14 SILVER FIELDS 



"brought up in the woods to be scared by owls." 

 But the panther may be here, for there are pan- 

 thers in Vermont yet, or at least there was one, 

 two or three years ago, when on a Thanksgiving 

 Day two little Green Mountain boys, partridge- 

 hunting in Barnard, came upon a monster crouch- 

 ing in a thicket of black growth, and a doughty 

 grown-up Green Mountain boy killed him at short 

 range with a well-delivered charge of BB shot. 

 When I was a boy there was always a panther 

 prowling about this mountain in huckleberry- 

 time, guarding the berries for the two or three 

 old berry-pickers who used to tell us of hearing 

 his fearful cries. He performed his duty well, as 

 far as concerned us youngsters. When the berry 

 season was over he departed and was heard no 

 more till next summer. 



A sheer wall of rock bars our further way up the 

 mountain in this direction. An ice cascade, silent 

 as all its surroundings, not the trickle of the small- 

 est rill of snow water to be heard in its core, veils 

 a portion of the black steep with dull silver, bur- 

 nished here and there with a moon-glint. 



Let us sound a retreat and set our faces toward 

 the gray steeps of Split Rock Mount and the piled- 

 up blue and white Adirondacks, and get back on 

 the silver fields, brighter than ever now. As we 

 march abreast of our northward slanting shadows, 

 with the moon now well up above the world, we 



