and watch the light grow in .the dusky cavern of the woods.  He would sit dozing awhile after the first outbreak, and presently as the flood of light grew clearer, lift himself a little, take another peep at the sky, and crow again, turning his head to hear those weird, mocking roosters of the timber-land.  Then, shortly, I would hear my father poking the fire or saying, as he patted the rooster:  “Sass ’em back, ye noisy little brat!  Thet ’s right:  holler.  Tell D’ri it’s time t’ bring some wood fer the fire.”

In a few minutes the pot and kettle would be boiling and the camp all astir.  We had trout and partridge and venison a-plenty for our meals, that were served in dishes of tin.  Breakfast over, we packed our things.  The cart went on ahead, my father bringing the oxen, while I started the sheep with D’ri.

Those sheep were as many thorns in our flesh that day we made off in the deep woods from Lake Champlain.  Travel was new to them, and what with tearing through thickets and running wild in every slash, they kept us jumping.  When they were leg-weary and used to travel, they began to go quietly.  But slow work it was at best, ten or twelve miles a day being all we could do, for the weather was hot and our road like the way of the transgressor.  Our second night in the woods we could hear the wolves howling as we camped at dusk.  We built our fire near the shore of a big pond, its still water, framed in the vivid green of young tamaracks.  A great hill rose on the farther side of it, with galleries of timber sloping to the summit, and peopled with many birds.  We huddled the sheep together in a place where the trees were thick, while father brought from the cart a coil of small rope.  We wound it about the trees, so the sheep were shut in a little yard.  After supper we all sat by the fire, while D’ri told how he had been chased by wolves in the beaver country north of us.

D’ri was an odd character.  He had his own way of expressing the three degrees of wonder, admiration, and surprise.  “Jerushy!”—­accented on the second syllable—­was the positive, “Jerushy Jane!” the comparative, and “Jerushy Jane Pepper!” the superlative.  Who that poor lady might be I often wondered, but never ventured to inquire.  In times of stress I have heard him swear by “Judas Priest,” but never more profanely.  In his youth he had been a sailor on the lake, when some artist of the needle had tattooed a British jack on the back of his left hand—­a thing he covered, of shame now, when he thought of it.  His right hand had lost its forefinger in a sawmill.  His rifle was distinguished by the name of Beeswax,—­“Ol’ Beeswax” he called it sometimes,—­for no better reason than that it was “easy spoke an’ hed a kind uv a powerful soun’ tew it.”  He had a nose like a shoemaker’s thumb:  there was a deep incurve from its wide tip to his forehead.  He had a large, gray, inquiring eye and the watchful habit of the woodsman.  Somewhere in the midst