silence and wildness.  The trout were quite black, like all wood trout, and took the bait eagerly.  I followed the stream till the deepening shadows warned me to turn back.  As I neared camp, the fire shone far through the trees, dispelling the gathering gloom, but blinding my eyes to all obstacles at my feet.  I was seriously disturbed on arriving to find that one of my companions had cut an ugly gash in his shin with the axe while felling a tree.  As we did not carry a fifth wheel, it was not just the time or place to have any of our members crippled, and I had bodings of evil.  But, thanks to the healing virtues of the balsam which must have adhered to the blade of the axe, and double thanks to the court-plaster with which Orville had supplied himself before leaving home, the wounded leg, by being favored that night and the next day, gave us little trouble.

  [Illustration:  THE BEAVERKILL]

That night we had our first fair and square camping out,—­that is, sleeping on the ground with no shelter over us but the trees,—­and it was in many respects the pleasantest night we spent in the woods.  The weather was perfect and the place was perfect, and for the first time we were exempt from the midges and smoke; and then we appreciated the clean new page we had to work on.  Nothing is so acceptable to the camper-out as a pure article in the way of woods and waters.  Any admixture of human relics mars the spirit of the scene.  Yet I am willing to confess that, before we were through those woods, the marks of an axe in a tree were a welcome sight.  On resuming our march next day we followed the right bank of the Beaverkill, in order to strike a stream which flowed in from the north, and which was the outlet of Balsam Lake, the objective point of that day’s march.  The distance to the lake from our camp could not have been over six or seven miles; yet, traveling as we did, without path or guide, climbing up banks, plunging into ravines, making detours around swampy places, and forcing our way through woods choked up with much fallen and decayed timber, it seemed at least twice that distance, and the mid-afternoon sun was shining when we emerged into what is called the “Quaker Clearing,” ground that I had been over nine years before, and that lies about two miles south of the lake.  From this point we had a well-worn path that led us up a sharp rise of ground, then through level woods till we saw the bright gleam of the water through the trees.

I am always struck, on approaching these little mountain lakes, with the extensive preparation that is made for them in the conformation of the ground.  I am thinking of a depression, or natural basin, in the side of the mountain or on its top, the brink of which I shall reach after a little steep climbing; but instead of that, after I have accomplished the ascent, I find a broad sweep of level or gently undulating woodland that brings me after a half hour or so to the lake, which lies in this vast lap like a drop of water in the palm of a man’s hand.