from the lake to the
base of the mountain. Here walking was comparatively easy, for in the
hard-wood timber there is little underbrush. The massive trunks seemed
like pillars set to uphold the level roof of green. Great yellow
birches, shaggy with age, stretched their knotted arms high above us;
sugar-maples stood up straight and proud under their leafy crowns;
and smooth beeches--the most polished and parklike of all the forest
trees--offered opportunities for the carving of lovers' names in a place
where few lovers ever come.

The woods were quiet. It seemed as if all living creatures had deserted
them. Indeed, if you have spent much time in our Northern forests, you
must have often wondered at the sparseness of life, and felt a sense of
pity for the apparent loneliness of the squirrel that chatters at you
as you pass, or the little bird that hops noiselessly about in the
thickets. The midsummer noontide is an especially silent time. The deer
are asleep in some wild meadow. The partridge has gathered her brood for
their midday nap. The squirrels are perhaps counting over their store
of nuts in a hollow tree, and the hermit-thrush spares his voice until
evening. The woods are close--not cool and fragrant as the foolish
romances describe them--but warm and still; for the breeze which sweeps
across the hilltop and ruffles the lake does not penetrate into these
shady recesses, and therefore all the inhabitants take the noontide as
their hour of rest. Only the big woodpecker--he of the scarlet head
and mighty bill--is indefatigable, and somewhere unseen is "tapping
the hollow beech-tree," while a wakeful little bird,--I guess it is
the black-throated green warbler,--prolongs his dreamy, listless
ditty,--'te-de-terit-sca,--'te-de-us--wait.

After about an hour of easy walking, our trail began to ascend more
sharply. We passed over the shoulder of a ridge and around the edge of
a fire-slash, and then we had the mountain fairly before us. Not that we
could see anything of it, for the woods still shut us in, but the path
became very steep, and we knew that it was a straight climb; not up and
down and round about did this most uncompromising trail proceed, but
right up, in a direct line for the summit.

Now this side of Ampersand is steeper than any Gothic roof I have ever
seen, and withal very much encumbered with rocks and ledges and fallen
trees. There were places where we had to haul ourselves up by roots and
branches, a