here.

Extract from my diary that night: "Eddie has been taken with
a slight cramp, and it has occurred to him that the owl
meat, though appetizing, may be poisonous. He is searching
his medicine bag for remedies. His disaster is merely
punishment for the quantity of other food he ate beforehand,
in his futile effort to escape the owl."

Chapter Nineteen

_Then scan your map, and search your plans,_
_And ponder the hunter's guess--_
_While the silver track of the brook leads back_
_Into the wilderness._

Chapter Nineteen

We looked for moose again on Sand Lake, but found only signs. On the
whole, I thought this more satisfactory. One does not have to go
galloping up and down among the bushes and rocks to get a glimpse of
signs, but may examine them leisurely and discuss the number, character
and probable age of these records, preserving meanwhile a measure of
repose, not to say dignity.

Below Sand Lake a brook was said to enter. Descending from the upper
interior country, it would lead us back into regions more remote than
any heretofore traveled. So far as I could learn, neither of our guides
had ever met any one who even claimed in know this region, always
excepting the imaginative Indian previously mentioned. Somewhere in
these uncharted wilds this Indian person had taken trout "the size of
one's leg."

Regardless of the dimensions of this story, it had a fascination for us.
We wished to see those trout, even if they had been overrated. We had
been hurrying, at least in spirit, to reach the little water gateway
that opened to a deeper unknown where lay a chain of lakes, vaguely set
down on our map as the Tobeatic[4] waters. At some time in the past the
region had been lumbered, but most of the men who cut the timber were
probably dead now, leaving only a little drift of hearsay testimony
behind.

It was not easy to find the entrance to the hidden land. The foliage was
heavy and close along the swampy shore, and from such an ambush a still
small current might flow unnoticed, especially in the mist that hung
about us. More than once we were deceived by some fancied ripple or the
configuration of the shore. Del at length announced that just ahead was
a growth of a kind of maple likely to indicate a brook entrance. The
shore really divided there and a sandy waterway led back somewhere into
a mystery of vines and trees.

We halted near the mouth of t