the deep red glowed just behind the hemlocks, and the gypsy bands
came home, I would see their sentinels posted here and there
among the hemlock tips--still, dark, graceful silhouettes etched
in sepia against the gorgeous after-glow--and hear the mothers
croaking their ungainly babies to sleep in the tree tops.

Down at one end of the pond a brood of young black ducks were
learning their daily lessons in hiding; at the other end a noisy
kingfisher, an honest blue heron, and a thieving mink shared the
pools and watched each other as rival fishermen. Hares by night,
and squirrels by day, and wood mice at all seasons played round
my tent, or came shyly to taste my bounty. A pair of big owls
lived and hunted in a swamp hard by, who hooted dismally before
the storms came, and sometimes swept within the circle of my fire
at night. Every morning a raccoon stopped at a little pool in the
brook above my tent, to wash his food carefully ere taking it
home. So there was plenty to do and plenty to learn, and the days
passed all too swiftly.

I had been told by the village hunters that there were no deer;
that they had vanished long since, hounded and crusted and
chevied out of season, till life was not worth the living. So it
was with a start of surprise and a thrill of new interest that I
came upon the tracks of a large buck and two smaller deer on the
shore one morning. I was following them eagerly when I ran plump
upon Old Wally, the cunningest hunter and trapper in the whole
region.

"Sho! Mister, what yer follerin?"