THE AROOSTOOK SABLE. 41 

without giving it a bite. Running his head in at the entrance 
of the dead fall prepared for him, he reaches far back and 
seizes the bait always wishing to run away with it before 
eating. But finding it securely tied with a strip of the inner 
bark of cedar to the end of the spindle, he braces his stout 
little legs under him, takes a fresh grip of the meat, and pulls 
this time to get it, when down comes the fall piece across 
his neck or shoulders, which is loaded with sufficient logs 
to hold him, and his breath lasts him but a moment. Here 
the hunter finds him when next visiting his traps, as scarcely 
ever does any animal eat the sable. We have sometimes felt 
a little ‘‘sorry on it,” (as the Indian says) for the killing of 
some animals, particularly a female deer, but have never 
wasted much sympathy upon the sable, knowing him to be 
most pitilessly cruel himself, to prove which, we will tell 
you something of him from observation. 
A companion and myself were going over our traps one 
drizzly morning in winter, after a changeable day and night 
of raining and freezing, giving us on this morning a good 
crust upon the deep snow for snow-shoeing. We remember 
it was the first for the season, and although the heavy mist 
was yet falling and dripping from the trees, we felt that we 
must get out in the roads and try the crust, for a slight rain 
or snow storm hardly ever kept us in camp in those days. 
Only pitiless old Boreas, with his sharp bitings, could drive 
us from the ridges. We had just passed over a small rise of 
land and were walking by the edge of a swamp, when my 
friend, who seldom forgets his meerschaum, but sometimes 
forgets he carries a gun, sings out: ‘‘Oh! Oh! look at him, 
look at him!” A rabbit, which here in Aroostook are so 
large that they might almost be called hare, came bounding 
