102 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



the silence and the shadows. The spell of the moss 

 is over all. The fisherman's tread is noiseless, as 

 he leaps from stone to stone and from ledge to ledge 

 along the bed of the stream. How cool it is ! He 

 looks up the dark, silent defile, hears the solitary 

 voice of the water, sees the decayed trunks of fallen 

 trees bridging the stream, and all he has dreamed, 

 when a boy, of the haunts of beasts of prey the 

 crouching feline tribes, especially if it be near night- 

 fall and the gloom already deepening in the woods 

 comes freshly to mind, and he presses on, wary 

 and alert, and speaking to his companions in low 

 tones. 



After an hour or so the trout became less abun- 

 dant, and with nearly a hundred of the black sprites 

 in our baskets we turned back. Here and there I 

 saw the abandoned nests of the pigeons, sometimes 

 half a dozen in one tree. In a yellow birch which 

 the floods had uprooted, a number of nests were still 

 in place, little shelves or platforms of twigs loosely 

 arranged, and affording little or no protection to the 

 eggs or the young birds against inclement weather. 



Before we had reached our companions the rain 

 set in again and forced us to take shelter under a 

 balsam. When it slackened we moved on and soon 

 came up with Aaron, who had caught his first trout, 

 and, considerably drenched, was making his way to- 

 ward camp, which one of the party had gone forward 

 to build. After traveling less than a mile, we saw 

 a smoke struggling up through the dripping trees, 

 and in a few moments were all standing round a 



