Gaut Gurley

s, to muse o'er

ce the forest

at own not man'

t hath ne'er,

rackless mount

flock that nev

ps and foaming

olitude: 't i

's charms, and view

is light canoe, with his fishing-tackle and fowling-piece, and pushed out upon the broad bosom of the forest-girt Umbagog. Having had the best success, when up on the lake the last time, on the western margin,

utset of its "varied journey to the deep." Turning from this magnificent swell on the west, the eye, as it wandered to the right over the bright expanse of intervening waters, next rested on the long, crescent-shaped mountain ridge, behind which slept, in their still deeper and wilder seclusion, the broad Mooseeluk-maguntic and the Molechunk-a-munk, which, with the Umbagog, make up the three principal links in this remarkable chain of lakes. Still farther to the right lay the seemingly bound

ir watery recesses. But all in vain the attempt. Not a trout was seen stirring the water at the surface, or manifesting his presence around the hook beneath; and all the endeavors which the tantalized angler made, by changing the bait, and throwing the line in different directions around him, proved, for the next hour, equally fruitless. While he was thus engaged, intently watching his line, each moment expecting that the next must bring him a bite, one of those peculiar, subdued, but far-reach

hawk-eyed, self-possessed looking man, with a round, c

lied Claud, with an

less you began be

did you s

er a cool shade in a sweltering hot day, very anxious to run out bare-headed in the sun, when there is no call for it; much less, then, the trout, that can't bear the sun and heat at all. Though there are,

not a-going

ng but a coon. I shall haul up my canoe somewhere about here; follow up the lake-shore a mile or so, with the idea of catching a deer in the edge of the water, come there to keep off the flies;

re, and, having moored it to a root, he glided into the thickets, and disappeared with a tread so noiseless as to leave

which was embowered by a group of magnificent pines. Here, finding a cool spring, as well as a refreshing shade, he drew out his lunch, and very leisurely proceeded to discuss it, with the ice-cold water of the spring by which he had seated himself f

s of luxur

thes not, pleasu

e, which he thought must have been delivered to him through mistake, Claud looked hastily round for the messenger, and, not seeing him, he walked backward and forward along the street, and lingered some time in the vicinity, still expecting the boy would soon return to claim the package. But, being disappointed in this, he went home, and, retiring to his room, undid the wrapper, which he carefully but vainly examined for some name, mark, or other clue to the mystery; and then, with much interest, fell to inspecting the picture. It was, obviously, a well-painted miniature likeness of a fair, dark-eyed girl, but representing no remembered face, except in the peculiar expression of the strong and commanding countenance; which, he thought, either in man or woman, he must have somewhere before encountered. The whole likeness, indeed, together with the circumstances under which it came into his hands, made, at the time, a lively impression on his mind; and, keepi

ing to note the last night's bed of some solitary bear, and there to trace the marks of the death-struggle of a victim deer, that, with all its vigilance and wondrous agility, had been surprised and brought down by the stealthy and far-leaping catamount. The ever-varying tenants of the forest, also, were constantly presenting as he passed on, some novelty to attract his unaccustomed eye; now in the smooth, tall shaft of the fusiform fir-the dandy of the forest-standing up with its beautiful cone-shaped top among its rougher neighbors, trim and straight as the

here in the woods! Breathless and speechless in her wild affright, she pointed, with a glance over her shoulder, to a thick, high tangle of large, strongly limbed, knotty, windfallen trees, a short distance behind her, and fled past him to the rear. Looking in the indicated direction, the startled and perplexed young man distinguished the outlines of a monstrous moose madly plunging at the woody barrier, and trying to force his enormous antlers through the unyielding limbs preparatory to leaping it in pursuit of his victim, who had eluded the infuriated animal, and barely escaped the fatal blows of his uplifted hoofs, by creeping under the providentially placed obstruction. Claud instantly raised his piece, when, feeling uncertain of his aim, he withheld his fire, and stood waiting for a fairer view. But, before he could obtain it, the moose, tired of vain attempts to force his passage through the bristling barricade of logs and limbs before him, disappeared for one moment, but the next came crashing round the nearest end of it, and, with renewed demonstrations of rage and hostility, made directly for the new opponent he beheld in his way. Still unalarmed for his own safety, Claud waited with levelled gun till his formidable assailant was within forty yards of him, when he took a quick aim and fired. Reeling under the discharge of his heavily loaded piece, and blinded by the smoke, he could not, at first, see the effect of his fire; but when he did so, the next instant, it was only to behold the monster brute, maddened, not stopped, by the flesh wounds inflicted, rushing on him with a force and fury which compelled him to leap suddenly aside, to avoid being beat into the earth by those terrible hoofs, which he saw lifted higher and higher, at each approaching step, for his destruction. Mindful, in his peril, of the precautions already learned from the hunters, Claude, while the moose, whose tremendous impetus was driving him straight ahead, could break up, so as to turn in the pursuit,-Claud made, with all the speed of which h

ch close quarters, that I had better be rather particular about my aim, so as to stop him at once; besides that, I was at first a little out of breath. I had heard the fellow blow w

s timely rescue," responded Claud, recovering his c

oot on the broad and still quivering flank of the huge animal. "Good twenty h

ten thus dangero

gly a customer as you meet with in the woods. This fellow I judge to have been oncommon vicious, as he begun his tantrums before he was touch

allant by the remark, though unwilling to appropriate to himself the prophe

and running, like a wild turkey, for the clearing, to which the moose had cut off her retreat. She has reached

w the family?" eagerly

nter. "They are new-c

her here so far into th

t get this moose into some condition, so that he will keep; then be off to let the settlers know of our luck. And early to-morrow morn

ss, the two contrived to raise it, by means of old logs rolled up for the purpose, several feet from the ground, so as to insure a free circulation of air beneath it. This being done, the hunter kindled two log fires, one on each side, to keep off, he said, the wolves and other carnivorous animals. They then, after c

anoe was tied, and turned round towards his lagging compan

laud, smiling; "and I would ev

smaller; and I think I'll have o

s you so c

the best time for them that could be got up: a deep cloud, as you see, is coming over the sun, and this wind is moving the water to the botto

feel disposed to banter the hunter, who had baited with a flap of moose-skin, which he had brought along with him, and which, to Claud, seemed little likely to attract the fishes to his hook. But he soon found himself mistake

cried Claud. "Why do

makes of it! Hop off, hop off, you fool! There," he added, as the trout at length broke away and disappeared, "there, that is right. N

round and round, or darted off in sharp short angles, with downward and forward plunges so quick and powerful as to make the stout sapling pole sway and bend, like a whipstock, in the steadying hands of the hunter. For four or five minutes he made no attempt to draw in

lding it up to view, "there is about what I bargained for: two feet long, not an inch s

th such luck?" aske

it will keep, this warm weather, with the plenty of moose-meat we shall have. Any thing more is a waste, which I will not commit. And you, sir, who have just hauled in your thi

o had already got under way, into the heaving waters of the now agitated lake. Side by side, with the quick and easy dip of their elastic single oars, the rowers now sent their light, sharp canoes, dug out to the thinness of a board

ar of smoke, which, deeply enshrouding that part of the distant forest lying east of the outlet of the lake with its expanded base, was r

view in the distance. "Let me see," he continued, running his eye along the border of the lake in search of his old landmarks: "there is the tall stub that stands half a mile down on the west bank of the river, and is n

it looked li

athering yonder, which has already given out one or two grumb

an't come from our slash. It must

rom the smoke, and extending upward to a height that no ground fire ever reached? That is your king pine in a blaze from bottom to top.

ur buildings?" ask

dubious shake of the head. "But hark again

man. "If any thing happens before I get there, I shall never forgive myself for my prolo

fall in behind. There; now keep the anchor-line slack between us, if you can," rapidly said the hunter, bending his sin

nt could impart, let us anticipate their arrival, to note what befell the objects of their anxieties, whom we so abruptly left in their perils from the fire,

n the logs of which it was built. Here, also, they soon succeeded in extinguishing the fire in the same manner. They were not, however, allowed a moment's respite from either their labors or alarms. The fences were by this time on fire in numerous places; and the chips and wood in the door-yard were seen to be igniting from the sparks and cinders which, every instant, fell thicker and hotter around their seemingly devoted domicil. The fences, after a few v

Mrs. Elwood, in her extremity, as she witness

n. If there are any within hearing, they will understand, with

The next moment that help was on the spot; but it was unnecessary. A mightier Hand was about to interpose. From the bold, black van of the hurrying and deeply-charged rack of cloud, that had now unheeded gained the zenith, a stream of fire, before which all other fires paled into nothing, at that instant descended on the top of the burning pine, and, rending it from top to bottom by the single explosion, sent its wide-flying fragments in blazing circles to the ground. A sharp, rattling sound, terminating in a cannon-like report, followed, shaking the rent and crashin