2 10 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Aug. ii, 1906. 
Uncle Shaw and Some Others.—III. 
Incidents of Life in a Vermont Village. 
(Coni nurd from page 169 ) 
As Uncle Shaw and a number of the neigh¬ 
bors were sitting on'the piazza of the store, they 
saw Harry and Will coming across the common 
toward them. 
“Wall, boys, so you’ve got back, have ye? 
Come right up here and set down and tell us 
all about your trip. You look as though ye had 
a pretty hard one. What, did ye get lost?’’ 
"I don’t know whether you would call it get¬ 
ting lost or not; we couldn't find our way out.” 
“Couldn’t find your way out; why, did you 
stay in one place all the time?” 
“Yes, we were at the dam camp every night. 
We couldn’t get away from it. You see, we 
couldn't find the path we went in on, and every 
time we tried to get out we came right back to 
the camp, and we got so mixed at last we didn’t 
know what to do.” 
“Tell us all about it,” said Uncle Shaw. “Be¬ 
gin at the beginning and tell what ye did do.” 
“I suppose I might as well tell the whole, once 
for all, and then you will all know,” said Harry, 
who saw that they would have no peace till 
the story was told. 
“We left Fred’s about daylight and got to 
Mr. Ireland’s about sunrise. We shouldered 
our packs, and he went to the edge of the woods 
and showed us the path, and we went in. We 
had to go up on the top of a big mountain and 
then down the other side. Our packs did not 
seem very heavy at first, but after a while I 
thought my shoulders would break, they ached 
so. We were pretty tired, and so was Fred, I 
guess, though he didn’t say so. We rested two 
or three times, and at last we came out into 
the head of a logging road. There was chop¬ 
ping all around and treetops in every direction. 
We followed this road down till we came into 
another larger one, and soon came to the camp. 
It was on a little hill with no trees around it, 
and the breeze came right down through the 
valley and kept it nice and cool. We had a 
good time fishing and finding many things to 
do around the camp, until Thursday came, when 
we decided to start for home the next morning. 
After we got through breakfast Friday morn¬ 
ing, we put the best of the grub into our 
pockets and threw the rest away. We packed 
the fish into our baskets with green grass, to 
cover them and keep them cool, and bidding 
good-bye to the old camp, went up over the hill. 
After we had gone up the road a mile or so 
Fred said we had come to the path. Will said 
he did not think it was; it did not look like 
the place to him; but Fred pointed out a big 
stub that we had noticed, so we left the road 
and took the path. It was very hot there in 
the woods and the flies and mosquitoes bothered 
us most to death. We had to stop lots of 
times to rest us, and when we did stop we 
could not rest any. 
“The path went around the side of a hill, and 
it did not seem to us like the same path we had 
come in on. We could not find the place where 
we had rested when we came in. But we kept 
on and at last went down a little hill and came 
to a stream. Fred was all upset when he saw 
the brook, because we had not crossed any when 
we came in, and how could we cross one now? 
The path stopped right here. The bank was all 
trod up there, and on the other side was a 
swamp where no path could be. 
"We asked Fred where he thought we were. 
He said it must be Mill Brook, and if we crossed 
it and went down on the other side we would 
come to the road we had passed over when we 
went to Mr. Ireland’s. 
“So we walked along the brook, but it was just 
awful. The trees were all dead, and lots of them 
were fallen down, and it would take us a long 
time sometime to go just a little ways. 
“After a while Will played out, and we all 
sat down and had something to eat. We drank 
out of the brook, but the water wasn’t good, and 
it made me awful sick. As soon as we got 
rested, we started again, for then it was almost 
night and we had got to get out of the woods 
somehow, for we had nothing to eat but fish, 
and no way to cook those. We kept on down 
the brook and at last came out where the trees 
were cut down and cleared away. There we 
could walk along nicely, and soon came to a 
place where some one had been digging, and 
walking along that, we came to a dam. 
“ ‘Why,’ said Fred, ‘I did not know there was 
a dam on Mill Brook. It must have been built 
lately.’ 
“While we were looking at it, Will walked 
down and picked up something. Then he turned 
around to Fred and said, ‘This is the same dam 
where we have been fishing. Here is the bob 
I cut off my line when we began to fish.’ 
“Well, sir, you ought to have seen Fred’s 
face. We looked at the bob, and sure enough 
it was. Then he said, ‘Well, if this is the dam, 
then the camp is right on top of that hill, and 
we are right back where we started from this 
morning.’ We went up then and there the camp 
was. 
“I don’t know whether the camp looked good 
to us or not; but the first thing we did after we 
got those packs off our backs was to look into 
the bushes for the grub we had thrown away 
in the morning. We found the pork and most 
of the potatoes, but the bread and other things 
we could not find; something had eaten them. 
“We fried some trout and potatoes, and ate 
our supper. It was not very good, but the nice 
water we had out of the spring made it go 
better. 
“It had been cloudy all the afternoon and 
awfully hot, and when it came dark the flies 
bit us so that we almost went crazy. Fred made 
us get up and shut the camp up tight as we 
could. 
“We had to fasten the door to with an old 
cant-dog, and we filled up all the other places 
with rags and things, except the window by the 
stove; that he left open. Then he took an old 
pan and built a smudge and set it in the middle 
of the room, and after that the flies didn’t 
trouble us much. 
“Along in the night Will woke up. He said 
somebody was trying to push in the door. The 
smudge had gone out and the flies, too. We 
listened a While, but heard nothing. Fred said 
it was a hedgehog and we must kill and cook 
him in the morning. So we waited, but did not 
hear it again. Our bunk was where we could 
see the stove and the window, and as I was 
looking out there, something filled the window 
all up. I pointed it out to Fred, but did not 
say a word for fear of scaring the hedgehog. 
Fred said to keep still and just as soon as it 
came in we would give it to him. In a minute 
it went away, and we heard a noise out on the 
chips and then something jumped against the 
door and nearly broke it in. 
“You better believe we jumped at the same 
time. ‘Thunder!’ whispered Fred, ‘that ain’t a 
hedgehog.’ And he jumped out of the bunk 
and rushed to the door. We went with him and 
pushed as hard as we could. Behind the stove 
was a pole that the men had put up to hang 
things to dry, and I got that and propped up 
the door from the other side of the camp. 
"In a minute or so the thing went away. We 
waited a while and then we started to go back 
to bed; but the flies were pretty thick; so Fred 
got the pan and went to the stove and built a 
fire in it of bark and chips. While he was wait¬ 
ing for it to blaze up, we heard a little noise 
at the window and all looked up. 
“ihere in the window was the head of a man. 
It was a big head with hair all tumbled down 
over the eyes. It had a big, red beard all matted 
and tangled up. The mouth was open, -and we 
could see that two front teeth were gone. But 
the worst of all was the eyes. Oh! they were 
awful. I can’t tell how they looked, but they 
made the cold shivers run down my back. 
‘Then for as much as a minute it looked right 
at Fred, and Fred looked right at him. Then, 
quick as a flash, Fred picked up the pan all full 
of blazing chips and threw them right at the 
head. 1 here was the most awful yell you ever 
heard, l'he head disappeared from the window 
and we heard a cracking and thrashing noise in 
the bushes and all was still. 
.“We didn’t sleep any more that night. In 
the morning when we got up it was rain¬ 
ing just a little, and was awful gloomy. x\ll 
along the hillside across the brook the clouds 
were drifting, and it looked as though we were 
going to have a big storm. When Will and 
Fred went for water, they found tracks all 
around the spring; they looked like a man’s 
feet all tied up in cloth. 
“After a little breakfast we decided to try 
again to get out. We went up the road we 
thought was the one. There were some old 
axes in camp; we took two of these, and Will 
took the sharp one. 
When we came to the path we thought was 
the right one, Fred had Will stay there and 
keep the place, so we could find it again, and 
he and I went in to find the path. We went a 
way, calling to Will all the time, so as not to 
lose him. Then Fred would go ahead and I 
would stand still. By and by, he came back 
and said there was no path there, and we went 
to another place and tried again. So we kept it 
up all day. And along in the afternoon we found 
a path that we thought was the one home. 
“Fred did not intend to be lost again, so he 
kept chopping the trees, so he could find his 
way back to the camp if he had to. It rained all 
the time; we were very tired and hungry, and 
as we had had but little sleep we felt pretty bad. 
We had nothing to eat, as there had been no 
food we could take with us when we left camp 
in the morning. 
“Will did not say anything, but I could see 
he was about worn out. He could hardly keep 
up, and kept talking funny. At last we found 
that the path we were on ran into another, and 
this one was the one we had followed the day 
before. Then we gave up. 
“All at once Will jumped up and ran back 
on the path. We called to him, but he did not 
stop, so we ran after him. He ran so fast that 
we could hardly keep in sight of him. I don’t 
know what we would have done if he had not 
caught his toe on a root and fallen down. We 
ran up and caught him and had to hold him 
down on the ground. He raved and cried and 
said we wanted to lose him, and he wanted to 
go home. 
“We told him we were trying our best to get 
home and all that, but we could not do any¬ 
thing till we told him we would start right back 
home if he would get up and walk. After a 
while he did try to go, but he was so weak and 
tired that it was pretty slowly. He had al¬ 
ways gone behind till then, but we were afraid 
he would run again, so we put him in the mid¬ 
dle. We talked as cheerfully as we could, and 
soon he got better. We went back to the camp 
and got there just before dark. When we went 
in we saw that some one had been there. At 
first we thought it was the wild man, and I did 
not want to stay there; but when we went down 
to the spring we saw tracks of boot heels, and 
we knew it was not he. Fred said it must have 
been some men that came up the stream from 
the mill to see if the gates to the dam were 
open. The owners sent men up once in a while 
to see that the gates were kept open, as if they 
were not the ponds would fill up and wash out 
the dams. 
“We went up to the camp and fastened up 
the door. We did not dare to leave it open a 
minute for fear Will would run away. I built a 
fire in the stove. All we had to eat was a 
piece of pork and two potatoes, Fred saying he 
would go down to the dam- and catch some 
fish, put his rod together and started. 
“Will was asleep in the bunk by this time. I 
looked around in the camp, for I didn’t know 
but the cook might have left something we could 
eat; and down in a bag in the bottom of a barrel 
I found about a peck of beans. In about half 
an hour Fred came back with two little small 
trout. 
“I showed him the beans, and he soon had 
them on the stove. I guess you would have 
laughed to have seen us eating that ‘bean 
swagen,’ as Fred called it. Will looked better 
after his sleep and supper, and soon went back 
to bed. After breakfast the next morning, he 
was all right. His eyes looked clear, and he 
talked just as sane as ever. We told him all 
