pa'tridge? Oh, yes, he's there. He'll stay there, too, till he
dies of old age; 'cause you see, Mister, there ain't nobody in
these parts spry enough to ketch 'im."



FOLLOWING THE DEER

I was camping one summer on a little lake--Deer Pond, the
natives called it--a few miles back from a quiet summer resort
on the Maine coast. Summer hotels and mackerel fishing and
noisy excursions had lost their semblance to a charm; so I
made a little tent, hired a canoe, and moved back into the
woods.

It was better here. The days, were still and long, and the nights
full of peace. The air was good, for nothing but the wild
creatures breathed it, and the firs had touched it with their
fragrance. The faraway surge of the sea came up faintly till the
spruces answered it, and both sounds went gossiping over the
hills together. On all sides were the woods, which, on the north
especially, stretched away over a broken country beyond my
farthest explorations.

Over against my tenting place a colony of herons had their nests
in some dark hemlocks. They were interesting as a camp of
gypsies, some going off in straggling bands to the coast at
daybreak, others frogging in the streams, and a few solitary,
patient, philosophical ones joining me daily in following the
gentle art of Izaak Walton. And then, when the sunset came and