I was pleased that he had taken the trouble to recite to me, and he knew it, but in the midst of a remark to me he began to yawn sleepily.
"Prince Fetlar," he said, "I'm going to have forty winks. I scarcely slept a bit last night," and he stepped back among the old pines that had watched the pool and its dark doings for many a year.
It was said to be bottomless, and when my master lay down to sleep he chose a nice fragrant bed of pine needles at the foot of a moss-grown boulder and at a safe distance from the treacherous waters of the pool.
"Watch a few minutes, Prince," he said, "it will only be a cat nap."
"Bless him," I said to myself, "he's safe for a couple of hours," and I, not feeling at all sleepy, placed myself in a bed of brakes behind him and stood stock still planning to see what I could see.
As long as we had been moving we saw nothing but the still life of the woods. The breaking of branches and the sound of my master's voice had kept every shy wild thing from us. They were not afraid that we would kill them, for Mr. Devering and the Good American allowed no shooting on their timber limits. They were just naturally averse to the near presence of human beings, but I knew they were all peeping at us as we went by.
As soon as my young master fell asleep some timid wood birds who haunted this pool began to talk to each other about the abundance of food this year and the easiness of the task of bringing up young ones.
Then a funny young Canadian bear came by, pad-padding along and stopping a few feet from me to sit down and leisurely scratch his ear. However, he caught our odour and away he went, he, too, looking for home and mother.
While I stood thinking what a lovely and pleasant thing it was that my young master and I, too, had no fear of these wild creatures about us now that we knew there was not one of them that would do us harm, I bent my head to rub off some little ants that were wandering about my fetlocks. There, almost nestling against my pastern, was a hen partridge, or perhaps I should say grouse.
She looked up at me with a bright and trusting eye, but decided she had better move along now that she was discovered. However, she made no haste about it and reminded me of some tame partridges in Maine whose backs a master I had then used to tickle with his fishing rod.