The people of Rangeley disappeared as mysteriously as they had emerged from the woods, having had their share of the good or bad talk of that year of freedom. If political harangues educate, the educated class was largely recruited that summer.
Next day, again, was stormy. We stayed quietly under shelter, preparing for our real journey after so much prelude. The Isaac Newton’s steam-whistle had sent up the curtain; the overture had followed with strains Der-Freischutzy in the Adirondacks, pastoral in the valleys of Vermont and New Hampshire, funebral and andante in the fogs of Mollychunkamug; now it was to end in an allegretto gallopade, and the drama would open.
At last the sun shone bright upon the silky ripples of the lake. Mr. Toothaker provided two buggies, — one for himself and our traps, one for Iglesias and me. We rattled away across county and county. And so at full speed we drove all day, and, with a few hours’ halt, all night, — all a fresh, starry night, — until gay sunrise brought us to Skowhegan, on the road to Moosehead Lake.
As we had travelled all night, breakfast must be our substitute for slumber. Repletion, instead of repose, must restore us. Two files of red-shirted lumbermen, brandishing knives at each other across a long table, only excited us to livelier gymnastics; and when we had thus hastily crammed what they call in Maine beefsteak, and what they infuse down
