One of these valleys, so narrow that the sun seldom brightened the merry brook, made a deep cut in the rocks.  The head of this valley tapered until the walls nearly met; it seemed to lose itself in the shade of fern-faced cliffs, shadowed as they were by fir trees leaning over the brink, as though to search for secrets of the ravine.  So deep and dark and cool was this sequestered nook that here late summer had not dislodged early spring.  Everywhere was a soft, fresh, bright green.  The old gray cliffs were festooned with ferns, lichens and moss.  Under a great, shelving rock, damp and stained by the copper-colored water dripping down its side, was a dewy dell into which the sunshine had never peeped.  Here the swift brook tarried lovingly, making a wide turn under the cliff, as though loth to leave this quiet nook, and then leaped once more to enthusiasm in its murmuring flight.

Life abounded in this wild, beautiful, almost inaccessible spot.  Little brown and yellow birds flitted among the trees; thrushes ran along the leaf-strewn ground; orioles sang their melancholy notes; robins and flickers darted beneath the spreading branches.  Squirrels scurried over the leaves like little whirlwinds, and leaped daringly from the swinging branches or barked noisily from woody perches.  Rabbits hopped inquisitively here and there while nibbling at the tender shoots of sassafras and laurel.

Along this flower-skirted stream a tall young man, carrying a rifle cautiously stepped, peering into the branches overhead.  A gray flash shot along a limb of a white oak; then the bushy tail of a squirrel flitted into a well-protected notch, from whence, no doubt, a keen little eye watched the hunter’s every movement.

The rifle was raised; then lowered.  The hunter walked around the tree.  Presently up in the tree top, snug under a knotty limb, he spied a little ball of gray fur.  Grasping a branch of underbush, he shook it vigorously.  The thrashing sound worried the gray squirrel, for he slipped from his retreat and stuck his nose over the limb.  Crack!  With a scratching and tearing of bark the squirrel loosened his hold and then fell; alighting with a thump.  As the hunter picked up his quarry a streak of sunshine glinting through the tree top brightened his face.

The hunter was Joe.

He was satisfied now, for after stowing the squirrel in the pocket of his hunting coat he shouldered his rifle and went back up the ravine.  Presently a dull roar sounded above the babble of the brook.  It grew louder as he threaded his way carefully over the stones.  Spots of white foam flecked the brook.  Passing under the gray, stained cliff, Joe turned around a rocky corner, and came to an abrupt end of the ravine.  A waterfall marked the spot where the brook entered.  The water was brown as it took the leap, light green when it thinned out; and below, as it dashed on the stones, it became a beautiful, sheeny white.