[Illustration:  SOME PEOPLE OF THE CATSKILLS]

In due time we found an old road, to which we had been directed, that led over the mountain to the West Branch.  It was a hard pull, sweetened by blackberries and a fine prospect.  The snowbird was common along the way, and a solitary wild pigeon shot through the woods in front of us, recalling the nests we had seen on the East Branch,—­little scaffoldings of twigs scattered all through the trees.

It was nearly noon when we struck the West Branch, and the sun was scalding hot.  We knew that two and three pound trout had been taken there, and yet we wet not a line in its waters.  The scene was primitive, and carried one back to the days of his grandfather, stumpy fields, log fences, log houses and barns.  A boy twelve or thirteen years old came out of a house ahead of us eating a piece of bread and butter.  We soon overtook him and held converse with him.  He knew the land well, and what there was in the woods and the waters.  He had walked out to the railroad station, fourteen miles distant, to see the cars, and back the same day.  I asked him about the flies and mosquitoes, etc.  He said they were all gone except the “blunder-heads;” there were some of them left yet.

“What are blunder-heads?” I inquired, sniffing new game.

“The pesky little fly that gets into your eye when you are a-fishing.”

Ah, yes!  I knew him well.  We had got acquainted some days before, and I thanked the boy for the name.  It is an insect that hovers before your eye as you thread the streams, and you are forever vaguely brushing at it under the delusion that it is a little spider suspended from your hat-brim; and just as you want to see clearest, into your eye it goes, head and ears, and is caught between the lids.  You miss your cast, but you catch a “blunder-head.”

We paused under a bridge at the mouth of Biscuit Brook and ate our lunch, and I can recommend it to be as good a wayside inn as the pedestrian need look for.  Better bread and milk than we had there I never expect to find.  The milk was indeed so good that Aaron went down to the little log house under the hill a mile farther on and asked for more; and being told they had no cow, he lingered five minutes on the doorstone with his sooty pail in his hand, putting idle questions about the way and distance to the mother while he refreshed himself with the sight of a well-dressed and comely-looking young girl, her daughter.

“I got no milk,” said he, hurrying on after me, “but I got something better, only I cannot divide it.”

“I know what it is,” replied I; “I heard her voice.”

“Yes, and it was a good one, too.  The sweetest sound I ever heard,” he went on, “was a girl’s voice after I had been four years in the army, and, by Jove! if I didn’t experience something of the same pleasure in hearing this young girl speak after a week in the woods.  She had evidently been out in the world and was home on a visit.  It was a different look she gave me from that of the natives.  This is better than fishing for trout,” said he.  “You drop in at the next house.”