ng the rough bark with his great claws,
sending down a clattering shower of chips and dust behind him, till he
reached the level of the ledge above and sprang out upon it; where he
stopped and looked down to see what I would do next. And there he
stayed, his great head hanging over the edge of the rock, looking at me
intently till I rose and went quietly down the trail.

It was morning when I came back to the salmon pool. Unlike the mossy
forest floor, the hard rock bore no signs to tell me--what I was most
curious to know--whether he came down the tree or found some other way
over the mountain. At the point where I had stood when his deep
_Hoowuff!_ first startled me I left a big salmon, for a taste of which
any bear will go far out of his way. Next morning it was gone; and so it
may be that Mooween, on his next journey, found another and a pleasanter
surprise awaiting him at the turn of the trail.

[Illustration]

Quoskh the Keen Eyed

[Illustration]

Sometimes, at night, as you drift along the shore in your canoe, sifting
the night sounds and smells of the wilderness, when all harsher cries
are hushed and the silence grows tense and musical, like a great
stretched chord over which the wind is thrumming low suggestive
melodies, a sudden rush and flapping in the grasses beside you breaks
noisily into the gamut of half-heard primary tones and rising, vanishing
harmonics. Then, as you listen, and before the silence has again
stretched the chords of her Eolian harp tight enough for the wind's
fingers, another sound, a cry, comes floating down from the
air--_Quoskh? quoskh-quoskh?_ a wild, questioning call, as if the
startled night were asking who you are. It is only a blue heron, wakened
out of his sleep on the shore by your noisy approach, that you thought
was still as the night itself. He circles over your head for a moment,
seeing you perfectly, though you catch never a shadow of his broad
wings; then he vanishes into the vast, dark silence, crying _Quoskh?
quoskh?_ as he goes. And the cry, with its strange, wild interrogation
vanishing away into the outer darkness, has given him his most
fascinating Indian name, Quoskh the Night's Question.

To many, indeed, even to some Indians, he has no other name and no
definite presence. He rarely utters the cry by day--his voice then is a
harsh croak--and you never see him as he utters it out of the solemn
upper darkness; so that there is often a mystery about thi