r. Again, a fierce plunge told that the ball had not erred
widely; and this time, when he again sank into his wonted posture, the
deep crimson dye that tinged the foam which curled about his graceful
neck, as he still struggled, feebly fleet, before his unrelenting foes,
gave token of a deadly wound.

Six more strokes of the bending oars--we shot alongside--a noose of rope
was cast across his branching tines, the keen knife flashed across his
throat, and all was over! We towed him to the shore, where Harry and his
comrades were awaiting us with another victim to his unerring aim. We
took both bucks and all hands on board, pulled stoutly homeward, and
found Tom lamenting.

Two deer, a buck of the first head, and a doe, had taken water close
beside him--he had missed his first shot, and in toiling over-hard to
recover lost ground, had broken his oar, and been compelled inactively
to witness their escape.

Three fat bucks made the total of the day's sport--not one of which had
fallen to Tom's boasted musket.

It needed all that Tim's best dinner, with lots of champagne and
Ferintosh, could do to restore the fat chap's equanimity; but he at last
consoled himself, as we threw ourselves on the lowly beds of the log
hut, by swearing that by the etarnal devil he'd bea us both at
partridges to-morrow.

DAY THE SIXTH

The sun rose broad and bright in a firmament of that most brilliant and
transparent blue, which I have witnessed in no other country than
America, so pure, so cloudless, so immeasurably distant as it seems from
the beholder's eye! There was not a speck of cloud from east to west,
from zenith to horizon; not a fleece of vapor on the mountain sides; not
a breath of air to ruffle the calm basin of the Greenwood lake.

The rock-crowned, forest-mantled ridge, on the farther side of the
narrow sheet, was visible almost as distinctly through the medium of the
pure fresh atmosphere, as though it had been gazed at through a
telescope--the hues of the innumerable maples, in their various stages
of decay, purple, and crimson, and bright gorgeous scarlet, were
contrasted with the rich chrome yellow of the birch and poplars, the
sere red leaves of the gigantic oaks, and with the ever verdant plumage
of the junipers, clustered in massy patches on every rocky promontory,
and the tall spires of the dark pines and hemlock.

Over this mass of many-colored foliage, the pale thin yellow light of
the new-risen sun was pourin