ing out
loud while you take them down in sound-hand. Then you can draft them
neatly and I'll sign them. You have tact and good manners and can do
many of my errands for me and save me from those who have no good reason
for taking up my time. You will meet the best people and the worst.
There's just a chance that it may come to something worth while--who
knows? You are young yet. It will be good training and you will witness
the making of some history now and then."

What elation I felt!

Again the voice of the hound which had been ringing in the distant hills
was coming nearer.

"We must keep watch--another deer is coming," said the Senator.

We had only a moment's watch before a fine yearling buck came down to
the opposite shore and stood looking across the river. The Senator
raised his rifle and fired. The buck fell in the edge of the water.

"How shall we get him?" my friend asked.

"It will not be difficult," I answered as I began to undress. Nothing
was difficult those days. I swam the river and towed the buck across
with a beech withe in his gambrel joints. The hound joined me before I
was half across with my burden and nosed the carcass and swam on ahead
yelping with delight.

We dressed the deer and then I had the great joy of carrying him on my
back two miles across the country to the wagon. The Senator wished to
send a guide for the deer, but I insisted that the carrying was my
privilege.

"Well, I guess your big thighs and broad shoulders can stand it," said
he.

"My uncle has always said that no man could be called a hunter until he
can go into the woods without a guide and kill a deer and bring it out
on his back. I want to be able to testify that I am at least partly
qualified."

"Your uncle didn't say anything about fetching the deer across a deep
river without a boat, did he?" Mr. Wright asked me with a smile.

Leaves of the beeches, maples and basswoods--yellowed by frost--hung
like tiny lanterns, glowing with noonday light, above the dim
forest-aisle which we traveled.

The sun was down when we got to the clearing.

"What a day it has been!" said Mr. Wright when we were seated in the
wagon at last with the hound and the deer's head between his feet and
mine.

"One of the best in my life," I answered with a joy in my heart the like
of which I have rarely known in these many years that have come to me.

We rode on in silence with the calls of the swamp robin and the hermit
thrush rin