d up there, and left by our pioneer for the
present. We found, however, upon examination, that the deer had walked
up on the dam, probably to take a look at what was below, and on the
other side, when his foot slipped down between the poles, and he was
caught as in a trap. His leg was badly broken, and nearly severed by
his efforts to get loose, and the bark of the poles was worn away
within reach of his struggles. He had died where he thus got hung; and
there he was, stone dead, but not yet cold, when we found him. He was
a fine, fat, young deer, and died by one of the thousand accidents to
which the wild animals of the forest, as well as man, are exposed.

Upon relating this incident to an old hunter, I was told by him that
he once, while out in the woods, came upon the skeletons of two large
bucks, that, in fighting, had got their horns so interlocked and
wedged together, that they could not separate them, and thus, locked
in the death grapple, they had starved and died. There lay their
bones, the flesh eaten from them by the beasts and carrion birds, and,
bleached by the sun and the storms, the two skulls with the horns
still interlocked; and the narrator told me he had them yet at home,
fast together, as he found them, as one of the curiosities to be met
with in the Rackett woods.

"I've been thinking," said Spalding, in his quiet way, as we sat
towards evening, looking out over the pleasant little lake, watching
the shadow chasing the retiring sunlight up the sides of the opposite
hills, "I've been thinking how differently we act, and feel, and
talk--aye, and think, too--out here in these old woods, from what we
do when at home and surrounded by civilization. However we four may
deny being old, we cannot certainly claim to be young. We have all
reached the meridian of life, and though feeling few, if any, of the
infirmities of age, still, our next move will be in the downhill
direction. Yet, notwithstanding all this, we talk and act, and think,
and feel, too, like boys. I do not speak this reproachfully, but as a
fact which develops a curious attribute of the human mind."

"Well," replied the Doctor, "while it may be curious, it is
exceedingly natural. We have thrown off the restraints which society
imposes upon us; we have thrown off the cares which the business of
life heaps upon us. We have gone back for a season to the freedom, the
sports, the sights, the exercises which delighted our boyhood. And can
it be