welve) ago, a black cloud came looming up in the
northwest, and started on its career towards the southeast. As it
swept along, it sent its fierce winds crashing, and howling, and
roaring, through the old forests, uprooting, hurling to the ground,
and scattering everything that encountered its fury. Houses, barns,
haystacks, fences, trees, everything were prostrated, and to this day
its track is visible in the swath it mowed through the old woods, from
sixty to a hundred rods wide, plain and distinct still, for miles and
miles. It was not of that tornado, however, that I propose to speak.
Others had preceded it, and in the country all about Angelica were
what were called 'windfalls.' These windfalls were neither more nor
less than the old tracks of these whirlwinds and tornadoes, that had
swept down the forest trees. Fire had finished what the whirlwind
begun. In time, blackberry-bushes had grown up among the charred
trunks of the old pines, and other trees, bearing an immensity of
fruit; and it was a pleasant resort for young people, one of those
windfalls, when the blackberries were ripe and luscious. These
windfalls were great places, too, for rabbits, partridges, and 'such
small deer,' and it was no great thing to boast of, to kill a dozen or
two of the birds of an afternoon.

"I went out with a friend one day to one of these windfalls, partly
after blackberries, and partly for partridges. We were both boys,
younger than fifteen, then, and each possessing, probably, quite as
much discretion as valor. We had separated a short distance from each
other, he to gather berries, and I, with a small fowling-piece, in
pursuit of game. Presently I saw my friend crashing through the brush
towards me, and also towards the fields, without his basket, and bare
headed, his hair standing straight up, putting in his very best jumps,
as if a thousand tigers were at his heels. Without heeding for a
moment my anxious inquiries as to what was the matter, he kept right
on, leaping the logs like a deer, looking neither to the right hand
nor the left, but with his coat tail sticking out on a dead level
behind, making a straight wake for home. Fear is said to be
contagious, and I believe in the doctrine that it is so. I caught it
bad; and without knowing what I was afraid of, I started, and if any
fourteen year old boy can make better time than I did on that
occasion, I should like to see him run. I kept possession of my
fowling-piece, and