THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 



porcupines kept up such a grunting and chattering 

 near our heads, just on the other side of the log, that 

 sleep was difficult. In my wakeful mood I was a 

 good deal annoyed by a little rabbit that kept whip- 

 ping in at our dilapidated door and nibbling at our 

 bread and hardtack. He persisted even after the 

 gray of the morning appeared. Then about four 

 o'clock it began gently to rain. I think I heard the 

 first drop that fell. My companions were all in 

 sound sleep. The rain increased, and gradually the 

 sleepers awoke. It was like the tread of an advan- 

 cing enemy which every ear had been expecting. 

 The roof over us was of the poorest, and we had 

 no confidence in it. It was made of the thin bark of 

 spruce and balsam, and was full of hollows and de- 

 pressions. Presently these hollows got full of water, 

 when there was a simultaneous downpour of bigger 

 and lesser rills upon the sleepers beneath. Said 

 sleepers, as one man, sprang up, each taking his blan- 

 ket with him; but by the time some of the party had 

 got themselves stowed away under the adjacent rock, 

 the rain ceased. It was little more than the dis- 

 solving of the nightcap of fog which so often hangs 

 about these heights. With the first appearance of 

 the dawn I had heard the new thrush in the scattered 

 trees near the hut, a strain as fine as if blown upon 

 a fairy flute, a suppressed musical whisper from out 

 the tops of the dark spruces. Probably never did 

 there go up from the top of a great mountain a 

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