orest, his gun on his shoulder. The sun had just dipped below the
western hills and trees, and he was approaching a small lake at which
the deer came to drink.

It was a dense forest through which he was pressing his way. In places
it was so dense he was compelled to part the underbrush with his hands.
Centuries of summer suns had warmed the tops of the same noble oaks and
pines, sending their heat even to the roots. Though the early frosts of
October had stricken many a leaf from its parent stem, enough still
remained to obscure the vision at a rod's distance.

Night was approaching, and John Louder, brave as he was to natural
danger, had a strange dread of shadows and the unreal.

He pressed his way through the wood, until a spot almost clear of timber
was in sight. This little area, which afforded a good view of the sky,
although it was pretty well filled with dead trees, lay between two of
those high hills or low mountains into which the whole surface of the
adjacent country was broken.

Dashing aside the bushes and brambles of the swamp, the forester burst
into the area with an exclamation of delight.

"One can breathe here! There is the lake to which the deer come to
drink. Now, if Satan send not a witch to lead my bullets astray,
perchance I may have a venison ere an hour has passed."

He gathered some dry sticks of wood and, with his flint and steel,
quickly kindled a fire.

His fire was to keep off the mosquitoes, which were tormenting in that
locality. The fire did not alarm the deer, for they had seen the woods
burn so often that they would go quite close to a blaze.

Hardly had he lighted his fire, when he was startled by the tramp of
feet near, and a moment later a horseman rode out of the woods and drew
rein before him.

Louder was surprised, but by no means alarmed. A man in the forest was
by no means uncommon, yet he felt a little curious to know why he was
there. He reasoned that probably the fellow had lost his way, and had
been attracted by his camp fire; but the stranger's question dispelled
that delusion.

"Are you John Louder?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You live at Salem?"

"I do."

"Are you a Protestant?"

"I am."

"You do not believe in the transubstantiation of the body and blood of
Christ into the bread and wine of the Sacrament?"

John Louder, who was a true Puritan and a hater of the Papists, quickly
responded:

"I do not hold to any such theology."

"Nor do you believe i