o the dusky depths,--an
integral part of the silence and the shadows. The spell of the moss
is over all. The fisherman's tread is noiseless, as he leaps from
stone to stone and from ledge to ledge along the bed of the stream.
How cool it is! He looks up the dark, silent defile, hears the
solitary voice of the water, sees the decayed trunks of fallen trees
bridging the stream, and all he has dreamed, when a boy, of the
haunts of beasts of prey--the crouching feline tribes, especially if
it be near nightfall and the gloom already deepening in the
woods--comes freshly to mind, and he presses on, wary and alert, and
speaking to his companions in low tones.

After an hour or so the trout became less abundant, and with nearly
a hundred of the black sprites in our baskets we turned back. Here
and there I saw the abandoned nests of the pigeons, sometimes half a
dozen in one tree. In a yellow birch which the floods had uprooted,
a number of nests were still in place, little shelves or platforms
of twigs loosely arranged, and affording little or no protection to
the eggs or the young birds against inclement weather.

Before we had reached our companions the rain set in again and
forced us to take shelter under a balsam. When it slackened we moved
on and soon came up with Aaron, who had caught his first trout, and,
considerably drenched, was making his way toward camp, which one of
the party had gone forward to build. After traveling less than a
mile, we saw a smoke struggling up through the dripping trees, and
in a few moments were all standing round a blazing fire. But the
rain now commenced again, and fairly poured down through the trees,
rendering the prospect of cooking and eating our supper there in the
woods, and of passing the night on the ground without tent or cover
of any kind, rather disheartening. We had been told of a bark
shanty a couple of miles farther down the creek, and thitherward we
speedily took up our line of march. When we were on the point of
discontinuing the search, thinking we had been misinformed or had
passed it by, we came in sight of a bark-peeling, in the midst of
which a small log house lifted its naked rafters toward the now
breaking sky. It had neither floor nor roof, and was less inviting
on first sight than the open woods. But a board partition was still
standing, out of which we built a rude porch on the east side of the
house, large enough for us all to sleep under if well packed, and
eat