On the banks of the Chazy and near the outlet, a
half-breed, that is, half French and half Indian, had built him a log
cabin, and cleared about an acre of land around it. His live stock
consisted of two homely, lean, and half-starved dogs, and as ragged
and ill-looking a donkey as could be found in a week's travel. The
half-breed was a sort of half fisherman and half hunter, excelling in
nothing, unless it be that he was the laziest man this side of the
Rocky Mountains. He succeeded, occasionally, in killing a deer in the
forest, and when he did so, he would lead his donkey to the place of
slaughter, and bring in the carcase on the long-eared animal's back.
"We were passing from the Chazy to Bradley's Lake, and had sat down on
the trunk of a fallen tree to take a short breathing spell. It was a
warm afternoon, and the air was calm; not a breath stirred the leaves
on the old trees around us; the forest sounds were hushed, save the
tap of the woodpecker on his hollow tree, or an occasional drumming of
a partridge on his log. It was drawing towards one of those calm,
still, autumnal evenings of which poets sing, but which are to be met
with in all their glory only among the beautiful lakes that lay
sleeping in the wild woods, and surrounded by old primeval things. The
path wound round a densely wooded and sombre hollow, the depths of
which the eye could not penetrate, but from out of which came the song
of a stream that went cascading down the rocks, and rippling among the
loose boulders that lay in its course.
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