The Present Century.
Place
Manhattan and the Hill Country of the Moosatuk.
AT THE SIGN OF THE FOX
CHAPTER I
THE RIVER KINGDOM
Robert Stead and Dr. Russell, clad for hunting, tramped down a pent road through the woodland and halted at the bars that separated it from the highway.
Like careful woodsmen, they made sure that their guns were at half-cock before resting them against the tumble-down wall; pulling out pipe and tobacco pouch, they filled and fingered the smooth bowls with the deliberation that is akin to restfulness. Then, face to windward, they applied the match and drew the few rapid puffs that kindle the charmed fire, and leaning on the top rail, looked down the slope to where the river, broad and tranquil as it passed, narrowed and grew more elusive as the eye traced it toward its starting-point in the north country many miles away.
For more than a hundred miles between its throne in the hill country and the sea travels the Moosatuk, and all the land through which it passes is its kingdom. What its stern mood was in the ancient days when as an ice-floe, maybe, it tore a pathway through the granite hills, fortressing them with splintered slabs and tossing huge boulders from its course, man may but guess; but to-day a wild thing, half tamed, it obeys while it still compels. Above, below, confined by dams, it does the will of man; and yet, flow where it will, man follows, with his mills, his factories, his railways, until, by spreading into shallows, it half eludes his greed. For twenty sinuous miles it follows a free, sunlit course, now running swift and lapping the banks of little islands wooded with hemlocks, now stretching itself on the smooth pebbles until it tempts the unwary to the crossing on a bridge of stepping-stones. For all this space the ferns and wood flowers stoop from the slanting banks to snatch its lingering kisses, the wood folk drink from it, the wild fowl sleep on it, and its waters bear no heavier responsibility or weight than driftwood or the duck boat, that steals silently forth, a shadow in the morning twilight, like the Mohican canoes that a mere century ago plied the selfsame waters.