the old woods, lighted up like noon, every tree distinct, every
mountain, every rock, and valley, as perfect and plain to be seen as
if the sun was standin' right above us in the sky. Crop was as much
astonished as I was, and he crept to my feet and trembled like a
coward, as he crouched beside them. I looked up, and flyin' across the
heavens was a great ball of fire, lookin' for all the world as if the
sun had broke loose, and was runnin' away in a fright. A long trail of
light flashed and streamed along the sky where it passed. It was out
of sight in a moment, and the fiery tail it left behind faded into
darkness. A little while after, maybe ten minutes after it
disappeared, that boomin' sound came driftin' down the wind, and I
somehow tho't it was mixed up in some way with that great ball of fire
that flew across the sky. Maybe I was wrong, but I've always tho't it
was the bustin' into pieces of that fiery thing that lighted up the
old woods that night, that broke the forest stillness, like a far off
cannon. I never heard it so loud at any other time, and when I hear it
now, I always say to myself, there goes another of Nater's fireballs
into shivers. I've hearn it in the daytime, when the air was still,
and the forest voices were hushed, but I never at any other time, day
or night, saw what I suspicioned occasioned it. The Ingins used to say
it came from the mountains, but it don't. I've hearn some folks
pretend that it comes from the bowels of the airth, but it don't; its
a thing of the air, and I've a notion it travels a mighty long way
from its startin' place afore it reaches us.

"Talkin' about that trip among the Adirondacks, puts me in mind of an
adventer I had with a bull moose, on one occasion among them. There
are times when sich an animal is dangerous. I've hearn tell of
elephants gittin' crazy and breakin' loose from their keepers, or
killin' them, and makin' a general smash of whatever comes in their
way. I believe its so sometimes with a bull moose; and when the fit
is on the animal forgets its timid nater, and is bold and fierce as a
tiger. I've seen two sich in my day; one of 'em sent me into a tree,
and the other put me around a great hemlock a dozen or twenty times, a
good deal faster than I like to travel in a general way, and if I
hadn't hamstrung him with my huntin' knife, maybe he'd have been
chasin' me round that tree yet. Wal, as I was sayin' I was out among
the Adirondacks one fall, airly i