144 Tue Aroostook Woops. 

wearing our horns this day appearing before us. Zo attack 
us perhaps (at which thought we may have shivered a little 
in our moccasins, but it was only the cold). Or if he had 
not the courage for that, was expecting him likely to be com- 
ing toward us sometime during the day, for the red wonder 
must surely catch his eye while he was passing along, and 
we crouching behind a bush with the red caps bobbing up 
and down toward him. Or he, standing in some cover out of 
our sight, though pretty sure to see us as we are passing, and 
then trot out toward us a piece. And we remember of see- 
ing him, not as yet, when after a long tramp for that same 
half day, noontime came. So we sought out a sheltered 
place from the wind beside a thicker clump of scrubby spruce 
and sat down upon the sunny side of them, opened out our 
lunch and removed the corks from the two half pints, con- 
taining our cold coffee, for the sparkling brook water flows 
not lively through the barrens in winter. And sitting here in 
the sun, the northwesterly wind, though breezy over the tops 
above, almost skip us entirely, while we hugely enjoy our 
lunch. After dinner usually comes the fragrant smoke, but 
just a few whiffs to-day, for this is not proper when still 
hunting; not a good decoy to bring the caribou toward you. 
But this time we indulge just a little under the circumstances, 
as we are sitting within four or five rods of a large pond to 
the south of us, high up and over which we think the smoke 
is all wafted. And looking through the trees we can see a 
large portion of the pond, with many bare spots here and 
there, and rows of oval mounds of snow of all widths and 
lengths (just depending upon the fickleness of old boreas,) 
with wide, long stretches reaching far away (when he was 
true to the point and not of a changeable mind,) of the hard 
