Part 6 (1/1)

Day was slow a-co, and didn't amount to much when it came, so heavy were the clouds; but the rain slackened We crawled out of our water-cure ”pack,” and sought the guide To our infinite relief he announced hi condition I looked at my watch It had stopped at five o'clock I poured the water out of it, and shook it; but, not being constructed on the hydraulic principle, it refused to go Some hours later we encountered a huntsrease; with this I filled the watch, and heated it in by the fire This is aa delicate Genevan tiht disclosed fully the suspected fact that our bed had been ht depression: the under rubber blanket spread in this had prevented the rain fro in as in fact a well-contrived bathtub While Old Phelps was pulling hiallons of water out of our blankets, we questioned the old man about the ”squawk,” and what bird was possessed of such a voice It was not a bird at all, he said, but a cat, the black-cat of the woods, larger than the doly customer, who is fond of fish, and carries a pelt that is worth two or three dollars in the market Occasionally he blunders into a sable-trap; and he is altogether hateful in his ways, and has the most uncultivated voice that is heard in the woods We shall remember hiht e lay in the storrier

We rolled up and shouldered our wet belongings, and, before the shades had yet lifted from the saturated bushes, pursued our h our progress was slow, and it was a question every rod whether the guide could go on We had the day before us; but if we did not find a boat at the inlet a day uide, to extricate us fro heroic in it; we had no object: it was merely, as it ht be lost or perish in it without reward and with little sy through the shen suddenly we stood in the little trail! Slight as it was, it appeared to us a very Broadway to Paradise if broad ways ever lead thither Phelps hailed it and sank down in it like one reprieved fro him, we quickly ran a quarter of a uide would have roused hiility of an aged deer: never was so glad a sound in his ear, he said, as that shout It was in a very jubilant mood that we emptied the boat of water, pushed off, shi+pped the cluh the black waters of the winding, desolate channel, and over the lake, whose dark waves were tossed a little in thebreeze

The trunks of dead trees stand about this lake, and all its shores are ragged with ghastly drift-wood; but it was open to the sky, and although the heavy clouds still obscured all the es we had a sense of escape and freedohtly past hardshi+p sits upon us! All the ht vanished, as if it had not been, in the shelter of the log cabin at Mud Pond, with dry clothes that fitted us as the skin of the bear fits hi fire, solicitude about our coness to hear the noing tale of our adventure Then came, in a day of absolute idleness, while the showers came and went, and the mountains appeared and disappeared in sun and stor of strength without any inclination to use it, and in a delicious languor which is too enjoyable to be surrendered to sleep