After a time we turned short to the left through a very narrow passage
between two marshy shores, and so, after a sharp bend of but a few
hundred feet, came into the other river.

This was a wide stream, smoothly hurrying, without rapids or tumult.
The forest had drawn to either side to let us pass. Here were the
wilder reaches after the intimacies of the little river. Across
stretches of marsh we could see an occasional great blue heron standing
mid-leg deep. Long strings of ducks struggled quacking from invisible
pools. The faint marsh odour saluted our nostrils from the point where
the lily-pads flashed broadly, ruffling in the wind. We dropped out the
smaller spoon and masterfully landed a five-pound pickerel. Even Deuce
brightened. He cared nothing for raw fish, but he knew their
possibilities. Towards evening we entered the hilly country, and so at
the last turned to the left into a sand cove where grew maples and
birches in beautiful park order under a hill. There we pitched camp,
and, as the flies lacked, built a friendship-fire about which to
forgather when the day was done.

Dick still vocally regretted the muscallunge told him of my big bear.

One day, late in the summer, I was engaged in packing some supplies
along an old fur trail north of Lake Superior. I had accomplished one
back-load, and with empty straps was returning to the cache for
another. The trail at one point emerged into and crossed an open park
some hundreds of feet in diameter, in which the grass grew to the
height of the knee. When I was about halfway across, a black bear arose
to his hind legs not ten feet from me, and remarked _Woof!_ in a
loud tone of voice. Now, if a man were to say _woof_ to you
unexpectedly, even in the formality of an Italian garden or the