122 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 



without answering 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 

 opinions upon any subject at all polemic, but he would 

 tell you what he had seen and known. What he had 

 seen and known about spooks was briefly this : In 

 company with a neighbor he was passing the night 

 with an old recluse who lived somewhere in these 

 woods. Their host was an Englishman, who had the 

 reputation of having murdered his wife some years 

 before in another part of the country, and, deserted 

 by his grown-up children, was eking out his days in 

 poverty amid these solitudes. The three men were 

 sleeping upon the floor, with Uncle Nathan next to a 

 rude partition that divided the cabin into two rooms. 

 At his head there was a door that opened into this 

 other apartment. Late at night, Uncle Nathan said, 

 he awoke and turned over, and his mind was occupied 



