NATURE AND THE PSALMIST 285 



Quacom-paug "The Lake of the Great White Gull" 

 and their trails lead away from its shores into the 

 surrounding swamps, overgrown now with blackberry 

 vines or eroded deep into the sandy soil. Once I 

 tramped in through the woods to this pond as the 

 afternoon was failing and launched a canoe on its 

 dark, still mirror. The sunset reddened till it glowed 

 like a far-off conflagration between the pine boles on 

 the western bank. The shadows of twilight stole out 

 of the forest behind me. Creeping along shore, it 

 seemed that night was already come, but by shooting 

 the canoe out free of the lily pads and the reflections 

 of the forest edge, the lake surface appeared to give up 

 daylight still. Presently the canoe slipped around a 

 wooded promontory noiselessly, without even a drip 

 from the paddle and there, knee-deep in the dark- 

 brown water, stood two deer, their tails startlingly 

 white against the black wall of the forest. They were 

 drinking, but one of them looked up, surprised, and 

 gazed at me with his great eyes, as deer will often do 

 before they make a move. He let me slide the canoe 

 still closer before he turned, and, with evidently a 

 whispered word to his companion, crashed up the 

 bank and disappeared, the doe following obediently. 

 A flash of white tail in the night blackness of the 

 forest was the last thing I saw, but for a full minute I 

 could hear, in diminuendo, the cracking of undergrowth 

 and twigs. 



