52 RIVERBY 



attention as a boy. We could look along his balsam- 

 covered back to his rump, from which the eye glanced 

 away down into the forests of the Neversink, and on 

 the other hand plump down into the gulf where his 

 head was grazing or drinking. During the day there 

 was a grand procession of thunder- clouds filing along 

 over the northern Catskills, and letting down veils 

 of rain and enveloping them. From such an eleva- 

 tion one has the same view of the clouds that he does 

 from the prairie or the ocean. They do not seem to 

 rest across and to be upborne by the hills, but they 

 emerge out of the dim west, thin and vague, and 

 grow and stand up as they get nearer and roll by 

 him, on a level but invisible highway, huge chariots 

 of wind and storm. 



In the afternoon a thick cloud threatened us, but 

 it proved to be the condensation of vapor that an- 

 nounces a cold wave. There was soon a marked fall 

 in the temperature, and as night drew near it became 

 pretty certain that we were going to have a cold time 

 of it. The wind rose, the vapor above us thickened 

 and came nearer, until it began to drive across the 

 summit in slender wraiths, which curled over the 

 brink and shut out the view. We became very dili- 

 gent in getting in our night wood, and in gathering 

 more boughs to calk up the openings in the hut. 

 The wood we scraped together was a sorry lot, roots 

 and stumps and branches of decayed spruce, such as 

 we could collect without an axe, and some rags and 

 tags of birch bark. The fire was built in one corner 

 of the shanty, the smoke finding easy egress through 



