to drive the whole sweep of the
forest-clad descent down to the water's edge.

Tim was enjoined to see to the provisions, and to provide as good a
dinner as his best gastronomic skill and the contents of our portable
larder might afford, and I was put under the charge of Tom, who seemed,
for about an hour, disposed to do nothing but to lie dozing with a cigar
in his mouth, stretched upon the broad of his back, on a bank facing the
early sunshine just without the door; while our hosts were collecting
bait, preparing fishing tackle, and cleaning or repairing their huge
clumsy muskets. At length, when the drivers had been gone already for
considerably more than an hour, he got up and shook himself.

"Now, then, boys," he exclaimed, "we'll be a movin. You Joe Teachman,
what are you lazin there about, cuss you? You go with Mr. Forester and
Garry in the big boat, and pull as fast as you can put your oars to
water, till you git opposite the white-stone pint--and there lie still
as fishes! You may fish, though, if you will, Forester," he added,
turning to me, "and I do reckon the big yellow pearch will bite the
darndest, this cold morning, arter the sun gits fairly up--but soon as
ever you hear the hounds holler, or one of them chaps shoot, then look
you out right stret away for business! Cale, here, and I'll take the
small boat, and keep in sight of you; and so we can kiver all this eend
of the pond like, if the deer tries to cross hereaways. How long is't,
Cale, since we had six on them all at once in the water--six--seven--
eight! well, I swon, it's ten years agone now! But come, we mus'nt stand
here talkin, else we'll get a dammin when they drives down a buck into
the pond, and none of us in there to tackle with him!"

So without more ado, we got into our boats, disposed our guns, with the
stocks towards us in the bows, laid in our stock of tinder, pipes, and
liquor, and rowed off merrily to our appointed stations.

Never, in the whole course of my life, has it been my fortune to look
upon more lovely scenery than I beheld that morning. The long narrow
winding lake, lying as pure as crystal beneath the liquid skies,
reflecting, with the correctness of the most perfect mirror, the abrupt
and broken hills, which sank down so precipitously into it--clad as they
were in foliage of every gorgeous dye, with which the autumn of America
loves to enhance the beauty of her forest pictures--that, could they
find their way into its