Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/276

Rh sat looking at the river with the darkness coming down, the frogs sounding resonant notes over on the New Hampshire side, and the white light of the young moon trembling up over the dark pine hills. Then we wrapped ourselves in our blankets, and slept till morning.

We had no tent; we two had discovered that we needed no tent in July or August, though we do not advise others to follow our example. Fortunately for us, we wake in the early morning with the same feeling of refreshment,—our lungs full of the delicious air, and our faces wet with dew. On this first morning, I leaped up at sunrise, shouting: "This is the way Nature meant men to live and sleep and wake!"

I shall never forget that first glorious morning. For an hour before rising, I had lain awake looking out at the river, and listening to the strange country sounds around me. All over the grass and low bushes, the spider's webs were stretched, glistening with dew. What a wonderful night's industry! Those webs were nearly all, or quite all, new. The little night-toilers had woven them over our olive bottle, over the gun, over ourselves. The field above us was white as snow with this incomparable cloth-of-silver.

As I lay and looked at one of those webs close to my face, I saw a strange thing. A little