surable sensations than were ever awakened by the household
organ or the town brass band of later years.

In the early spring, during the alternate slush, mud and freeze of the
first thaws, there always occurred a short vacation from school and
work, in which we gathered a harvest of fun, fur and feathers.

At this season, the low, flat valleys of the Little Sioux and the
Ocheyedan rivers were covered six or eight feet deep by the annual
overflow; and torrents of yellow snow-water, the melting of tremendous
drifts, rushed down creeks and ravines.

As soon as these impetuous currents had gathered force enough to upheave
the thick layers of ice in the river-beds and break over the banks out
came beaver, musk-rat and mink, driven from house and hole to take
refuge upon the masses of ice and drift stuff which lodged in the
thickets of tall willows that grew along the beds of these streams. Here
they were obliged to stay until the water subsided, and here they often
fell a prey to the rifle or shotgun of the hunter.

We owned three boats in common; and as the men of the settlement were
not particularly busy during the freshet season, we could easily
persuade or hire them to load our skiffs on their wagons, and haul us
eight or ten miles up the Sioux or Ocheyedan, for half a day's run down
home, in which scarcely the stroke of an oar was necessary, after
getting out into the main channel. Floating leisurely down, we were able
to hunt musk-rat, geese and ducks, which were plentiful on the water or
on the banks.

Beaver were scarce, but we occasionally got one. A mink or two, a couple
of dozen muskrats, and a goodly bag of feathered game were often the
result of a half-day's run with a single boat.

Mortimer Halleck, who at this time lived in the fork of the rivers, and
at a considerable distance from the rest of as, owned a staunch skiff,
which he had himself made, and in it went often alone upon the rivers.
It was upon one of these solitary trips that he met with the adventure
mentioned.

On a raw afternoon in March, his father had taken Mortimer and his boat
on his double horse wagon six miles up stream. At this point there was a
great bend in the river, and, by crossing the neck, the water distance
to the fork was lengthened to fifteen miles. Mortimer was thus set
afloat with his boat, with a long afternoon's run on the river before
him.

For several hours the young hunter allowed his boat to drift down with
the c