northern Pennsylvania, and. Western New York, let him provide himself with angle-worms, and row to the head of the lake. A short distance east of where Bog River enters, say from a quarter to half a mile, he will find a cold mountain stream. Let him rig for brook-fishing and take to that stream. If he does not fill his basket in a little while, he may set it down to the score of bad luck, or some lack of skill on his part in taking them, for the brook trout are there in abundance. Across the lake from Long Island, to the right as you go up the lake, is a bay that goes away in around a woody point. At the head of this bay, "Grindstone Brook" enters. It is a smallish stream, and comes dashing down over shelving rocks some thirty feet, and shoots out into the bay among broken rocks, and loose boulders. The waters of this stream are much colder than those of the lake. Let the sportsman row carefully up towards the mouth of this stream, along towards evening of a hot day, when the shadow of the hill reaches far out over the lake, and cast his fly across the little current, and if he does not take as beautiful a string of river trout as can be found in these parts, let him set it down to the score of accident, for the trout are there in the warm days of August. If he has a curiosity to know what there is above these Little Falls, let him try his angle-worms in the brook just over the ridge, and he will find out. I claim to have discovered these choice fishing places some seasons since, and have kept them for my own private use and amusement. Nobody seemed to know of them. When the trout refused to be taken elsewhere, I have always found them here, abundant, greedy, and ready to be taken by any decently skillful effort. I regard these places as in some sort my private property, and I mention them privately and in confidence to the reader, trusting that my right will be respected.

We finished our evening meal while the sun was yet above the western hills, and sat with our pipes around a smudge, made upon the broad flat rock, which recedes with a gentle acclivity from the shore, where the Bog River enters the lake, looking out over the stirless waters. It was a beautiful view, so calm, so still and placid, and yet so wild. The islands seemed to stand out clear from the water, to be lifted up, as it were, from the lake, so perfectly moveless and polished was its surface. On a grassy point to the right, and a hundred rods distant, two deer were quietly feeding, while in a little bay on the left, a brood of young ducks were sporting and skimming along the water in playful gyrations around their staid and watchful mother. On the outstretched arm of a dead tree on the island before us, sat a bald eagle, pluming himself; and high above the lake the osprey soared, turning his piercing eye downward, watching for his prey.

"I've been thinking," said Smith, as he refilled his pipe, "of what the Doctor was saying the other evening about every body having a streak of the vagabond in him, which makes him relish an occasional tramp in the old woods among the natural things; things that have not been marred by the barbarisms, so to speak, of civilization. I'm inclined to believe his theory to be true, but I see a difficulty in its practical working. Now, suppose, Doctor, that you and I being out here together vagabondizing, as you term it, and your streak of the vagabond being twice as large as mine, you would of course desire to play the savage twice as long as I should. There would, in that case, be a marring of the harmonies. I should be anxious to get back to civilization, while you, being rather in your normal element, would insist upon 'laying around loose,' as you say, for Mercy knows how long."

"Gentlemen," said the Doctor in reply, "only hear this fellow! He's getting homesick already. He has no wife, not a child in the world, no business, nothing to call him home save a superannuated pointer, and an old Tom cat, and yet he would leave these glorious old woods, these beautiful lakes, these rivers, these trout and deer, and all the glad music of the wild things, to-morrow, and go back to the dust, the poisoned atmosphere, the eternal jostling and monotonous noises of the city! Truly a vagabond and a savage is Smith. He's afraid that his family, his mangy old pointer and dropsical cat, will suffer in his absence."

"I scorn to answer such an accusation," retorted Smith, "I shall treat it with dignified contempt, as I do the Doc medicines, which I never take but always pay for, just to keep him from starving, and to make him imagine he cures me. But speaking of cats reminds me of a certain matter which occurred not many years ago. The Doctor here, if his testimony could be relied upon, knows that I used to be troubled with indigestion, and was sometimes a little nervous"——

"A little nervous!" interrupted the Doctor, "why he would be as crazy with the hypo as a March hare. He would insist that he was going to die, or to the almshouse. He has made two or three dozen wills, to my certain knowledge, under the firm conviction that he would be in the ground in a week. A little nervous, indeed!"

"Well," said Smith, "we won't quarrel about the degree of my nervousness. But in regard to what I was going to say about cats. Some years ago I occupied a suite of rooms in the second story of a house rented by a widow lady, to whom I had been under some obligations in my boyhood, and whom my mother always regarded as her best friend." (Smith supported the excellent old lady in comfort for a decade, under pretence of boarding with her, ministering to the last years of her life with the care and affection of a son.) "The landlord of the premises was the owner of a block of twelve houses—six on Pearl street, and six on Broadway, the lots meeting midway between the two streets. On the rear of these lots are the out-houses, all under a continuous flat roof, some twelve feet high, twenty wide, and say a hundred and fifty feet long. In the rear of the Broadway dwelling-houses, are one story tea-rooms, or third parlors, the roofs of which form a continuous platform, upon which you can step from the second story of the houses."

"Well," said the Doctor, "what of all that?"

"There's a great deal of it," Smith replied. "I don't pretend to know how many cats there were in the city of Albany. Indeed, I never heard that they were included in the census. I do not undertake to say that they all congregated nightly on the roofs of those out-houses. But if there was a cat in the sixth ward, that didn't have something to say on that roof every night, I should like to make its acquaintance. I am against cats. I regard them as treacherous, ungrateful animals, and as having very small moral developments generally. I am against cat-terwauling, especially in the night season, when honest people have a right to their natural sleep. I don't like to be woke up, when rounding a pleasant dream, by their growling and screaming, spitting and whining, groaning and crying, and the hundred other nameless noises by which they frighten sleep from our pillows.

"Well, one night, it may have been one o'clock, or two, or three, I was awakened by the awfullest screaming and sputtering, growling and swearing, that ever startled a weary man from his slumbers. I leaped out of bed under the impression that at least twenty little children had fallen into as many tubs of boiling water. I threw open the window and stepped out upon the roof of the tea-room. I don't intend to exaggerate, but I honestly believe that there were less than three hundred cats over against me, on the roofs of the out-houses; each one of which had a tail bigger than a Bologna sausage, his back crooked up like an oxbow, and his great round eyes gleaming fiercely in the moonlight, putting in his very best in the way of catterwauling. Two of the largest, one black as night and the other a dark grey or brindle, appeared to be particularly in earnest, and the way they scolded, and screamed, and swore at each other was a sin to hear. I won't undertake to report all they said; a decent regard for the proprieties of language, compels me to give only a sketch of the debate.

"'You infernal, big-tailed, hump-backed, ugly-mugged thief,' screamed the grey, 'I'd like to know what you are out here for this time of night, skulking, and creeping, and nosing about in the dark, poaching upon other people's preserves?'

"'Very well I mighty well!' was the reply, 'for you, to talk, you black-skinned, ogre-eyed, growling and sputtering robber, to come upon this roof, sticking up your back and taking airs on yourself. I'd like to know what business you've got to be prowling about and crowding yourself into honest people's company?'

"'I'm a regular Tom Cat, I'd have you know, and go where I please, and I'll stand none of your big talk and insolent looks.' "'Insolent! Hear the cowardly thief! Insolent! Very well, Mr. Tom Cat! very good, indeed! Now, just take your black skin off of this roof, or you'll get what will make you look cross-eyed foe a month.'

"'Get off this roof, I think you said. Look at this set of ivory, and these claws, old greyback! If you want I should leave this roof, just come and put me off. Try it on, old Beeswax. Yes, yes! try it on once, and we'll see whose eyes will look straightest in the morning! Come on, old Humpback! Try it on, old Sausage Tail!'

"And then they pitched in, and such scratching and growling, scolding and swearing, and biting, and rolling over and over, I never happened to see or hear before. About that time I dropped a boulder of coal, taken from the scuttle, weighing about half a pound, right among them (accidently of course). Whether it hit any one I can't positively affirm, but I heard a dull heavy sound, a kind of chug, as if it had struck against something soft, and the scream of one of the belligerents was brought to a sudden stop, by a sort of hysterical jerk, as though there had been a sudden lack of wind to carry it on. It put an end to the disturbance, and all the rioters, save one, scampered away. That one remained, all doubled up in a heap like, as if it had the sick headache, or been attacked with a sudden inflammation of the bowels. If any body's cat was found the next morning with a swelled head, or a great bunch on its side, and seemed dumpish, it's my private opinion that that's the one that lump of coal fell upon. Still it did'nt do much good in the way of relieving me from the annoyance of these cat conventions. They continued to congregate nightly on that long shed in the rear of my rooms. I wasted more wood upon them than I could well afford to spare. I used up all the brickbats I could lay my hands on. I threw away something less than a ton of coal; and on two occasions came near being taken to the watch-house for smashing a window in the opposite block. All this proved of no avail. Indeed, my tormentors began at last to get used to it, to regard it as part of the performance.

"The matter was getting serious. It became evident that either those cats or myself must leave the premises. I had paid my rent in advance, and was therefore entitled to quiet use and enjoyment, according to the terms of my lease. I made up my mind to try one more experiment. So I bought me a double-barrelled gun, and a quantity of powder and shot, and gave fair warning that I intended to use them.

"Well, the moon came up one night, with her great round face, and went walking up the sky with a queenly tread, throwing her light, like a mantle of brightness, over all the earth. I love the calm of a moonlight night, in the pleasant spring time, and the cats of our part of the town seemed to love it too, for they came from every quarter; from the sheds around the National Garden, from the stables, the streets, the basements, and the kitchens, creeping stealthily along the tops of the fences, and along the sheds, and clambering up the boards that leaned up against the outbuildings, and set themselves down, scores or less of them, in their old trysting place, right opposite my chamber windows. To all this I had in the abstract no objection. If a cat chooses to take a quiet walk by moonlight, if he chooses to go out for his pleasure or his profit, it is no particular business of mine, and I haven't a word to say. Cats have rights, and I have no disposition to interfere with them. If they choose to hold a convention to discuss the affairs of rat-and-mousedom, they can do it for all me. But they must go about it decently and in order. They must talk matters over calmly; there must be no rioting, no fighting. They must refrain from the use of profane language—they must not swear. There's law against all this, and I had warned them long before that I would stand no such nonsense. I told them frankly that I'd let drive among them some night with a double-barrelled gun, loaded with powder and duck-shot—and I meant it. But those cats did'nt believe a word I said. They did'nt believe I had any powder and shot. They did'nt believe I had any gun, or knew how to use it, if I had; and one great Maltese, with eyes like tea-plates, and a tail like a Bologna sausage, grinned and sputtered, and spit, in derision and defiance of my threats. 'Very well!' said I. 'Very well, Mr. TOM CAT! very well, indeed! On your head be it, Mr. TOM CAT! Try it on, Mr. TOM CAT, and we'll see who'll get the worst of it.'

"Well, as I said, the moon came up one night, with her great round face, and all the little stars hid themselves, as if ashamed of their twinkle in the splendor of her superior brightness. I retired when the rumble of the carriages in the streets, and the tramp on the stone sidewalks had ceased, and the scream of the eleven o'clock train had died away into silence, with a quiet conscience, and in the confidence that I should find that repose to which one who has wronged no man during the day, is justly entitled.

"It may have been midnight, or one o'clock, or two, when I was awakened from a pleasant slumber, by a babel of unearthly sounds in the rear of my chamber. I knew what those sounds meant, for they had cost me fuel enough to have lasted a month. I raised the window, and there, as of old, right opposite me, on the north end of that long shed, was an assemblage of all the cats in that part of the town. I won't be precise as to numbers, but it is my honest belief that there was less than three hundred of them; and if one among them all was silent, I did not succeed in discovering which it was. There was that same old Maltese, with his saucer eyes and sausage tail; and over against him sat a monstrous brindle; and off at the right was an old spotted ratter; and on his left was one black as a wolf's mouth, all but his eyes, which glared with a sulphurous and lurid brightness; and dotted all around, over a space some thirty feet square, were dozens more, of all sizes and colors, and such growling and spitting, and shrieking, and swearing, never before broke, with hideous discord, the silence of midnight.

"I loaded my double-barrelled gun by candle-light I put plenty of powder and a handful of shot into each barrel. I adjusted the caps carefully, and stepped out of the window, upon the narrow roof upon which it opens. I was then just eighty feet from that cat convention. I addressed myself to the chairman (the old Maltese) in a distinct and audible voice and said, 'SCAT!' He did'nt recognise my right to the floor, but went right on with the business of the meeting. 'SCAT!' cried I, more emphatically than before, but was answered only by an extra shriek from the chairman, and a fiercer scream from the whole assembly. 'SCAT! once,' cried I again, as I brought my gun to a present. 'SCAT! twice,' and I aimed straight at the chairman, covering half a dozen others in the range. 'SCAT! three times,' and I let drive. Bang! went the right-hand barrel; and bang! went the left-hand barrel. Such scampering, such leaping off the shed, such running away over the eaves of the outbuildings, over the tops of the wood-sheds, were never seen before. The echoes of the firing had scarcely died away, when that whole assemblage was broken up and dispersed.

"'Thomas,' said I, the next morning to the boy who did chores for us, 'there seems to be a cat asleep out on that woodshed, go up and scare it away.'

"Thomas clambered upon the shed and went up to where that cat lay, and lifting it up by the tail, hallood back to me, 'This cat can't be waked up; it can't be scared away—its dead!' After examining it for a moment—'Somebody's been a shootin' on it, by thunder,' as he tossed it down into the yard.

"You don't say so!" said I. "That cat was the old Maltese—the chairman of that convention. I don't know where he boarded, or who claimed title to him. What I do know is, that it cost me a quarter to have him buried, or thrown into the river; and that I was suffered to sleep in peace from the time I made the discovery that powder and lead are great quellers of midnight rioting. They gave me quiet at least, and saved me from the wickedness of the nightly use of certain expletives, under the excitement of the occasion, which are not to be found in any of the religious works of the day."



CHAPTER XII.

THE FIRST CHAIN OP PONDS—SHOOTING BY TURNS—SHEEP WASHING—A PLUNGE AND A DIVE—A ROLAND FOR AN OLIVER.

We started early the next morning up Bog River, intending to reach the "first chain of ponds," some twenty miles deeper in the wilderness, as the stream runs, on the banks of which our pioneer had been instructed to pitch our tents. This day's journey, it was understood, would be a hard one, as there were eight carrying places, varying from ten rods to half a mile in length. The Bog River is a deep, sluggish stream for five or six miles above the falls, just at the lake. It goes creeping along, among, and around immense boulders, thrown loose, as it were, in mid channel. At this distance, the stream divides, the right hand channel leading to the two chains of ponds and Mud Lake, where it takes its rise; and the left to Round Pond, and little Tupper's Lake, and a dozen other nameless sheets of water, laying higher up among the mountains. Our course lay up the right hand channel, which, for half a mile above the forks, comes roaring and tumbling through a mountain gorge, plunging over falls, and whirling and surging among the boulders, in a descent of three of four hundred feet in all. Around these, and seven other rapids of greater or less extent, our boats had to be carried.

We reached the lower chain of ponds within an hour of sunset, and found our tents pitched at a pleasant spot which looked out over the easternmost one of these beautiful little lakelets. There are three of them, connected together by narrow passages or straits, the banks of which, as the boat glides along, the oars will touch. They are surrounded by low but pleasant hills, so arranged as to form a varied but delightful scenery. From the western one, the hills rise from the water with a steep acclivity, covered with a gigantic growth of timber, save on the northern side, where a pleasant natural meadow, covered with rank grass and a few spruce and fir trees, stretches away. It contains about two hundred acres, and its waters are deep and pure. The middle one, though smaller, is equally beautiful, skirted on three sides with wood-covered hills, and on the other by a continuation of the same natural meadow. The eastern one, on the western banks of which our tents were located on a beautiful little bay, is the prettiest of them all. It contains perhaps six hundred acres, and the scenery around it is exceedingly cheerful and pleasant. The northern shore is bound by a natural meadow of luxuriant wild grass, between which and the water is a hard sandy beach, at low water some thirty feet wide, and extending between a quarter and half a mile in length.

As we approached these ponds, the river became broad and shallow. Natural meadows, covered with tall grass and weeds, stretching away on either hand. When we came to this portion of the river, the oars were shipped, and our boat-men took their seats in the stern with their paddles. Smith was in the bow of one boat, and Spalding in that of the other, each with rifle in hand, preparatory to the slaughter of a deer, to provide us with venison. It was arranged that the marksman who fired and failed to secure his game, should change places with the one behind him, and that thus the rotation should go on, till we should bring down a deer. We knew that we should see numbers of them feeding along the margin of the stream, and upon the natural meadows that skirted the shore. The stream was winding and tortuous, and at no time could we see more than five-and-twenty rods in advance of us, so crooked is its course.

We were moving up the stream cautiously and silently; the boatman who had charge of the craft in which were Smith and myself, seated in the stern, paddling, and Smith himself seated in the bow, with rifle in hand, ready for anything that might turn up. As the boat rounded a point, a deer started out from among the reeds on the right, and went dashing and snorting across the river directly in front of the boat, and five or six rods ahead, the water being only about two feet in depth. Smith blazed away at him; where the ball went, Mercy knows; but the deer dashed forward with accelerated speed, and a louder whistle, and went crashing up the hill-side. Smith acknowledged to a severe attack of the Buck fever. It was now my turn to take the next shot; and changing places with Smith, we went ahead. In ten minutes a chance to try my skill occurred. But it was a long shot, the game was "on the wing," and I had no better success than did my friend. The deer only increased the length of his bounds, and he too went plunging through the old woods, snorting in astonishment, and huge affright at what he had seen and heard.

Our boat now fell back, and Spalding and the Doctor took the lead. In a short time, a deer was discovered feeding just ahead of us on the lily pads along the shore. The boatman paddled silently up to within eight or ten rods of him. Spalding sighted him long and, as he averred, carefully with his rifle. The deer fed and fed on, and we waited anxiously to hear the crack of the rifle, and see the deer go down; but still the boat glided on unnoticed by the animal that was feeding in unsuspecting security. At length he raised his head, threw forward his long ears, gazed for a second intently at his enemies, and then appreciating his danger, snorted like a warhorse and plunged in a seeming desperation of terror towards the shore. He had ran a few rods when Spalding let drive at him, as he confessed, at random. The ball went wide of the mark, and the game dashed, with more desperate energy, and whistling and snorting like a locomotive, into the brush that lined the banks. It was Spalding's third shot in all his life at a deer, and he insisted, gravely enough, that he did not fire while the game was standing broadside to him, on account of his desire to give the animal a chance for his life. The truth is, that Spalding had a bad, a very bad attack of the aforesaid Buck fever.

The Doctor, by rotation, now became the leading marksman. He was cool and calm, as if going to perform some delicate surgical operation. We soon came in sight of a buck feeding in a shallow pasture, and the boat glided quietly within fifteen rods of it. The Doctor's hand was firm, and his aim steady. There was about him none of that nervous agitation which is so apt to disturb the first efforts at deer slaying. The boat came to a pause a moment, when his rule rang out quick and sharp, waking the echoes of the mountains around and reverberating along the shore. At the crack of the rifle, the buck leaped high into the air, and plunged madly towards the bank, up which he dashed with a prodigious bound, made a single jump among the tall grass, and disappeared from the sight. The Doctor was greatly mortified, supposing he had missed. He declared solemnly that he had taken steady and sure aim just back of the fore-shoulders of the deer, had a perfect sight upon it, and that it did not fall in its tracks, could only be owing to its bearing a charmed life. The boatman, however, knew that the animal, from its actions, was mortally wounded. He said nothing, but paddled quietly to the shore, and there, just over the bank, in the tall grass and weeds, lay the noble buck, stone dead. He had gone down and died without a struggle. A proud man was the Doctor, as he passed his hunting-knife across the throat of the deer, and gazed upon its broad antlers, now in the velvet, pointing to the course of the ball right through its vitals, in on one side and out on the other. We had venison for the next four-and-twenty hours, and we disturbed the deer no more that afternoon.

The deep baying of the stag-hounds, as we entered the little lake, apprised us of the location of our tents, and we were glad to reach them, and stretch our limbs upon the bed of boughs beneath them, for the day had been warm, and our journey a weary one. Our pioneer had made the entire journey the day before, though he had to pass over all the carrying-places three times. We found that he had killed two deer, and had the meat from them, cut into thin slips, undergoing the process of "jerking," in a bark smokehouse erected near the tents. He had also a beautiful string of trout ready for our supper, taken in a way peculiarly his own. He had used neither bait nor fly.

After supper, as we sat looking out over the lake in front of our tents, the Doctor inquired of our pioneer how he had taken his fish, as he had with him neither rod nor flies, and there was no bait to be found in the woods proper for trout.

"Why," said he, "I got lonesome yesterday, all alone up here in the woods, waiting for you, and I thought I'd take a look around the shore of the lake, thinking I might find a gold mine, or a pocketful of diamonds, or something of that sort; so I took my rifle and the two dogs, and started on an explorin' voyage. I didn't find any gold, but I found, just across there by those willows and alders, a cold stream entered the lake, and right in the mouth of it the trout were lyin' as thick as your fingers. They were fine little fellows as I ever happened to see, weighing about a quarter of a pound each. I had a hook or two, and a piece of twine in my pocket, but they were of no sort of use in common fishin', for I had no kind of bait, and couldn't get any. After thinking the matter over, I concluded I'd see if I couldn't bag some of them in a quiet way. So I cut me a long pole, tied the hook and line to the end of it, and reaching out over the water, dropped quietly down among them. I let the line drift gently up against the one I wanted. He didn't seem to mind it, but was rather pleased as the line tickled his sides. After letting it lay there a moment, I jerked suddenly, and up came the trout clean over my head on to the flat rock behind me. However this might have astonished him, it didn't seem to disturb the rest. In that way I caught all I wanted, and could have caught a bushel. It isn't a very science way of fishin', but it answers when a man is hungry, and hasn't got any bait or fly."

"I scarcely know why," said the Doctor, "but Cullen's account of catching his trout, reminds me of a circumstance which occurred when I was a boy, and which for the moment made a deal of sport. I have not probably thought of it in twenty years, but it comes to me now as fresh as though it were the occurrence of yesterday. It must be, as Hank Wood said the other day, that a thing which gets fairly anchored in a man's mind, remains there always, and covered up as it may be by other and later things, it can never be forgotten. It will come drifting back on the current of memory, fresh and palpable as ever.

"Everybody understands, or ought to understand, how sheep are washed. A small yard is built on the bank of a stream adjacent to a deep place. One side of which is open to the water, and into which the flock is crowded. The washers take their places in the water, where it is three or four feet deep, and the sheep are caught by others, and tossed to them, where they undergo ablution (an operation by the way, that they do not seem altogether to enjoy), to wash the dirt and gum from their fleeces. On such occasions, it is regarded as a lawful thing, a standing and ancient practical joke, to pitch any outsider, who may happen to indulge his curiosity by stopping to look on, into the stream. If he is verdant, he will be very likely to be inveigled into the yard, and in an unguarded moment, be made to take an involuntary dive, head foremost into the water.

"A few rods above the place in which my father washed his sheep, was an old dam, the apron of which remained, and beneath which was a basin some five or six feet in depth, and thirty or forty feet in diameter, filled of course with water. On one occasion, a man who was employed to catch the sheep, was one of those shiftless, good-natured, lazy fellows, to be found in almost every neighborhood, who prefer smoking and telling stories in bar-rooms to regular work, and who greatly prefer odd jobs to consecutive labor. Tom G——was one of this genus, full of fun and mischief, but without a particle of real malice in his composition. As he was busy throwing sheep to the washers, a young fellow from the neighboring village happened that way, and becoming somewhat interested in the process, was seduced by Tom G——, inside of the yard, to try his hand at catching and tossing in sheep. About the second or third one he operated upon, his treacherous friend stumbled against him, giving him a tremendous push, and with a sheep in his arms he drove head foremost among the washers. The water was cold, and there was a good deal of puffing and blowing about the time his head came above the surface. He was a sensible chap, and took the joke as a wise man should, especially when the odds are all against him, albeit, it was somewhat rude.

"He came out on the other side of the stream, and after joining in the laugh against himself, and taking off and wringing his garments, he wandered up to the apron of the old dam, and stretching himself along the planks, went to looking anxiously down into the deep water. After a while, he seemed to have discovered something, and called out to his friend below, 'I say Tom, have you got a fishhook in your pocket? Here is a trout that will weigh two pounds, and I want to hook him up.' Now Tom was a fisherman, and a big trout was his weakness; moreover, he was never without half a dozen hooks and lines in his pockets. He left his business at once, and went up to the apron to assist in taking the two-pound trout. A pole was cut, and a couple of feet of line, with a hook attached, was fastened a little way from the top, and the haft of the hook stuck into the end so that by a little force it might be removed, and Tom and his friend got upon the apron, and stooped over to see where the great trout lay.

"'Here he is, Tom, just under the edge of this rock.' Tom stretched himself over to get a view of the fish, when a vigorous shove from the rear sent him like a great frog plump towards the bottom of the pool. This was a consummation that Tom had not bargained for, but there was no alternative but to swim for the shore, dripping like a rat from a flooded sewer. That joke had two points to it, and Tom G——had the worst of them."

"Your anecdote," said Smith, "reminds me of one in which I was an actor, and which was impressed upon my mind by a process which few boys are fond of, but which is very apt to make the impression durable. I fished for trout once without line or hook. I got a fine string of them, and myself into a pretty kettle of fish in the bargain. On my father's farm, as it was when I was a boy, was a stream that came down through a gorge in the mountains that bounded the pleasant valley in which that farm lay. In the spring freshets and the summer rains, that stream was a mighty and resistless torrent, that came roaring and plunging down from the plain above, cascading and leaping down ledges and rushing though a gorge, on either side of which precipices of solid rock stood straight up two hundred feet in height. It was a goodly sight to see that stream when its back was up, come rushing and foaming, a mighty flood from the deep and shadowy gulf, rolling in its resistless course great boulders of tons upon tons in weight, and eddying, and twisting, and roaring onward in its furious course towards the lake. In the summer time the drouth lapped up its waters, and it dried away to a little brook, trickling over the falls, and went winding, a small streamlet, around the base of the hill; sometimes it disappeared in the gravel, or among the loose stones, save here and there a pool of narrow limits and shallow depth. It was a fine trout stream at times. Its waters were cold and pure, and the brook trout loved to hide away under the great smooth stones or shelving rocks, and be comfortable in the shade, when the summer sun was hot and fiery in the sky. When the creek was low, they would congregate in the pools and still places, and in times of extreme drouth, might be seen huddled together in such places in great numbers.

"My father, though not a member of any church, was strict in his family discipline in regard to the observance of the Sabbath, the breach of which, on the part of his children, was very apt to be followed by consequences not the most pleasant in the world, for he held that a good switch was an essential article of household furniture, and its occasional use a cardinal principle in the philosophy of family rule. One Sunday, when I was some ten or eleven years old, when the old people were gone to meeting (and they had to go eight miles to find a meeting house), I, with an older brother, tired of lying around the house, concluded to take a stroll along up the brook. It was a time of severe drouth, and the stream was dried up, save here and there a small pool, clear and cold, the bottom of which consisted of smooth and clean-washed stones and pebbles. In one of these was a number of beautiful speckled trout, averaging maybe a quarter of a pound each in weight. Here was a temptation too strong to be resisted. We had no hooks or lines with us, and would not have ventured to use them on Sunday, if we had. That would have been fishing. But the taking of those trout with our hands was quite another matter. So, rolling our pants up above our knees (there was no use of talking about shoes and stockings; such luxuries were not within the range of indulgence to boys of our age in those days, save in the frosts and snows of winter, and stubbed toes, stone bruises, and thorns in the feet, come floating along down from the long past, like shadows of darkness on the current of memory. By the way, will some rich man, who was reared in the country in the good old times when boys went barefooted in the summer months, when chapped feet, stone bruises, stubbed toes, and thorns that pierced and festered in their soles were the great ills that 'darkened deepest around human destiny,' solve for me a problem of the human mind? Will he tell me whether, in his after life, when he was the owner of broad acres, fine houses, piles of stocks in paying corporations, and huge deposits in solvent banks, he ever felt richer or prouder when counting his gains, and contemplating the aggregate of his wealth, than he did when he pulled on his first pair of boots?) So, as I said, we rolled up our pants, and waded in for the trout. We caught a beautiful string of twenty or more, took them home, dressed them nicely, and sat them carefully away in the cool cellar. We had a notion that the greatness of the prize would wipe away the offence by which it was secured, and that the delicious breakfast they would afford, would be received as a sufficient atonement for the sin of having taken them on a Sunday. But we were never more mistaken in our lives. My father went into the cellar for some purpose in the evening, after his return from meeting, and discovered the trout. An inquiry was instituted, our dereliction was exposed, and we were promised a flogging. Now that was a promise, which, while it was rarely made, was never broken. When my father in his calm, quiet way, made up his mind and so expressed it, that he owed one of his boys a flogging, it became, as it were, a debt of honor, what, in modern parlance, would be termed a confidential debt, and he to whom it was acknowledged to be due, became a prefered creditor, and was sure to be paid.