. Many of the trout were full of ripe spawn, and a few
had spawned, the season with them being a little later than on the
stream we had left, perhaps because the water was less cold. Neither
had the creek here any such eventful and startling career. It led,
indeed, quite a humdrum sort of life under the roots and fallen
treetops and among the loose stones. At rare intervals it beamed
upon us from some still reach or dark cover, and won from us our
best attention in return.

The day was quite spent before we had pitched our air-woven tent
and prepared our dinner, and we gathered boughs for our bed in the
gloaming. Breakfast had to be caught in the morning and was not
served early, so that it was nine o'clock before we were in motion.
A little bird, the red-eyed vireo, warbled most cheerily in the
trees above our camp, and, as Aaron said, "gave us a good send-off."
We kept down the stream, following the inevitable bark road.

My companion had refused to look at another "dividing ridge" that
had neither path nor way, and henceforth I must keep to the open
road or travel alone. Two hours' tramp brought us to an old clearing
with some rude, tumble-down log buildings that many years before had
been occupied by the bark and lumber men. The prospect for trout was
so good in the stream hereabouts, and the scene so peaceful and
inviting, shone upon by the dreamy August sun, that we concluded to
tarry here until the next day. It was a page of pioneer history
opened to quite unexpectedly. A dim footpath led us a few yards to a
superb spring, in which a trout from the near creek had taken up his
abode. We took possession of what had been a shingle-shop, attracted
by its huge fireplace. We floored it with balsam boughs, hung its
walls with our "traps," and sent the smoke curling again from its
disused chimney.

The most musical and startling sound we heard in the woods greeted
our ears that evening about sundown as we sat on a log in front of
our quarters,--the sound of slow, measured pounding in the valley
below us. We did not know how near we were to human habitations, and
the report of the lumberman's mallet, like the hammering of a great
woodpecker, was music to the ear and news to the mind. The air was
still and dense, and the silence such as alone broods over these
little openings in the primitive woods. My soldier started as if he
had heard a signal-gun. The sound, coming so far through the forest,
sweeping over those grea