Two miles from the head of the lake, on the east side, is a deep bay at the head of which enters a little brook that comes creeping along for a mile among the tangled roots of ancient hemlocks and spruce, singing gaily among the loose stones, sometimes disappearing entirely beneath bridges of moss, and sometimes sparkling in the sunlight, on its way to the lake.  This little stream we found swarming with speckled trout of the size of minnows, and at its mouth the large trout congregated.  As we rounded one of the points that shut out the view of this bay from the lake, we saw two deer feeding quietly upon the lily pads along the shore, some quarter of a mile from us.  We dropped quietly back behind the point, where Smith and one of the boatmen prepared to take a shot at them.  Martin took his seat in the stern with his paddle, and Smith lay stretched at length along the bottom of the boat upon boughs prepared for the occasion, with his rifle resting upon the forward end of the boat.  It was broad daylight, and to paddle up within shooting distance of a deer under such circumstances, in plain view of an animal the most wary, is a delicate job, but it may be done.  I have more than once been thus paddled within thirty yards of a deer while feeding in the water.  The wind must be blowing from the deer to the hunter, or the scent will alarm the animal, and he will go snorting and bounding away.

Smith and Martin passed silently out into the bay, and moved slowly towards where the deer were feeding.  The boat in which we sat was permitted to float out to a position from which we could see the sportsmen as they approached the game.  Slowly but steadily they moved, the paddle remaining in the water, sculling the little craft along as if it were a log drifting in the water.  The deer occasionally raised their heads, looking all around, evidently regarding the boat as a harmless thing floating in from the lake.  After gazing thus about them they stooped their heads again, and went on feeding, as if no danger were near them.  The hunters drifted within seventy or eighty yards of the game, when a column of white smoke shot suddenly up from the bow of the boat, and the report of Smith’s rifle rang out sharp and clear over the lake.  We saw where the ball struck the water just beyond the deer, passing directly under its belly, possibly high enough to graze its body.  At the flash and report of the rifle, the animal leaped high into the air, bounded in affright this way and that for a moment, and then straightened itself for the woods.  We heard his snort as he went crashing up the hillside.

Reader, should you ever drift out to this beautiful lake, you will find on the ridge just above where Bog River comes tumbling, and roaring, and foaming over the rocks into the lake, the charred remains of a campfire, built against a great log that was once the trunk of a tall forest tree.  If you should visit it within a year or two, you will perhaps notice some forked stakes standing a few feet from the place of the fire, and a bed of withered and dry boughs (now fresh and green).  Well, our tents were stretched over those stakes, those boughs were our bed, and those charred chunks are the remains of our campfire, that sent a sepulchral light among the forest trees around.