as high and there was a
confusion of sounds outside.

"Hark!" said one.

We all listened.

"I thought I heard a knock at the hall door."

"Only the wind," was replied.

"Yes; there it is again."

We all heard two distinct knocks, given quickly one after the other.

I arose, and going into the hall went to the front door and opened it.
As I did so Ponto bounded in past me, gave two or three short, glad
barks, and then paid his boisterous respects to the family in the
sitting-room. I waited a moment, and then stepped out to see who had
lifted the knocker, but found no one. Ponto had done it himself, as we
had proof enough afterward; for ever since that time he has used the
knocker as regularly as any two-legged member of the family.

I could tell you stories for a whole evening about Ponto, but these
two must answer for the present.

BRUIN AT A MAPLE-SUGAR PARTY.

One evening near the first of April, three years ago this spring, I
was making my way the best I could down from the west branch of the
Penobscot River towards the plantation of Nikertou. (Up in Maine they
call an unincorporated town a plantation. Down south the word has a
different meaning.) How and why I came to be in that wild section, at
the hour of twilight, may need a word in explanation.

A month previously I had been sent up to the "Head of Chesuncook" from
Bangor, by the lumbering firm of which my uncle was a member, to pay
off one of their "gangs," which made the "head" of that lake a sort of
depot and place of rendezvous.

Both going up and coming back as far as the foot of Lake Pemadumcook,
I had had with me, as guide and armed protector, an old hunter named
Hughy Clives. But on getting down to the foot of this lake, and within
six or eight miles of Nikertou, old Hughy had been seized with a
sudden desire to leave me and to go to Millinocket Lake in quest of
otters; and so giving me my "course" for Nikertou, he had bidden me
"good luck," and again started northward.

It was a warm, spring-like afternoon, though the snow in that region
still lay to the depth of three or four feet; but on my snow-shoes I
didn't mind the depth; the main thing was to keep out of the brush and
the dense hemlock and cedar thickets.

It was about two o'clock when I left the river; and I had expected to
get down to the little "settlement" by sunset. But the sun went below
the distant spruce-clad ridges, and dusk fell, with as yet no signs of
a "cle