is brightness lay
like a mantle of glory upon the water, while his heat gave to the deep
shadows of the old trees, whose long arms with their clustering
foliage were interlocked above us, a peculiar charm. The description
which we gave of the beautiful lake we had left the day before, the
story of the moose and the bear we had killed, together with our
quit-claim of the shanty we had, inhabited, brought our friends to the
conclusion to drift that way for a week or so.

It was amusing to hear Smith relate the manner of capturing the bear,
the glory of which achievement he had won by the tossing up of a
dollar; how he had started out alone in one of the boats with his
rifle to look into a little bay half a mile below the shanty, where be
left the rest of us sleeping after dinner; and how, as he was floating
along under the shadow of the hills, at the base of a wall of rocks
some forty feet high, rising straight up from the water, he heard
something walking just over the precipice; and how he picked up his
rifle that lay in the bottom of the boat, to be ready for any
emergency; and then how astonished he was to see a great black bear
walk out into view along the edge of the rocks above, and how
carefully he sighted him; and how, at the crack of his rifle, the
animal came tumbling down the cliff, and how quick he reloaded and
gave trim a settler in the shape of a second bullet; and how he
tugged, and strained, and lifted to get him into the boat, and how
astonished we all were when he returned with his prize to camp. While
relating this wonderful achievement, he winked at the Doctor, as much
as to say, "fair play; remember our compact; stand by me now." And the
Doctor did stand by him, boldly endorsing, with a gravity that was
refreshing, every invention of Smith's prolific imagination, on the
subject of his slaughtering the bear.

We left our new friends in the afternoon; they to start in the morning
for our old camping-ground on the lake above, and we down the stream
on our retreat from the wilderness. We came back to our tents, after
securing a string of trout from the mouth of the little stream across
the bay. Our evening meal was over, and we sat around our campfire
just as the sun was hiding himself behind the western highlands, when,
from a little hollow in the forest behind us, and but a short way off,
we heard the call of a raccoon. Martin started over the ridge with the
dogs, and in five minutes he hallooed to u