Our level road wound through the Pinkham woods in the defiles of the mountains, and at every turn gave them to us in a new aspect. It seemed to me that the sun had never shone so brightly as it now glanced into the forest upon the stems of the white birches—Wordsworth's 'ladies of the wood'—and danced on the mosaic carpet made by the brilliant fallen leaves. We missed the summer-birds, but the young partridges abounded, and, hardly startled by our wheels, often crossed our path. We saw a fox, who turned and very quietly surveyed us, as if to ask who the barbarians were that so out of season invaded his homestead. One of us—I will not tell you which, lest you discredit the story—fancying, while the wagon was slowly ascending, to make a cross-cut on foot through some woodland, saw a bear—yes, a bear! face to face, and made, you may be sure, a forced march to the highway. The mountaineers were not at all surprised when we recounted what we fancied a hair-breadth 'scape, but quietly told us that 'three bears had been seen in that neighborhood lately, but bears did no harm unless provoked, or desperately hungry!' It was not a very pleasant thought that our lives depended on the chances of Bruin's appetite.
This meeting with the fox—the Mercury of the woods—and with the bear—the hero of many a dramatic fable—would, in the forests of the Old World, and in prolific Old World fancies, have been wrought into pretty legends or traditions for after-ages. I might have figured as the
'Forsaken, woful, solitary maid,
In wilderness and wasteful deserts strayed,'
set on by the 'ramping beast;' and for the knight? why, it would be easy to convert the wanderer I descried on the summit of Mount Washington, into a lover and deliverer, whose 'allegiance and fast fealty' had bound him to my trail. But, alas! there is no leisure in this material age for fancy-weaving; and all our way was as bare of tradition or fable as if no human footstep had impressed it, till we came to a brawling stream near Davis's, crossing the way, which we were told was called 'Nancy's Brook.' We heard various renderings of the origin of the name, but all ended in one source—man's perjury and woman's trust. A poor girl, some said, had come with a woodsman, a collier, or tree-feller, and lived with him in the mountains, toiling for him, and 'singing to him,' no doubt, 'when she his evening food did dress,' till he grew tired, and one day went forth and did not come back; and day after day she waited, but her Theseus did not return, and she was starved to death on the brink of the little brook that henceforward was to murmur her tragic tale.
The sun was set to us behind the ridge of Mount Willard, when we reached the 'Willey Slide,' and Alice and I walked the last two miles to the 'Mountain Notch.' Just after we alighted from the wagon, and while we were yet close to it, at a turn in the road I perceived a pedestrian traveler before us, who, seeming startled by the sound of our wheels, sprang lightly over the fence. I involuntarily withdrew my arm from Alice's, and stood still, gazing after him for the half-instant that passed before he disappeared in the forest.
'Are you frightened?' said Alice; 'this is a lonely road; shall I hail the wagon?'
'Oh! no,' I replied.
'But,' she urged, 'this may be some fugitive from justice.'
'Nonsense, Alice; don't you see by his air that he is a gentleman?'
'No,' she saw nothing 'but that he was light of foot, and anxious to escape observation.'