66 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
spring-hole remains unfrozen. I dipped up a pitcher- 
ful of the soft, spicy cedar-water pulsing from the 
very heart of the marsh. The Pinies have a saying 
that he who drinks cedar-water will always come 
back to the barrens, no matter how far afield he may 
wander. 
As I came to the porch-steps, in the dark stream 
just below me I saw a strange thing. Underneath the 
water a ball of fire flashed down the stream and dis- 
appeared around the bend. For a long time I tried to 
puzzle out what it could be. There was no form of 
aquatic phosphorescent life that would swim through 
a northern stream in the depths of winter. It was 
only when I started to tell the time by the sky clock 
that the mystery was solved. I was looking at the 
star Caph in Cassiopeia, which is the hour-hand of 
the clock, when suddenly a meteor flashed down the 
sky, and I realized that my submarine of a few mo- 
ments before had been only the reflection of another 
shooting star. 
As I stopped on the porch with my pitcher, the 
open door made a long lane of light. Just across the 
creek, not fifty feet away, sounded a crash in the 
brush, and there in the spotlight, held by the glare, 
stood a big buck. For a moment I looked right 
into his beautiful, liquid, gleaming eyes. Then, with 
a snort, he plunged into the woods and was gone. 
For years I had tramped through the barrens and 
had found the tracks of the deer that still live not 
thirty miles from the third largest city in America, 
but until that night I had never seen one. 
