nto the woods. Uncle Eb and
Tip Taylor, who knew the forest, and myself, were to go with Gerald to
Blueberry Lake. We loaded our wagon with provisions one evening and made
ready to be off at the break of day.

Chapter 16

I remember how hopefully we started that morning with Elizabeth Brower
and Hope waving their handkerchiefs on the porch and David near them
whittling. They had told us what to do and what not to do over and over
again. I sat with Gerald on blankets that were spread over a thick mat
of hay. The morning air was sweet with the odour of new hay and the
music of the bobolink. Uncle Eb and Tip Taylor sang merrily as we rode
over the hills.

When we entered the shade of the big forest Uncle Eb got out his rifle
and loaded it. He sat a long time whispering and looking eagerly for
game to right and left. He was still a boy. One could see evidences of
age only in his white hair and beard and wrinkled brow. He retained
the little tufts in front of his ears, and lately had grown a silver
crescent of thin and silky hair that circled his throat under a bare
chin. Young as I was I had no keener relish for a holiday than he. At
noon we halted beside a brook and unhitched our horses. Then we caught
some fish, built a fire and cooked them, and brewed our tea. At sunset
we halted at Tuley Pond, looking along its reedy margin, under purple
tamaracks, for deer. There was a great silence, here in the deep of
the woods, and Tip Taylor's axe, while he peeled the bark for our camp,
seemed to fill the wilderness with echoes. It was after dark when the
shanty was covered and we lay on its fragrant mow of balsam and hemlock.
The great logs that we had rolled in front of our shanty were set afire
and shortly supper was cooking.

Gerald had stood the journey well. Uncle Eb and he stayed in while Tip
and I got our jack ready and went off in quest of a dugout He said Bill
Ellsworth had one hid in a thicket on the south side of Tuley. We found
it after an hour's tramp near by. It needed a little repairing but we
soon made it water worthy, and then took our seats, he in the stern,
with the paddle, and I in the bow with the gun. Slowly and silently we
clove a way through the star-sown shadows. It was like the hushed and
mystic movement of a dream. We seemed to be above the deep of heaven,
the stars below us. The shadow of the forest in the still water looked
like the wall of some mighty castle with towers and battlements and
my