“There, Judge” said Cullen, “I’ve hearn that sound often among the mountains, and when I’ve been driftin’ about on these lakes, it never seems much louder or nearer.  It always seems to come from the mountains, and yet you’ll hear it while shantyin’ at their base, and it sounds just as faint and far off as it did just now.  What it is, or where it comes from, I won’t undertake to say.  The old Ingins who, five and twenty year ago, fished and hunted over these regions, told of it as a thing to wonder at, and that it was handed along down from generation to generation, as one of the mysteries of this wilderness.  I mind once I was out among the Adirondacks, trappin’ martin and sable.  I shantied for a week with Crop, under the shadow of Mount Marcy.  It was twenty odd year ago, and that old mountain stood a good deal further from a clearin’ than it does now.  Crop and I had a good many hard days’ work that trip; but we got a full pack of martin and sable skins, and two or three wolf scalps, besides a bear and a painter, and we didn’t complain.  Wal, one afternoon, we put up a shanty in an open spot two miles from our regular campin’ ground, and built our fire for the night.  There was no moon, and though the stars shone out bright and clear, yet in the deep shadow of the forest it was dark and gloomy enough.  We had eaten our supper, and I was smokin’ my last pipe before layin’ myself away, when all at once the forest was lighted up like the day.  It was all the more light from the sudden glare which broke upon the darkness, and there, for an instant, stood the old woods, lighted up like noon, every tree distinct, every mountain, every rock, and valley, as perfect and plain to be seen as if the sun was standin’ right above us in the sky.  Crop was as much astonished as I was, and he crept to my feet and trembled like a coward, as he crouched beside them.  I looked up, and flyin’ across the heavens was a great ball of fire, lookin’ for all the world as if the sun had broke loose, and was runnin’ away in a fright.  A long trail of light flashed and streamed along the sky where it passed.  It was out of sight in a moment, and the fiery tail it left behind faded into darkness.  A little while after, maybe ten minutes after it disappeared, that boomin’ sound came driftin’ down the wind, and I somehow tho’t it was mixed up in some way with that great ball of fire that flew across the sky.  Maybe I was wrong, but I’ve always tho’t it was the bustin’ into pieces of that fiery thing that lighted up the old woods that night, that broke the forest stillness, like a far off cannon.  I never heard it so loud at any other time, and when I hear it now, I always say to myself, there goes another of Nater’s fireballs into shivers.  I’ve hearn it in the daytime, when the air was still, and the forest voices were hushed, but I never at any other time, day or night, saw what I suspicioned occasioned it.  The Ingins used to say it came from the mountains, but it don’t.  I’ve hearn some folks pretend that it comes from the bowels of the airth, but it don’t; its a thing of the air, and I’ve a notion it travels a mighty long way from its startin’ place afore it reaches us.