"I'll wipe them if Tom'll wash them!" cried Willis. "'Tis tough for girls always to have to wash dishes." "I agree to find no fault for one," said Ellen. "We might do as they are said to do in the lumbering camps," remarked Addison; "that is to eat off the same plates without washing, till we forget what we ate off them last." "I object to such a plan as that!" cried Theodora. "I would rather wash them all, myself." Tom and Willis washed the dishes that night, however; and the girls sat back on their bench and smiled and pinched each other, to see the performance. By the time the dishes question was disposed of and everything had been tidied up and the fire once more attended to, the darkness of an October night had fallen. Everything outside the circle of our firelight was veiled in obscurity. There was no moon and it was a little cloudy, at least, the stars did not seem to show much. Very soon as we sat on our benches in front of the girls' cabin, we began to hear various wild notes from the great somber forest about us. "What is that kind of plaintive cry that I hear now and then near the stream?" Theodora asked. "It's like the word _seet_! I have heard it several times since dark, once or twice back of the cabins, and now out there by the two pines." "That? Oh, that is the night note of a little mouse-catching owl," said Addison. "Some term it the saw-whet owl, I believe. There are numbers of these little fellows about at night, in these woods. They catch lots of woods mice and such small birds as chickadees." "But hark! what was that strange, lonesome, hollow cry?" said Ellen, as an outcry at a distance, came wafted on the still air. "Oh, that's a raccoon," said Tom. "He's trying to attract the notice of some other 'coon. You'll hear him for fifteen or twenty minutes now, every minute or so." "They came into our corn-field last year," said Willis. "We heard them every night, calling to each other. I set a trap, but never could get any of them into it." Willis went on to relate several raccoon stories which his older brothers had told him. "Hullo!" he suddenly interrupted himself. "Hear that? away off up there by the foot of the mountain?" "I know what that was," said Tom. "That was a screamer." "What is a 'screamer?'" Theodora asked. "Oh, it's a kind of wild-cat," replied Thomas. "You tell her, Addison." "If it is a wild-cat, it is the same as the 'lucivee,' or loup-cervier," replied Addison. "But I have never heard one cry out at night; so I cannot say for certain." "Oh, I have," said Willis. "They have little tassels on the top of their ears and are about as big as a fair-sized dog. But they never come near a camp; they are so shy that you never can get sight of one, though the lumbermen tell stories of having fights with them. They've got long claws and could scratch like sin, if they were cornered up anywheres."