"The little dock there, with the boats moored beside it, and the hut where our friend here keeps his horn and cannon,--all lay in a melancholy quiet which struck me like death--as if those who frequented them had gone away at some nightfall years ago, like the workmen who left their trowels in the mortar of unfinished Pompeii on the morning of its destruction,--never to return again and yet ever to be waited for, while the earth kept its course in the heavens. I was alone, and I suppose that imagination ran riot with me and made me partially a maniac. The hush was so awful that I dared not break it, even by a loud breath. I saw the Indians there, under yon sweeping trees to the left, whose branches bend down and almost kiss the water--saw an Indian canoe lying there, faces within it smeared with war-paint and the pointed arrow ready to twang from the bow-string. I expected to hear the war-whoop every instant--expected it, perhaps not in my human mind but in that other and more powerful mind for which we are none of us quite responsible. Then I saw--yes, I was sure that I saw the dusky shadow of a robber flitting along from pine to pine, far up on the side of the cliff there, silent and dangerous as death, and ready to drop down on the first living thing that passed beneath him. Then I saw fiery eyes through the branches, and thought that the panther and the catamount that lurked in these tangled woods two hundred years ago, divided possession once more with the Indians and were prowling about for some late banquet. I do not think that it was fear that I felt, for I would not have gone away if I could, any more than I could have gone away if I would; but it appeared to be the very silent haunt of nature in her hour of rest, wherewith nothing but the wild and the savage had any business; and it seemed impossible to throw aside the idea that even the tread of a civilized foot must be a sacrilege that only life could atone. Then there was a sudden plunge from the bushes into the water, a few yards up the bank, and a ripple following some large dark object swimming away towards the other shore. This was more real, and the feeling of awe began to pass away, for I knew that the swimmer must be a water-rat or otter that had been paying a midnight visit like myself and was now going homeward by the cool and refreshing marine route. That was the first noise I had heard, but others followed, for an owl began to hoot over yonder in the bushes and a young eagle--I suppose it must have been a young eagle--indulged in a scream from the top of the Cliff, where I believe he has a habit of nesting. Then the supernatural and the imaginative rolled away after they had held me an hour or two, and I was simply alone at two o'clock or a little later, beside Echo Lake, only half a mile from the bed that had been all that time waiting for me. I took the warning of the night-owl and the eagle, who no doubt intended to order me off as an intruder, and strolled