at the time.  After a while, the warmth came back to him, but he dared not trust himself again to the boughs; he fought the cold all night as one might fight a besieging foe.  By carefully husbanding the fuel, the beleaguering enemy was kept at bay till morning came; but when morning did come, even the huge root he had used as a chair was consumed.  Rolled in my blanket beneath a foot or more of balsam boughs, I had got some fairly good sleep, and was most of the time oblivious of the melancholy vigil of my friend.  As we had but a few morsels of food left, and had been on rather short rations the day before, hunger was added to his other discomforts.  At that time a letter was on the way to him from his wife, which contained this prophetic sentence:  “I hope thee is not suffering with cold and hunger on some lone mountain-top.”

Mr. Bicknell’s thrush struck up again at the first signs of dawn, notwithstanding the cold.  I could hear his penetrating and melodious whisper as I lay buried beneath the boughs.  Presently I arose and invited my friend to turn in for a brief nap, while I gathered some wood and set the coffee brewing.  With a brisk, roaring fire on, I left for the spring to fetch some water, and to make my toilet.  The leaves of the mountain goldenrod, which everywhere covered the ground in the opening, were covered with frozen particles of vapor, and the scene, shut in by fog, was chill and dreary enough.

We were now not long in squaring an account with Slide, and making ready to leave.  Round pellets of snow began to fall, and we came off the mountain on the 10th of June in a November storm and temperature.  Our purpose was to return by the same valley we had come.  A well-defined trail led off the summit to the north; to this we committed ourselves.  In a few minutes we emerged at the head of the slide that had given the mountain its name.  This was the path made by visitors to the scene; when it ended, the track of the avalanche began; no bigger than your hand, apparently, had it been at first, but it rapidly grew, until it became several rods in width.  It dropped down from our feet straight as an arrow until it was lost in the fog, and looked perilously steep.  The dark forms of the spruce were clinging to the edge of it, as if reaching out to their fellows to save them.  We hesitated on the brink, but finally cautiously began the descent.  The rock was quite naked and slippery, and only on the margin of the slide were there any boulders to stay the foot, or bushy growths to aid the hand.  As we paused, after some minutes, to select our course, one of the finest surprises of the trip awaited us:  the fog in our front was swiftly whirled up by the breeze, like the drop-curtain at the theatre, only much more rapidly, and in a twinkling the vast gulf opened before us.  It was so sudden as to be almost bewildering.  The world opened like a book, and there were the pictures; the spaces were without a film, the forests and mountains