AUTUMN 11 



the Bethlehem road, a carriage stopped 

 across the field ; a man jumped out, gun in 

 hand, ran up to an unoccupied house stand- 

 ing there by itself, with a tract of low mea- 

 dow behind it, peeped cautiously round the 

 corner, lifted his gun, leveled it upon some- 

 thing with the quickness of a practiced 

 marksman, and fired. Then down the grassy 

 slope he went on the run out of sight, and 

 in a minute reappeared, holding a crow by 

 its claw. He took the trophy into the car- 

 riage with him, — two ladies and a second 

 man occupying the other seats, — and as I 

 emerged from the pine wood, fifteen minutes 

 afterward, I found it lying in the middle of 

 the road. Its shining feathers would fly no 

 more ; but its death had brightened the day 

 of some of the lords and ladies of creation. 

 What happier fate could a crow ask for ? 



One of my first desires, this time (there 

 is always something in particular on my 

 mind when I go to Franconia), was to re- 

 visit Lonesome Lake, a romantic sheet of 

 water lying deep in the wilderness on the 

 back side of Mount Cannon, at an elevation 

 of perhaps twenty-eight hundred feet, or 



