gloaming. Breakfast had to be caught in the morning and was not served
early, so that it was nine o'clock before we were in motion. A little
bird, the red-eyed vireo, warbled most cheerily in the trees above our
camp, and, as Aaron said, "gave us a good send-off." We kept down the
stream, following the inevitable bark road.

My companion had refused to look at another "dividing ridge" that had
neither path nor way, and henceforth I must keep to the open road or
travel alone. Two hours' tramp brought us to an old clearing with some
rude, tumble-down log buildings that many years before had been
occupied by the bark and lumber men. The prospect for trout was so good
in the stream hereabouts, and the scene so peaceful and inviting, shone
upon by the dreamy August sun, that we concluded to tarry here until
the next day. It was a page of pioneer history opened to quite
unexpectedly. A dim footpath led us a few yards to a superb spring, in
which a trout from the near creek had taken up his abode. We took
possession of what had been a shingle-shop, attracted by its huge
fireplace. We floored it with balsam boughs, hung its walls with our
"traps," and sent the smoke curling again from its disused chimney.

The most musical and startling sound we heard in the woods greeted our
ears that evening about sundown as we sat on a log in front of our
quarters,--the sound of slow, measured pounding in the valley below us.
We did not know how near we were to human habitations, and the report
of the lumberman's mallet, like the hammering of a great woodpecker,
was music to the ear and news to the mind. The air was still and dense,
and the silence such as alone broods over these little openings in the
primitive woods. My soldier started as if he had heard a signal-gun.
The sound, coming so far through the forest, sweeping over those great
wind-harps of trees, became wild and legendary, though probably made by