the sun. Not a sound had I heard from the dogs. My hoodoo was working
malignly. Well, let it work. I was comfortable now, and that old bear
could go to any other doom she preferred. It was pleasant enough to
lie here alone in the forest and be free! Aye, it was good to be alive,
and to be far, far away from the broken bottles and old tin cans of
civilization.

[Illustration: "By and by up they came, carrying the Bear on a trimmed
sapling"]

For many a league to the southward clouds covered all the valleys in
billows of white, from which rose a hundred mountain tops, like islands
in a tropic ocean. My fancy sailed among and beyond them, beyond the
horizon's rim, even unto those far seas that I had sailed in my youth,
to the old times and the old friends that I should never see again.

But a forenoon is long-drawn-out when one has breakfasted before dawn,
and has nothing to do but sit motionless in the woods and watch and
listen. I got to fingering my rifle trigger impatiently and wishing that
a wild Thanksgiving gobbler might blunder into view. Squirrels made
ceaseless chatter all around my stand. Large hawks shrilled by me within
tempting range, whistling like spent bullets. A groundhog sat up on a
log and whistled, too, after a manner of his own. He was so near that I
could see his nose wiggle. A skunk waddled around for twenty minutes,
and once came so close that I thought he would nibble my boot. I was
among old mossy beeches, scaled with polyphori, and twisted into
postures of torture by their battles with the storms. Below, among
chestnuts and birches, I could hear the _t-wee, t-wee_ of "joree-birds"
(towhees), which winter in the valleys. Incessantly came the
_chip-chip-cluck_ of ground squirrels, the saucy bark of the grays, and
great chirruping among the "boomers," which had ceased swearing and were
hard at work.

Far off on my left a rifle cracked. I pricked up and listened intently,
but there was never a yelp from a dog. Since it is a law of the chase to
fire at nothing smaller than turkeys, lest big game be scared away, this
shot might mean a gobbler. I knew that Matt Hyde could not, to save his
soul, sit ten minutes on a stand without calling turkeys (and he _could_
call them, with his unassisted mouth, better than anyone I ever heard
perform with leaf or wing-bone or any other contrivance).

Thus the slow hours dragged along. I yearned mightily to stretch my
legs. Finally, being certain that no d