He knew, however, that I had been raised in the saddlethat I felt more at home there than in any other placeand as he saw that I was confident that I could stand the racket, and could ride as far and endure it as well as some of the older riders, he gave me a short route of forty-five miles, with the stations fifteen miles apart, and three changes of horses.

A half-dozen red-skins, yelling and whooping and making a hideous racket, and firing their guns, rode up and attempted to stampede the horses, several of which, together with the four pack-mules, were so frightened that they broke loose and got away.

One of the players was Chet, and as she watched she saw him fling his racket high in the air.

and with his tennis balls in his hand and his racket under his arm he sauntered over toward home.

"Say, what's the matter?" asked Chet, flinging his tennis racket into one chair and seating himself on the arm of another.

Not many men would have stood the racket and sacrificed themselves as you have done.

Around and around she went, feeling on the floor for the tools that had clattered down with such a racket and for the iron bar she had hurled among them.

"Terrible racket, yes.

"They're keeping such a racket outside," he muttered; and then, half to himself: "It certainly is.

Then Eleemos, dozing away in the winter sunshine, would hear an unusual racket in the scrub behind him,some heavy animal brushing about heedlessly and sniffing loudly at a cold trail.

As he turned the corner, he met Dora Robson with a racket in her hand.

She saw nothing, she thought of nothing, but that her own little arrangement to have Tom for a partner was successful; and so, blithely and triumphantly, she took her place and lifted her racket.

"Neither Will nor Tilly can match that," she thought; and at the thought she looked over and across the netting, to see a girl's uplifted arm swinging easily forward, the racket hitting the ball lightly with a swift, sure, upward, and onward motion.

An exclamation of disappointment from Tom added to her discomfiture; and when Will, the next instant, cried, "Wait a minute, till I get another racket, Miss Smith has broken hers," Agnes, flinging down her own, exclaimed, "Miss Smith can have my racket; I'm not going to play any longer!" "Not going to play?

An exclamation of disappointment from Tom added to her discomfiture; and when Will, the next instant, cried, "Wait a minute, till I get another racket, Miss Smith has broken hers," Agnes, flinging down her own, exclaimed, "Miss Smith can have my racket; I'm not going to play any longer!" "Not going to play?

Yes, it was Tilly,Tilly with the racket she, Agnes, had flung down,Tilly standing in her place andandserving the ball back to that girl!

Every minute that had elapsed since she had flung down her tennis racket in such anger and mortification had but increased this mortification, and strengthened her resolve to show those boys and Tilly Morris that she was right and they were wrong about "that girl.

And you are looking so much better, Peggy, for the salt air, and away from all our racket.

"She could never sleep through all that racket!" said Callandar with conviction.

Repeated breaks of pistol-fire guided them to the front room, a racket echoed in diminished volume from the street.

You are quite unfit for the noise and racket of the holidays.

"He knew I had a boat, and I fancy he's working this particular racket without any official help.

Once in a while one may hear a bell of deep, sweet tone, like that of the great bell in Cuzco, which is tolled when the last sacrament is being administered to a dying Christian; but the general idea of bell-ringers in this part of the world seems to be to make the greatest possible amount of racket and clamor.

When the house-door was got open, a party of men, with a menacing look about them, strode in with their guns and swords, making a horrible racket.

Just hear the racket those fellows are making!

Though the excursion spoken of in the following pages was taken four years ago, yet I found, the last summer, small diminution of the trout even in the border streams and lakes of the "Saranac and Rackett woods.

But its occupant moved deeper into the wilderness, over on the waters of the Rackett, many years since; the log shanty has rotted away, and a vigorous growth of brush and small timber, now covers what once may have been called a field.

In the Rackett Woods, among the lakes and streams of that wild region, with a rod and fly, I'm at home with the trout, but;' "'Oh! ho!'

he exclaimed with a chuckle, 'you're the chap I was consulted about down near the mouth of the Rackett the other day, by a country trout, who was on a journey to visit his relatives in the streams of Canada.

This stream is navigable for small boats like ours, five miles to the Rackett River.

The next morning we started down Stony Brook, towards the Rackett River, intending to pitch our tents at night on the banks of Tupper's Lake, twenty-three miles distant.

Stony Brook is a sluggish, tortuous stream, large enough to float our little boats, and goes meandering most of the way for five miles among natural meadows, overflowed at high water, or thinly timbered prairie, when it enters the Rackett.

We procured fresh grass in which to lay our fish, and green boughs to cover them, and floated on down the stream, entering the Rackett at nine o'clock.

The Rackett is a most beautiful river.

The same scenery, and the same voices are seen and heard along its banks now as then; and, while man, in his restlessness, has changed almost everything else, the Rackett and the things that pertained to it when the earth was young, remain unchanged.

Civilization is pushing its way even towards this wild and, for all agricultural purposes, sterile region, and before many years even the Rackett will be within its ever-extending circle.

"I like these old woods," said a gentleman, whom I met on the Rackett last year; "I like them, because one can do here just what he pleases.

"And this reminds me of an anecdote told me by a gentleman I met in June of last year, on the Rackett River among the black flies, of an adventure he met with on Lonesome Rock last season.

Just above, where the river enters, is a dam, built of logs some fifteen feet high, erected by the lumbermen the last winter to hold back the water, so as to float their logs down from this to Tupper's Lake, and so on down the Rackett to the mills away below.

There lay their bones, the flesh eaten from them by the beasts and carrion birds, and, bleached by the sun and the storms, the two skulls with the horns still interlocked; and the narrator told me he had them yet at home, fast together, as he found them, as one of the curiosities to be met with in the Rackett woods.

This lake is probably more than a thousand feet above the Rackett, and the river falls that distance principally at the two rapids around which our boats were carried.

He works at lumbering in the winter, and if there is one among the hundreds, I had almost said thousands, who make war, in the snowy season of the year, upon the old pines of the Rackett woods, who can swing an axe more effectually than Mark Shuff, his light is under a bushelhis fame obscured.

The man who cannot make a meal where the viands present are moose-meat, bear, jerked venison, fresh trout, and pork, and for drink the best of tea and the purest and coldest spring water, had better keep out of the Rackett woods.

We rose with the dawn the next morning, and before the sun was above the hills we were on our way down the lake, to separate as we struck the Rackett; the Doctor and Smith to return by the way of Keeseville and the Champlain, and Spalding and myself to drift down that pleasant stream to Pottsdam, and thence to the majestic St. Lawrence, to spend a fortnight among the "Thousand Islands" of that noble river.

We arranged matters so that the Doctor and Smith were to return in one boat to the Saranacs, while Spalding and myself were to move on down the Rackett with the other two.

There are two outlets which enter the Rackett, half a mile apart, down the right hand one of which the Doctor and Smith's course lay, and ours down the left.

" We drifted leisurely down the left hand channel, and entered the Rackett, bidding good-bye to the beautiful lake as a bend in the river hid it from our view.

We floated quietly down the Rackett, carrying our boats around the falls, shooting like an arrow down the rapids, or gliding along under the shadows of the gigantic forest trees that line the long, calm reaches of that beautiful river.