BIRCH BROWSINGS 177 
rested a while, and partaken sparingly of the bread 
and whiskey, which in such an emergency is a great 
improvement on bread and water, I agreed to their 
proposition that we should make another attempt. 
As if to reassure us, a robin sounded his cheery call 
near by, and the winter wren, the first I had heard 
in these woods, set his music-box going, which 
fairly ran over with fine, gushing, lyrical sounds. 
There can be no doubt but this bird is one of our 
finest songsters. If it would only thrive and sing 
well when caged, like the canary, how far it would 
surpass that bird! It has all the vivacity and ver- 
satility of the canary, without any of its shrillness, 
Its song is indeed a little cascade of melody. 
We again retraced our steps, rolling the stone, as 
it were, back up the mountain, determined to com- 
mit ourselves to the line of marked trees, These 
we finally reached, and, after exploring the country 
to the right, saw that bearing to the left was still 
the order. The trail led up over a gentie rise of 
ground, and in less than twenty minutes we were 
in the woods I had passed through when I found 
the lake. The error I had made was then plain; 
we had come off the mountain a few paces too far 
to the right, and so had passed down on the wrong 
side of the ridge, into what we afterwards learned 
was the valley of Alder Creek. 
‘We now made good time, and before many minutes 
I again saw the mimic sky glance through the trees. 
As we approached the lake a solitary woodchuck, 
the first wild animal we had seen since entering the 
