8o BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 



not a wrinkle, denoting years, in his brow or 

 cheeks, and yet you suspected he was old. It 

 might have been the rather hard glitter of his 

 calm, gray eyes, or the half stolid way in which 

 he kept closed his immense hirsute lips, which 

 suggested something of senility coupled with 

 unusual strength. His bodily movements, too, 

 though full of elasticity of a certain sort, 

 lacked the ready suppleness of youth, suggest 

 ing instead the half-automatic, perfunctory 

 agility of long experience. You occasionally 

 see such old men by the sea or in the moun 

 tains. They are men whom age cannot con 

 quer the men of perfect health. But his boat 

 was not so impervious to time and exposure, it 

 seemed. A kind of dry rot had attacked it, 

 apparently years ago. This, however, seemed 

 to have added to its buoyancy, for it danced 

 upon the water like a bubble or a feather. I 

 could not help, as I glanced from man to boat, 

 imagining a sort of rapport between them, and 

 presently the odd fancy that, like the centaur 

 and the horse, they were really one, took hold 

 on my mind so forcibly that I could not re 

 strain a low laugh as we began to glide down 

 the stream, so ludicrously did the blending of 

 the guide s gray, old clothes with the sides and 

 bottom of the gray, old boat, in color and text 

 ure, enforce the whimsical thought. 



It may as well be stated here that the stream 

 upon which we were now afloat ran past the 

 guide s cabin over on the other side of the 

 ridge. But to do so it had to make a complete 

 double round a great point, after dashing 

 through a deep, hidden valley, down stony 

 precipices and between the close-drawn walls 

 of a resounding gorge. 



