one of the quills than the tail leaps up in a most surprising manner, and the laugh is not on your side.  The beast cantered along the path in my front, and I threw myself upon him, shielded by my roll of blankets.  He submitted quietly to the indignity, and lay very still under my blankets, with his broad tail pressed close to the ground.  This I proceeded to investigate, but had not fairly made a beginning when it went off like a trap, and my hand and wrist were full of quills.  This caused me to let up on the creature, when it lumbered away till it tumbled down a precipice.  The quills were quickly removed from my hand, when we gave chase.  When we came up to him, he had wedged himself in between the rocks so that he presented only a back bristling with quills, with the tail lying in ambush below.  He had chosen his position well, and seemed to defy us.  After amusing ourselves by repeatedly springing his tail and receiving the quills in a rotten stick, we made a slip-noose out of a spruce root, and, after much manoeuvring, got it over his head and led him forth.  In what a peevish, injured tone the creature did complain of our unfair tactics!  He protested and protested, and whimpered and scolded like some infirm old man tormented by boys.  His game after we led him forth was to keep himself as much as possible in the shape of a ball, but with two sticks and the cord we finally threw him over on his back and exposed his quill-less and vulnerable under side, when he fairly surrendered and seemed to say, “Now you may do with me as you like.”  His great chisel-like teeth, which are quite as formidable as those of the woodchuck, he does not appear to use at all in his defense, but relies entirely upon his quills, and when those fail him, he is done for.

  [Illustration:  THE WITTENBERG FROM WOODLAND VALLEY]

After amusing ourselves with him awhile longer, we released him and went on our way.  The trail to which we had committed ourselves led us down into Woodland Valley, a retreat which so took my eye by its fine trout brook, its superb mountain scenery, and its sweet seclusion, that I marked it for my own, and promised myself a return to it at no distant day.  This promise I kept, and pitched my tent there twice during that season.  Both occasions were a sort of laying siege to Slide, but we only skirmished with him at a distance; the actual assault was not undertaken.  But the following year, reinforced by two other brave climbers, we determined upon the assault, and upon making it from this the most difficult side.  The regular way is by Big Ingin Valley, where the climb is comparatively easy, and where it is often made by women.  But from Woodland Valley only men may essay the ascent.  Larkins is the upper inhabitant, and from our camping-ground near his clearing we set out early one June morning.