get his one moose a year, he need carry ing me with their bright round eyes. no rifle. The winter-birds were with us from the first. Flocks of friendly cross-bills, red and yellow, and the tiny speckled thistlebird which we always saw in their company, were daily working about our various camps. They seemed to have a great liking for salt; and an old bag in which pork had been carried would furnish them pickings for days. These little birds are particularly fearless. Time and again while standing at the camp door they alighted on my fishing-rod, my shoulder, my hat. I would sit perfectly still, watching them feed within six feet of me, and they would peck away while watch The old red ones fought a good many sham-battles. Suddenly some nervous one would fly, for no reason at all, and with mimic thunder the whole flock would rise, only to return in a few moments, one by one. Henry caught several in his hands, right in open daylight, but I could not learn that trick. And when released they would not fly far, but soon return to their endless eating of nothing in particular. I wish the partridge hunters of these United States could see how coolly the ruffed grouse took us. We saw them daily, seldom more than one or two at a time. But there was none of the alert rigidity and noisy flight so familiar to us all. Cocks and hens alike would scarcely get out of our way. There are two kinds of partridge in New Brunswick, locally known as the birch and spruce. The birch partridge is the pheasant of Virginia, and the common friend of all bird-shooters of North America. Even this most suspicious fowl would not easily take alarm. I photographed one at six feet as it was walking on a log. The woods in May are a continual Saengerfest. There are a great many people who never heard the morning song of a wren. I would willingly go a thousand miles to hear this little bird make his joyous prediction of fine weather. The lumbermen want rain to fall in the spring, so the streams will be full of water to float their logs to mill, and they have a saying that "two wrens will hang a drive." But as I heard their happy songs, I did not care if they hung up all the logs in the province. It was a splendid thing to see the wonderful increase in the beavers. In our pursuit of bears we were on many lakes and streams. In scores of places the old dams and houses had been repaired, and at almost every turn the sticks, denuded of their bark, showed beaverwork. One day, running down the North Pole, we came upon a whole family at work. The Indians say "Beaver big fool; work all time, same as white man." One beaver we took wholly by surprise. He was dragging a stick down the bank, and it seemed to have caught on something. He was dragging it backward, beaver fashion, and had his head turned away Cross-bills Feeding. from us as the canoe shot toward him. I had the camera in my hand as usual and instantly hoped for a picture. We almost ran the beaver down before he suddenly let go the stick and whirled around. For an instant he was the most astonishedlooking animal you ever saw. I snapped the shutter, and the beaver dived almost under the bow of the canoe, not even having time to slap the water with his tail, as we heard others do. Sometimes a frightened beaver will whack the water so loudly that you would think a tree had fallen into it. Beavers have been entirely protected in New Brunswick for some years, and it is certain that we saw fresh signs of scores of them in the different waters we crossed. We only heard of two being caught, and this was done by a man in a lumber crew away down river. The fishing this spring after the trout began to gather in the pools as the water warmed, was the finest I have ever seen. I do not kill many fish, but I love to know they are about. At some of our camps the trout supply was ample without going beyond the water-hole. One morning, as we were coming out of the woods, Henry and I made a business of going to fish at Pocket Lake pool, where the stream pours out among big rocks. I got out of the canoe onto a bowlder, just big enough to stand upon, using the canoe as a bridge, the other end being ashore. Henry went up the trail to see if he could find a toboggan that the driving crew's cook had borrowed and not returned. I hooked a fine two-pound trout, and trailed him. about till he was tired out. Then I discovered that the canoe had drifted away from my rock, leaving me without place or means to land my fish. So I coaxed him close to my feet and firmly seized him by the mouth and one gill, getting my fingers nicely bitten. I pray I may have fingers torn by trout's teeth for a great many years yet. Lifting the trout from the water and keeping my balance on the little rock, I disengaged the hook, and let the fly trail on the water while I reached in my pocket for a large jack-knife to stop the struggles of the fish, which I had strung on my left thumb. And it is only the narrative of truth that as my fly dangled unwatched on the water, a wicked trout, much larger than the first, seeing my embarrassed condition, grabbed the fly and ran with it. I had a big flapping trout in one hand, a water-devil running out my line from the rod in my other hand, and no way to let go or get ashore. So Henry found me when he came back, trying my best to fight the two fish at once. We landed the second one, and the two of them weighed five pounds. That was the most concentrated fishing I had on the trip. There is a general impression among those who take an interest in wild animals that their days on this continent are numbered. Some years ago the editor of a sportsman's magazine in New York wrote a very doleful article on "The Vanishing Moose." It is only the commonplace statement of an obvious fact to say that in New Brunswick the moose and deer are increasing in numbers. Henry reads a great deal, and often when we would come upon a bull or a cow and her calves in the woods he would laugh and say: "There are some more of those vanishing moose." The season when they go into the water to feed and to escape the insects had hardly come when we left the woods. Yet we saw more than thirty moose in three weeks while we kept count, and there were fresh tracks everywhere. The last week or two, after the snow water had all gone, we began to see the moose feeding on lily roots. One day we were paddling home and on rounding a familiar bend I had a queer sensation that I had not before seen a rock which stood out of the water two hundred yards ahead. The canoe ran on for perhaps a minute, when suddenly there was a splash, and a long neck, head, and ears grew on the rock. What we had seen was the back of a moose, with her head submerged. She would not have seen us probably till we were close to her, but the wind blow ing fair upon her from us caught her attention, and in a moment she began a springy trot for shore, leaving a wake of muddy water after she had disappeared in the woods. One evening at dusk we came upon a moose similarly feeding, and I touched her back with my paddle as we swept past her. She tore up the lily roots by the dozen with her feet, in her frantic rush for shore. Bear-hunting was just becoming good when we left the woods and returned to the settlement, where we found the dwellers in the Miramichi beginning the attack "N THE CLOCK IN THE SKY By George W. Cable ILLUSTRATION BY HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY OW, Maud," said uncle jovially as he, aunt, and I drove into the confines of their beautiful place one spring afternoon of 1860, "don't forget that to be too near a thing is as bad for a good view of it as to be too far away." I was a slim, tallish girl of scant sixteen, who had never seen a slave-holder on his plantation, though I had known these two for years, and loved them dearly, as guests in our Northern home before it was broken up by the death of my mother. Father was an abolitionist, and yet he and they had never had a harsh word between them. If the general goodness of those who do some particular thing were any proof that that particular thing is good to do, they would have convinced me, without a word, that slave-holding was entirely right. But they were not trying to do any such thing. "Remember," continued my uncle, smiling round at me, "your dad's trusting you not to bring back our honest opinion-of anything-in place of your own." Silas, my aunt explained, was a carpen"He hands your uncle so much a week; all he can make beyond that he's allowed to keep." The carriage stopped at the door; half a dozen servants came, smiling, and I knew Sidney and Hester at a glance, they were so finely different "And the best," added my uncle; from their fellows. "she's as good as she is black." That night the daughter and I made |