154 HILLS AND LAKES. 



improve much, if lie don't look into the reason of 

 things that he sees around him. Anybody out here 

 in the woods, when he builds his shantee, would cover 

 it with bark so as to shed rain, if he saw a black 

 cloud in the south-west, and saw the lightnin' playin' 

 around its edges ; but it takes a 'cute observer to look 

 into a cloudless sky, and say it will rain afore morn- 

 ing, or it will be a wet day to-morrow, and have his 

 sayin' come out true. 



" You, now, though you may be a smart lawyer at 

 home, don't know that we shall want a shelter afore 

 mornin', and won't leave it until noon to-morrow, un- 

 less we agree to be out in the rain but I know it, 

 and if you wan't to know how I know it, I'll tell you. 

 Just listen to the tree-frog, how merrily he pipes all 

 along the shore, up among the branches of the scrub- 

 by trees that grow out of the rocks ; well, he says, 

 1 it'll rain.' Listen again to the loon hear, with what 

 a loud, clear voice he speaks, and how it quavers and 

 sinks away into silence ; you havn't heard that voice 

 since we left Indian Lake. That loon says, 'it will 

 rain.' Hark again, and you'll hear not a rustling among 

 the leaves and branches of the trees, but a kind of 

 deep far-off moaning ; not the creaking of one tall tree 



