A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 13 



sume he had angled there for forty years without hav- 

 ing his privacy thus intruded upon. I surprised hawks 

 and herons and kingfishers. I came suddenly upon 

 muskrats, and raced with them down the rifts, they 

 having no time to take to their holes. At one point, 

 as I rounded an elbow in the stream, a black eagle 

 sprang from the top of a dead tree, and flapped hur- 

 riedly away. A kingbird gave chase, and disappeared 

 for some moments in the gulf between the great wings 

 of the eagle, and I imagined him seated upon his 

 back delivering his puny blows upon the royal bird. 

 I interrupted two or three minks fishing and hunting 

 alongshore. They would dart under the bank when 

 they saw me, then presently thrust out their sharp, 

 weasel-like noses, to see if the danger was imminent 

 At one point, in a little cove behind the willows, 

 I surprised some schoolgirls, with skirts amazingly 

 abbreviated, wading and playing in the water. And 

 as much surprised as any, I am sure, was that hard- 

 worked looking housewife, when I came up from under 

 the bank in front of her house, and with pail in hand 

 appeared at her door and asked for milk, taking the 

 precaution to intimate that I had no objection to the 

 yellow scum that is supposed to rise on a fresh article 

 of that kind. 



" What kind of milk do you want ? " 



"The best you have. Give me two quarts of it," 

 I replied. 



" What do you want to do with it ? " with an anxious 

 tone, as if I might want to blow up something or burn 

 her barns with it. 



"Oh, drink it," I answered, as if I frequently put 

 milk to that use. 



