PEPACTON 



meditations were 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 droop- 

 ing tail from the yard in front. I, too, had men- 

 tally 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 deep- 

 ening 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 appre- 

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