, rock-scarred face of Bald Mountain, for all its
naked grimness, looked very cheerful in the last of the warm-coloured
sunset. There were no trees; but every little hollow, every tiny
plateau, every bit of slope that was not too steep for clinging roots
to find hold, was clothed with a mat of blueberry bushes. The berries,
of an opaque violet-blue tone (much more vivid and higher in key than
the same berries can show when picked and brought to market) were so
large and so thickly crowded as to almost hide the leaves. They gave
the austere steeps of "Old Baldy" the effect of having been dyed with
a wash of cobalt.

Far below, where the lonely wilderness valley was already forsaken
by the sun, a flock of ducks could be seen, with long, outstretched
necks rigid and short wings swiftly beating, lined out over a
breadth of wild meadow. Above the lake which washed the foot of
the mountain,--high above the water, but below the line of shadow
creeping up the mountain's face,--a single fish-hawk circled
slowly, waiting for the twilight coolness to bring the big trout to
the surface to feed. The smooth water glimmered pallidly, and here
and there a spreading, circular ripple showed that the hungry fish
were beginning to rise.

Up in the flood of the sunset, the blueberries basked and glowed, some
looking like gems, some like blossoms, according to the fall of the
light. Around the shoulder of the mountain toward the east, where the
direct rays of the sun could not reach, the light was yet abundant,
but cool and tender,--and here the vivid berries were beginning to
lose their colour, as a curved moon, just rising over the far, ragged
rim of the forest, touched them with phantom silver. Everywhere
jutting rocks and sharp crevices broke the soft mantle of the
blueberry thickets; and on the southerly slope, where sunset and
moonrise mingled with intricate shadows, everything looked ghostlike
and unreal. On the utmost summit of the mountain a rounded peak of
white granite, smoothed by ages of storm, shone like a beacon.

[Illustration: "AN OLD SHE-BEAR WITH TWO HALF-GROWN CUBS."]

The only berry-pickers that came to these high slopes of Bald Mountain
were the wild kindreds, furred and feathered. Of them all, none were
more enthusiastic and assiduous than the bears; and just now, climbing
up eagerly from the darkening woods below, came an old she-bear with
two half-grown cubs. They came up by easy paths, zigzagging past
boulder a