WOODLAND CHOEUSES. 359 



seem now half as natural as when the wolves were howl- 

 ing an accompaniment, but it is true, nevertheless. 



THE WOLF CHASE. 



During the winter of 1834, being engaged in running 

 a line in the Aroostook country in the northern part of 

 Maine, I had much leisure to devote to wild sports. 

 To none of these was I more passionately addicted ihan 

 to skating. The deep and sequestered lakes of" this 

 State, frozen by the intense cold of the northern winter, 

 present a wide field to the lovers of this pastime. Often 

 would I bind on my skates, and glide away up the glit- 

 tering river, and wind each mazy streamlet that flowed 

 beneath its fetters on toward the parent ocean, forgetting 

 all the while, time and distance in the luxurious sense of 

 the gliding motion, thinking of nothing in the easy flight, 

 but rather dreaming as I looked through the transparent 

 ice at the long weeds and cresses that nodded in the cur- 

 rent beneath and seemed wrestling with the V\-aves to let 

 them go ; or I would follow on the track of some fox or 

 otter, and run my skate along the mark he had left with 

 his dragging 4:ail until thp^rail would enter the woods. 

 Sometimes these excursions were made by moonlight, 

 and it was oli one of these occasions that I had a rencon- 

 tre, which even now in a -svarm climate and with kind 

 faces and bright fires around me, I cannot recall without 

 a nervous looking-over-my-shoulder feeling. 



*' I had left my friend's house one evening just before 



