"Yes," returned Mr. Killgrove, "when you come to get seven or eight feet more of water atop of this in spring, it is considerable of a puddle." Our weather seemed to be now bettering with more resolution. Many days had passed since Aurora had shown herself,--many days since the rising sun and the world had seen each other. But yesterday this sulky estrangement ended, and, after the beautiful reconciliation at sunset, the faint mists of doubt in their brief parting for a night had now no power against the ardors of anticipated meeting. As we shot out upon the steaming water, the sun was just looking over the lower ridges of a mountain opposite. Air, blue and quivering, hung under shelter of the mountain-front, as if a film from the dim purple of night were hiding there to see what beauty day had, better than its own. The gray fog, so dreary for three mornings, was utterly vanquished; all was vanished, save where "swimming vapors sloped athwart the glen," and "crept from pine to pine." These had dallied, like spies of a flying army, to watch for chances of its return; but they, too, carried away by the enthusiasms of a world liberated and illumined, changed their allegiance, joined the party of hope and progress, and added the grace of their presence to the fair pageant of a better day. Lake Moosetocmaguntic is good,--above the average. If its name had but two syllables, and the thing named were near Somewhere, poetry and rhetoric would celebrate it, and the world would be prouder of itself for another "gem." Now nobody sees it, and those who do have had their anticipations lengthened leagues by every syllable of its sesquipedalian title. One expects, perhaps, something more than what he finds. He finds a good average sheet of water, set in a circlet of dark forest,--forests sloping up to wooded hills, and these to wooded mountains. Very good and satisfactory elements, and worth notice,--especially when the artistic eye is also a fisherman's eye, and he detects fishy spots. As to wilderness, there can be none more complete. At the upper end of the lake is a trace of humanity in a deserted cabin on a small clearing. There a hermit pair once lived,--man and wife, utterly alone for fifteen years,--once or twice a year, perhaps, visited by lumbermen. Fifteen years alone with a wife! a trial, certainly,--not necessarily in the desponding sense of the word; not as Yankees have it, making trial a misfortune, but a test. Mr. Killgrove entertained us with resinous-flavored talk. The voyage was unexcitingly pleasant. We passed an archipelago of scrubby islands, and, turning away from a blue vista of hills northward, entered a lovely curve of river richly overhung with arbor-vitae, a shadowy quiet reach of clear water, crowded below its beautiful surface with reflected forest and reflected sky. "Iglesias," said I, "we divined how Mollychunkamug had its name; now, as to Moosetocmaguntic,--hence that elongated appellative?"