CHESUNCOOK. 
105 
spires of a Venice in the forest. In two places stood a 
small stack of hay on the bank, ready for the lumberer’s 
use in the winter, looking strange enough there. We 
thought of the day when this might be a brook winding 
through smooth-shaven meadows on some gentleman’s 
grounds; and seen by moonlight then, excepting the 
forest that now hems it in, how little changed it would 
appear! 
Again and again Joe called the moose, placing the 
canoe close by some favorable point of meadow for them 
to come out on, but listened in vain to hear one come 
rushing through the woods, and concluded that they had 
been hunted too much thereabouts. We saw, many 
times, what to our imaginations looked like a gigantic 
moose, with his horns peering from out the forest-edge; 
but we saw the forest only, and not its inhabitants, that 
night. So at last we turned about. There was now a 
little fog on the water, though it was a fine, clear night 
above. There were very few sounds to break the still¬ 
ness of the forest. Several times we heard the hooting 
of a great horned-owl, as at home, and told Joe that he 
would call out the moose for him, for he made a sound 
considerably like the horn, — but Joe answered, that the 
moose had heard that sound a thousand times, and knew 
better; and oftener still we were startled by the plunge 
of a musquash. Once, when Joe had called again, and 
we were listening for moose, we heard, come faintly 
echoing, or creeping from far, through the moss-clad 
aisles, a dull, dry, rushing sound, with a solid core to it, 
yet as if half smothered under the grasp of the luxuri¬ 
ant and fungus-like forest, like the shutting of a door in 
some distant entry of the damp and shaggy wilderness. 
If we had not been there, no mortal had heard it. 
5 * 
