6 A SUMMER BOATING TRIP 



so disturbed that I was compelled to eject him from the 

 cover, albeit he had the best right there. But he crowed 

 his defiance with drooping tail from the yard in front. 

 I, too, had mentally crowed over the good fortune of 

 the shower; but before I closed my eyes that night my 

 crest was a good deal fallen, and I could have wished 

 the friendly elements had not squared their accounts 

 quite so readily and uproariously. 



The one shower did not exhaust the supply a bit; 

 Nature's hand was full of trumps yet, yea, and 

 her sleeve, too. I stopped at a trout brook, which came 

 down out of the mountains on the right, and took a 

 few trout for my supper; but its current was too roily 

 from the shower for fly-fishing. Another farmhouse 

 attracted me, but there was no one at home; so I picked 

 a quart of strawberries in the meadow in front, not 

 minding the wet grass, and about six o'clock, thinking 

 another storm that had been threatening on my right 

 had miscarried, I pushed off, and went floating down 

 into the deepening gloom of the river valley. The 

 mountains, densely wooded from base to summit, shut 

 in the view on every hand. They cut in from the right 

 and from the left, one ahead of the other, matching 

 like the teeth of an enormous trap ; the river was caught 

 and bent, but not long detained, by them. Presently I 

 saw the rain creeping slowly over them in my rear, for 

 the wind had changed ; but I apprehended nothing but 

 a moderate sundown drizzle, such as we often get from 

 the tail end of a shower, and drew up in the eddy of a 

 big rock under an overhanging tree till it should have 

 passed. But it did not pass; it thickened and deepened, 

 and reached a steady pour by the time I had calcu- 

 lated the sun would be gilding the mountain-tops. I 



