290 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. 23, 1907- 
for the other two sentences. It’s over three 
hundred miles from here to Yarmouth Town, 
but Matteou managed to be in Yarmouth jail 
four days after they washed him and shingled 
his hair. When he got out, he went on to the 
States, but they didn’t use him quite so well 
there. He drew his knife on a policeman in 
Portland, and the policeman didn’t wait to be 
stabbed. His widow went to St. Stephens, N. 
B., and married a very decent Millicete. This 
pool has been called Matteou’s Pool ever since 
the. time Viddler took him. I’ve only heard 
of two bad Indians in Nova Scotia. One of 
them’s running round now; the other was 
Matteou. 
“Now, while we’ve been talking, there’s a fish 
come up over the rapids. Take that canary off, 
and put on a Durham-ranger. Now drop the 
fly a little above the eddy, in front of that 
dogwood, and let him ‘tail down’ slowly.” 
I obeyed directions, and in a few seconds I was 
engaged with another salmon in Matteou’s Pool. 
« Edmund F. L. Jenner. 
Evenings wiih Antler. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Speaking of Antler, the writer recalls an in¬ 
cident in connection with “Leather Stocking 
Tales” which gives a little glimpse of Antler’s 
home life, and seems too good to be lost. He 
was a great admirer of Cooper, and invariably 
referred to Cooper’s characters as if they were 
his real and intimate friends. While teaching 
at Grand View it was my privilege to spend a 
part of three winters in Mr. Stratton’s pleasant 
home. The long, quiet winter evenings, for study 
and reading, after an early supper of Mrs. Strat¬ 
ton’s excellent cooking, are among the pleasant 
memories of my life. One evening we were 
reading aloud, as we often did, Antler and the 
teacher reading by turns, while Aunt Pollie sat 
by the open fire, knitting, listening and occasion¬ 
ally commenting. It was my turn to read; the 
book was “The Pioneers,” and the chapter the 
one describing the Christmas dinner at Judge 
Marmaduke Temple’s, with its wild turkey and 
venison, bear’s meat and fish, vegetables, fruits 
and sweetmeats. 
As the story proceeded Mrs. Stratton re¬ 
marked : “That makes me feel hungry.” “Me, 
too,” said Antler. 
The teacher read on, while Antler left his 
chair and stood by the fire. Presently he said: 
“I’m getting more and more hungry every 
minute,” and then, turning to Mrs. Stratton: 
“Ma, I'll tell you what I’ll do. I will get a 
nice fat chicken ready for the frying-pan, if you 
will cook it.” 
The answer came at once: “All right, father, 
and I’ll make some biscuits, too,” and later we 
sat down—those two dear old people and my¬ 
self—to an 11 o’clock supper of such delightful 
fried chicken and delicious cream biscuits that 
it makes my mouth water even now to think 
of it. Antler said it was almost equal to some 
suppers he had eaten while camping out. 
The teacher always tried to arrange SO' that it 
would come Antler’s turn to read the parts of the 
story giving the Leather Stocking’s conversation, 
for he seemed to fall naturally into' Natty’s pro¬ 
nunciation and manner of speaking. 
Although a lover of the hunt from his earliest 
youth, Antler had a gentle, sympathetic nature 
and a tender heart. He loved all wild creatures 
and killed none of them in wanton sport. The 
writer recalls how, when in reading aloud, he 
came to any touching paragraph, or pathetic 
story, his voice would begin to tremble, his eyes 
fill with tears, and presently he would say, “Here, 
it’s your turn to read now !” H. R. S. 
[“Antler” was an old time correspondent of 
Forest and Stream, a resident of Tennessee 
and a charming writer. He died about seven 
years ago.— Editor.] 
SUBSTANTIAL NOURISHMENT. 
The chief concern of every camper is to obtain sub¬ 
stantial nourishment in compact form. No camp or cabin 
! s complete without its supply of Borden’s Eagle Brand 
Condensed Milk and Peerless Brand Evaporated Milk. 
They have no equal for Coffee, Fruits and Cereals ,—Adv. 
Camp Don’i Hurry. 
XI.—Kingston. 
Uncle Nick finished washing the supper dishes, 
and then trudged off through the black path of 
the pine woods to his lodgings at a neighboring 
farm house. We watched the fitful gleaming of 
his lantern, as the undergrowth now hid and now 
revealed it. Old Billy sat silently gazing at the 
fire until we noticed the corners of his mouth 
begin to draw back and twitch a little. Pretty 
soon he turned toward us and asked: 
“Do either of you fellows remember Deacon 
Higman who used to live at Oswenango? No? 
Well, I thought likely you wouldn’t. He died 
before your time. What an old liar he was! 
“When father ran the store and I was a boy 
clerking for him, the deacon used to come in* 
there a good deal. He always carried.a cane 
and most always had his hands behind his back, 
with the cane sticking straight up along his 
spine. When he was a little excited it would 
twitch back and forth like a cat’s tail. I can t 
remember half the yarns he told, but this is a 
sample of them. 
“He said that when he was a young man and 
worked in the woods, he had a broad-ax that 
was made by welding ninety-nine razor blades 
together. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘The way that broad.-ax 
would ring when 1 used it. Why, it would fairly 
deafen a person and you couldn’t hear any one 
speak for a long ways around.’ Finally some 
one stole it and the deacon hunted all over the 
country for it but couldn’t get track of it any¬ 
way, and had to give it up for lost. Ten years 
later he was driving along the road one winter, 
in a sleigh, and heard the sound of that same 
broad-ax. He hitched his horse and started to 
hunt it up. and he said he followed that sound 
seven miles back over the hills, and there, sure 
enough, found a fellow hewing timber with it. 
The old liar!” 
When Billy had finished the story, he again 
lapsed into silence and began watching the 
camp-fire. Probably that fire was a picture of 
many hundreds which he had sat before, and 
the picture seemed to lead him a long way back. 
We knew there would soon be something more 
coming from him, so we waited patiently for the 
twitching of the mouth corners to begin again. 
After a while he said : 
“I . guess I never told you about Peter Jack¬ 
son’s getting lost in the fog, did I?” 
“No, and it’s high time you did,” Henry replied. 
“You know,” Billy continued, “Pete was a 
slave, but he ran away about the beginning of 
the war and joined the Northern army. Well, 
when the soldiers came home, somehow he came 
along with them and built a little cabin at Oswe¬ 
nango. He hadn’t been there long enough to get 
very well acquainted with the country before he 
began to ask where the best fishing was. One 
day some of the fellows let him go .with them 
down tO' the mouth of the Unadilla River for an 
afternoon’s fishing. When it came night they 
hadn’t caught much, and decided to come home, 
but Pete wanted to stay a little longer. The 
boys pointed out a w x av for him to cut across 
the river flat and save some distance whenever 
he got ready to quit. 
“He had iust the combination he liked; sitting 
by the river with a pint of whiskey and a fish 
pole, so it was 2 o’clock in the morning before 
he decided to start for the village. He crossed 
the flat and struck into the road heading for 
home at a pace born of slavery. It w T as foggy, 
so things didn’t look very natural, but that didn’t 
bother a man who was used to living nights in 
the swamp and listening to' the bloodhounds 
hunting for him. After a spell he passed a little 
two' storv building with the upper story open. 
He couldn’t seem to remember of having seen 
it before, but wasn’t much surprised. A half 
mile further on he came to another just like 
it. That set Pete to thinking, but he trudged 
along. When he finally came to a third build¬ 
ing just like the other two, he had such deep- 
seated suspicions that he poked around until 
he found a rail, and laid it across the road. 
Then he started once more for home, but at 
the end of another half mile stubbed his toe 
against the rail. 
“The problem was too much for Pete’s mind 
to handle, particularly as the whiskey had given 
out, so he just sat down on the grass and waited 
for morning to throw light upon the mystery. 
Then he found that instead of being in the 
highway he had been going around and around 
Sant Hill’s trotting track and keeping count on 
the number of times he had seen the judges’ 
stand.” 
As Billy finished speaking, he rapped his dead 
pipe on the unburned end of a stick of wood, 
and after a powerful stretch and yawn, began 
to strip for bed. The slight breeze that night 
may have come from a new direction, by a de¬ 
gree or so, for it brought a different melody off 
the rifts from any that I knew. The young, 
thinly leafed maples on the sandy flat sifted it 
from a different angle. The intermittent tink¬ 
ling of the cow-bells on the grazing herd across 
the stream blended with it, but in a different 
proportion. I lay and listened, while from the 
wide open tent I watched the full moon climb 
up toward the naked angular limb of the old 
chestnut stub which at a little distance rose like 
a monument above the young timber. 
Often have I envied those who can read the 
music of the rifts as readily as an open book, 
and to whom the sound of waters is as audible 
as the voice of a friend. 
To me it is more like the opera in a foreign 
tongue. I hear and feel the music, but the words 
I do not understand. Only its most distinct 
moods can I comprehend. Of course I know 
what it says when it bursts its bonds of ice, and 
with an exultant roar crunches and grinds its 
fetters to pulp; or having gorged itself with 
mud and showers, its swollen flood rolls sullenly 
by. And when weak and spent with summer’s 
heat, the feeble rifts murmur their prayer to 
the god of rain. As I listened trying to learn 
the air of the new melody, the cows one by one 
lay down, and the tinkling ceased. The moon 
rose above the single limb of the spectre-like 
stub, and the fire blinked itself to' sleep. 
When we were getting up from dinner the 
next day we heard the wheels of a wagon come 
rattling over the roots of the rough wood road. 
It was Mr. Brown, and he said he had to' drive 
a few miles back into the mountains, and came 
prepared to take us along if we wished to ride. 
It was a happy thought, and we piled in just as 
we were. I sat on the front seat with Mr. 
Brown, while Billy, with little thin Henry for 
chinking, filled the rear one. 
Billy threw his arm on the back of the seat 
behind Henry and settled himself to enjoy the 
trip. As we rocked and 'rolled through the 
woods, somehow Billy happened to touch Henry’s 
ribs with his finger, and discovered that with 
only a thin shirt for covering those ribs were 
excessively ticklish. It was like an inspiration 
to him. Whenever he saw anything which he 
wished to- call Henry’s attention to, instead of 
mentioning it he simply touched a rib and Henry 
went up like a jack in the box. No matter how 
much he protested or threatened Billy paid no 
attention to it. When Henry tried to get up or 
climb out, Billy just closed his great arm around 
him and chugged him back into the seat without 
in the least noticing him or skipping a word 
if he was talking. There was a particularly 
cute-looking litter of pigs and Henry got tickled. 
Six summer girls sat on the top rail of a fence, 
like sparrows on a teleghaph wire, and Henry 
got tickled. 
So it went on for two or three miles, until 
the road suddenly turned and brought us along¬ 
side of a small creek. Without a word of warn¬ 
ing Henry jumped from the wagon, clearing the 
hind wheel like a sheep going over a stone wall, 
while old Billy let out a whoop that was elevated 
for long range, and tickled into vacancy. A 
little foot bridge, made of a couple of logs with 
bits of board across them, sagged over the 
stream. The structure was not more than two 
feet wide, and on it end to' end were three big 
fat Germans lying flat on their backs and sound 
asleep, while a little gray-haired gentleman stood 
modestly waiting to cross. Henry was first to 
spy them, and quick as a weasel, had jumped 
to save the inevitable tickling. The rusticating 
Germans were a little bit spunked at their sudden 
awakening, but seeing the old gentleman, began 
