WOODLAND CHORUSES. 261 



my skate along the mark he had left with his dragging tail until 

 the trail would enter the woods. Sometimes these excursions 

 were made by moonlight, and it was on one of these occasions that 

 I had a rencontre, which even now in a warm climate, and with 

 kind faces and bright fires around me, I cannot recall without a 

 nervous looking-over-my-shoulder feeling. 



"I had left my friend's house one evening just before dusk, 

 with the intention of skating a short distance up the Kennebec, 

 which glided directly before the door. The night was beautifully 

 clear. A peerless moon rode through an occasional fleecy cloud, 

 and stars twinkled from the sky and from every frost-covered tree 

 in millions, and the great zone of the milky way and the lucid 

 planets were all copied in the mirror-like ice, till your foot seemed 

 treading the jewelled vault of heaven. Your mind would wonder 

 at the light that came glinting from ice, and snow-wreath, and 

 incrusted branches, as the eye followed for miles the broad gleam 

 of the Kennebec, that like a satin ribbon wound between the dark 

 forests that bound it. And yet all was still. The cold seemed to 

 have frozen tree and air, and water, and every living thing that 

 moved. Even the ringing of my skates on the ice echoed back 

 from Moccasin Hill with a startling clearness, and the crackle 

 of the ice as I passed over it in my course, seemed to follow the 

 tide of the river with lightning speed. 



" I had gone up the river nearly two miles, when, coming to a 

 little stream which empties into the larger, I turned in to explore 

 its course. Fir and hemlock of a century's growth met overhead, 

 and formed an archway radiant with frost-work. All was dark 

 within, but I was young and fearless, and as I peered into an 

 unbroken forest that mirrored itself on the borders of the stream, 

 I laughed with joyousness, my wild hurrah rang through the silent 

 woods, and I stood listening to the echo that reverberated again 

 and again, until all was hushed. I thought how often the Indian 

 hunter had concealed himself behind these very trees, how often 

 his arrow had pierced the deer by this very stream, and his wild 

 halloo had here rung for his victory. And then, turning from 

 fancy to reality, I watched a couple of white owls, that sat in their 

 hooded state, with ruffled pantalettes and long ear-tabs, debating in 



