nd again, until all was hushed. I thought how
often the Indian hunter had concealed himself behind these very
trees--how often his arrow had pierced the deer by this very stream, and
his wild halloo had here rung for his victory. And then, turning from
fancy to reality, I watched a couple of white owls, that sat in their
hooded state, with ruffled pantalettes and long ear-tabs, debating in
silent conclave the affairs of their frozen realm, and was wondering if
they, "for all their feathers, were a-cold," when suddenly a sound
arose--it seemed to me to come from beneath the ice; it sounded low and
tremulous at first, until it ended in one wild yell. I was appalled.
Never before had such a noise met my ears. I thought it more than
mortal--so fierce, and amidst such an unbroken solitude, it seemed as
though a fiend had blown a blast from an infernal trumpet. Presently I
heard the twigs on shore snap, as though from the tread of some brute
animal, and the blood rushed back to my forehead with a bound that made
my skin burn, and I felt relieved that I had to contend with things
earthly, and not of spiritual nature--my energies returned, and I looked
around me for some means of escape. The moon shone through the opening
at the mouth of the creek by which I had entered the forest, and
considering this the best channel of escape, I darted towards it like an
arrow. 'Twas scarcely a hundred yards distant, and the swallow could
hardly excel my desperate flight; yet, as I turned my head to the shore,
I could see two dark objects dashing through the underbrush at a pace
nearly double in speed to my own. By this rapidity, and the short yells
which they occasionally gave, I knew at once that these were the much
dreaded gray wolf.

I had never met with these animals, but from the description given of
them I had very little pleasure in making their acquaintance. Their
untameable fierceness, and the untiring strength which seems part of
their nature, render them objects of dread to every benighted traveller.

"With their long gallop, which can tire
The deer-hound's haste, the hunter's fire,"

they pursue their prey--never straying from the track of their
victim--and as the wearied hunter thinks he has at last outstripped
them, he finds that they but waited for the evening to seize their prey,
and falls a prize to the tireless pursuers.

The bushes that skirted the shore flew past with the velocity of
lightning as I dashed on