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 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?"

"Why, these deer tracks," I said simply.

Wally gave me a look, of great pity.

"Guess you're green--one o' them city fellers, ain't ye, Mister? Them
ere's sheep tracks--my sheep. Wandered off int' th' woods a spell ago,
and I hain't seen the tarnal critters since. Came up here lookin' for um
this mornin'."

I glanced at Wally's fish basket, and thought of the nibbled lily pads;
but I said nothing. Wally was a great hunter, albeit jealous; apt to
think of all the game in the woods as being sent by Providence to help
him get a lazy living; and I knew little about deer at that time. So I
took him to camp, fed him, and sent him away.

"Kinder keep a lookout for my sheep, wi