of a huge bear in the sand on the beach, and the deer-paths were like those that lead to a sheep-fold.  It was a pleasant thing to row along the shore, into the bays, around the islands, and into the creeks that came in from other little lakes deeper in the wilderness.  The banks are mostly bold and bluff, the rocks standing up four or eight feet from the water, or broken and fallen like an ancient wall.  Here and there is a long stretch of beautiful sandy beach, on which the tiny waves break with a rippling song, and from which bars go out with a gentle slope into the water.

We intended to remain here quietly for a few days, taking things easy, rowing, and fishing, and hunting enough for exercise only.  There is plenty of deer, and trout, and duck, and partridge here, to be taken with small labor; there are bears, and wolves, and panthers, in the woods around.  But these are fewer and harder to be come at than the other game; there is an occasional moose too.  We saw the tracks of all these animals hereabouts, and we hoped to get a shot at some or all of them before leaving the woods.

Reader, did you ever hear the wolves howl in the old woods of a Still night!  No?  Then you have not heard all the music of the forest.  Some deep-mouthed old forester will open his jaws, and send forth a volume of sound so deep, so loud, so changeful, so undulating and variable in its character, that, as it rolls along the forest, and comes back in quavering echoes from the mountains, you will almost swear that his single voice is an agglomerate of a thousand, all mixed, and mingled, and rolled up into one.  May be, away in the distance, possibly on the other side of the lake, or across a broad valley, another will open his mouth and answer, with a howl as deep, and wild, and variable, as the first; and possibly a third and fourth, one on the right, and another on the left, will join in the chorus, until the whole forest seems to be fall of howling and noise; and yet not one of these animals may be within a mile of you.  To a timid man, there is something terrific in the howl of the wolves; but in truth, they are harmless as the deer, quite as wild and shy, and full as cowardly in the presence of a man.  They will fly as frightened from his approach, unless, possibly, in the intense cold and desolation of winter, when driven together and rendered desperate by hunger, they might be emboldened by starvation to attack a man, but even this is among the apocryphal legends of the wilderness.

“Hearing them wolves howlin’,” said Hank Martin, as we sat in the evening around our camp fire, “reminds me of a story Mark Shuff tells of his experience with the critters; but mind, I don’t pretend to swear to its truth, for I don’t claim to know anything about the facts myself.  I’ll tell it as Mark told it to me, and if it turns out to be too tough a yarn to take down whole, don’t lay it to me.  You know Mark Shuff,” said he, appealing to me, “and you may believe such parts of it as you may be able to swallow, and the rest may be divided up, as the Doctor said the other day, among the company.”