50 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 
ereeks and spring runs, kept it rearing and pitching 
in the most frightful manner. The steers went at a 
spanking pace; indeed, it was a regular bovine gale ; 
but their driver clung to their side amid the brush 
and bowlders with desperate tenacity, and seemed +o 
manage them by signs and nudges, for he hardly ut- 
tered his orders aloud. But we got through without 
any serious mishap, passing Mosquito Creek and Mos- 
quito Pond, and flanking Mosquito Mountain, but see- 
ing no mosquitoes, and brought up at dusk at a lum- 
berman’s old hay-barn, standing in the midst of a 
lenely clearing on the shores of Moxie Lake. 
Here we passed the night, and were lucky in hav- 
ing a good roof over our heads, for it rained heavily. 
After we were rolled in our blankets and variously 
disposed upon the haymow, Uncle Nathan lulled us to 
sleep by a long and characteristic yarn. 
I had asked him, half jocosely, if lid: believed in 
“spooks”; but he took my question seriously, and 
without sdlawelditi it directly, proceeded to tell us 
what he himself had known and witnessed. It was, 
by the way, extremely difficult either to surprise or to 
steal upon any of Uncle Nathan’s private opinions 
and beliefs about matters and things. He was as shy 
of all debatable subjects as a fox is of a trap. He 
usually talked in a circle, just as he hunted moose and 
caribou, so as not to approach his point too rudely 
and suddenly. He would keep on the lee side of his 
interlocutor in spite of all one could do. He was 
thoroughly good and reliable, but the wild creatures 
of the woods, in pursuit of which he had spent so 
much of his life, had taught him a curious gentleness 
and indirection, and to keep himself in the back. 
ground; he was careful that you should not scent his 
a es 
An ae mm nits 9 RT —  N  e ions 
