“All agreed,” we answered, with one voice.

“Very well, gentlemen,” said Spalding, shouldering his rifle, “there’s one life saved anyhow.  That animal up there has been in great peril, but he’s safe now.  I don’t intend to fire at him sooner than ten o’clock to-morrow, and if I understand our arrangements, we leave here in the morning at six.”

“Sold, by Moses!” exclaimed Martin, as he broke out into a roar that you might have heard a mile; “I thought the Judge meant something, by the time he wasted in talkin’ and gettin’ ready to shoot.”

“Spalding,” inquired Smith, “do you expect us to keep this compact?”

“Of course I do,” he replied; “did any of us peach when you opened so rich in the matter of your bear?  Did any one break his compact with you on that subject?  Absolve us from our agreement about the bear, and you may take my shot at that animal up in the tree.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday,” Smith replied, “and I can’t afford to exchange the glory of killing the bear in my own way, and baring three responsible endorsers, for the honor of shooting a coon.  Gentlemen,” he continued, “I move that that coon be permitted to take his own time to descend from his perch up in the tree-top there;” and the motion was carried unanimously.

CHAPTER XXVII.

WOULD I WERE A BOY AGAIN.

“We have played the boy again, yesterday and to-day, pretty well,” remarked Smith, as we sat in front of oar tents in the evening, smoking our pipes.  “And I am half inclined to think we have started for home too soon, after all.  Spalding’s moralizing for the last two or three days deceived me.  I thought, as he was becoming so serious, he must be getting tired of the woods; but his proposition yesterday to escort that deer to the shore, and frighten him almost to death, his jolly humor with our young friends over the way, and the trick he played on as in regard to the raccoon this evening, satisfies me that he’s got a good deal of the boy in him yet.  We shall have to retreat from the woods slower than I thought, to exhaust it.”

“If the cares of business or the duties of life did not call us back to civilization” said the Doctor, “I could almost spend the summer among these lakes, only for the luxury of feeling like a boy again.  When I listen to the glad voices of the wild things around as, I can almost wish myself one of them.”

“That coon, for instance,” interrupted Smith, “that came so near getting shot by his chattering.”

“I call the gentleman to order,” said I; “the Doctor has the floor.”