THE RAVEN’S NEST 83 
Revolution. When he lay a-dying, three quarters 
of a century later, the wailing howl of a wolf-pack 
sounded outside his cabin, although wolves had been 
gone from the Valley for fifty years. Old Dan sat 
up with the death-sweat on his forehead and 
grinned. “They’ve come to see me off,” he whis- 
pered and fell back dead. 
They bred hunters in that Valley. Peter Penz, the 
Indian fighter, who celebrated his ninetieth birthday 
by killing a red bear, came from there. So did Jacob 
Quiggle, who killed a maned panther one winter 
night, under the light of a wind-swept moon, with his 
famous gun, Black Sam. Over on Panther’s Run not 
ten miles away, lived Solomon Miller, who shot the 
last wood-bison, and died at the age of eighty-eight, 
clapping his hands and shouting the chorus ofa 
hunting-song. 
As the light began to show in the eastern sky, 
came the first bird-notes of the day. The caw of a 
crow, a snatch of song-sparrow melody, the chirp of 
a robin, the fluted alto note of a blue-bird, and the 
squeal of a red-tailed hawk sounded before the sun 
came up. 
A change of trains, and I met the Collector, as 
enthusiastic as ever. Already that year he had found 
six ravens’ nests with eggs in them, but the one he 
had promised to show me was the best of the lot. 
It was located in Poe’s Gap, where local tradition 
hath it that the poet wooed, not unsuccessfully, a 
mountain girl, and wrote “The Raven” in her cabin. 
On the way to the Gap we heard and saw nineteen 
