e himself from any position in the woods,
his knowledge was of that occult sort possessed by woodsmen which it
is impossible to communicate. Our object was to strike a trail that
led from the Au Sable Pond, the other side of the mountain-range, to an
inlet on Mud Pond. We knew that if we traveled southwestward far enough
we must strike that trail, but how far? No one could tell. If we reached
that trail, and found a boat at the inlet, there would be only a row of
a couple of miles to the house at the foot of the lake. If no boat was
there, then we must circle the lake three or four miles farther through
a cedar-swamp, with no trail in particular. The prospect was not
pleasing. We were short of supplies, for we had not expected to pass
that night in the woods. The pleasure of the excursion began to develop
itself.

We stumbled on in the general direction marked out, through a forest
that began to seem endless as hour after hour passed, compelled as we
were to make long detours over the ridges of the foothills to avoid the
swamp, which sent out from the border of the lake long tongues into
the firm ground. The guide became more ill at every step, and needed
frequent halts and long rests. Food he could not eat; and tea, water,
and even brandy he rejected. Again and again the old philosopher,
enfeebled by excessive exertion and illness, would collapse in a heap
on the ground, an almost comical picture of despair, while we stood and
waited the waning of the day, and peered forward in vain for any sign of
an open country. At every brook we encountered, we suggested a halt for
the night, while it was still light enough to select a camping-place,
but the plucky old man wouldn't hear of it: the trail might be only a
quarter of a mile ahead, and we crawled on again at a snail's pace. His
honor as a guide seemed to be at stake; and, besides, he confessed to
a notion that his end was near, and he didn't want to die like a dog
in the woods. And yet, if this was his last journey, it seemed not an
inappropriate ending for the old woodsman to lie down and give up the
ghost in the midst of the untamed forest and the solemn silences he felt
most at home in. There is a popular theory, held by civilians, that a
soldier likes to die in battle. I suppose it is as true that a woodsman
would like to "pass in his chips,"--the figure seems to be inevitable,
struck down by illness and exposure, in the forest solitude, with heaven
in sight and a t