132 I GO A- FISHING. 



sounds the wind, the short yelp of a dreaming hound in 

 some camp, the rush of a hungry trout seeking his food 

 in the night-time, and constantly that laugh of the loon, 

 varied now and then by his long, mournful cry. 



Late as it was when I slept, I awoke with daybreak, 

 and paddling one of the canoe-like boats around to the 

 bay where I had taken the trout the evening before, threw 

 my fly and took a couple of splendid specimens of the 

 Follansbee inhabitants. I wanted no more, and took no 

 more, but again lay in the bottom of the boat and watched 

 the changes of the moving sky. 



While I was thus lying, waiting for whatever sounds of 

 the forest and sky I might hear, two large herons came 

 wheeling downward around me, and lit on the drift-wood 

 at the edge of the tamarack swamp through which the 

 Weller brook comes down to the lake. Stalking along 

 from log to log, or plunging their long legs in the oozy 

 swamp, they paid no attention to my presence, but occu- 

 pied themselves with their own fishing arrangements, as 

 if the wilderness were their own. 



A plunge in the swamp startled them, and they raised 

 their long necks and looked into the recesses which my 

 eye could not penetrate. Another plunge, and they qui- 

 etly resumed their fishing, while I looked the more ea- 

 gerly; for if the birds were undisturbed by such a noise, 

 I knew that the maker of it must be one of the forest in- 

 habitants from whom they had nothing to fear. Nor was 

 I wrong, for in a minute or so I saw a bush snake, and 

 another, and another, then a buck made his appearance, 

 quietly sauntering along, as fearless of harm as the her- 

 ons. I was as motionless as breathing would allow ; he 

 did not see me till he was at the edge of the lake. Then 

 indeed he caught sight of me, and pausing like a statue 



