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diff --git a/old/62303-0.txt b/old/62303-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 9ecff59..0000000 --- a/old/62303-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4660 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Winter of Content, by Laura Lee Davidson - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: A Winter of Content - - -Author: Laura Lee Davidson - - - -Release Date: June 2, 2020 [eBook #62303] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WINTER OF CONTENT*** - - -This text was transcribed by Les Bowler - - [Picture: Book cover] - - [Picture: “Through patches of snow”] - - - - - - A Winter of Content - - - By - LAURA LEE DAVIDSON - - * * * * * - - “Now there is a rocky isle in the mid - sea, midway between Ithaca - and rocky Samos, Asteris, a little isle.” - - The Odyssey of Homer. Translated by - S. S. Butcher and Andrew Lang - - * * * * * - - [Picture: Decorate graphic] - - * * * * * - - THE ABINGDON PRESS - NEW YORK CINCINNATI - - * * * * * - - Copyright, 1922, by - LAURA LEE DAVIDSON - - * * * * * - - Printed in the United States of America - - * * * * * - - To - LOUISE - THE LADY OF THE ISLAND - - * * * * * - - - - -ILLUSTRATIONS - -“THROUGH PATCHES OF SNOW” Frontispiece -“PETER, THE RABBIT, IS TURNING WHITE VERY RAPIDLY” 53 -THE HOUSE 82 -A POINT OF ONE OF THE ISLANDS 97 -“THE HEAVY WOODSLEDS STILL TRAVEL DOWN THE LAKES” 131 -“THE DRAPEAUS LIVE ON A LONG PENINSULA TO THE WEST 155 -OF THIS ISLAND” - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -A SMALL, rocky island in a lake, a canoe paddling away across the blue -water, a woman standing on a narrow strip of beach, looking after it. I -was the woman left on the shore, the canoe held my companions of the past -summer, the island was to be my home until another summer should bring -them back again. - -There is no denying that I was frightened as I turned back along the -trail toward the little house among the birches. It was hard work to -keep from jumping into a boat and putting out after the canoe that was -rounding the point and leaving me alone. - -Little chilly fears laid icy fingers on the back of my neck. A shadow -slipped between the trees; a sigh whispered among the leaves. I wanted -to see all round me; I wanted to put my back against a wall. A little, -grinning goblin of a misgiving stuck out an impudent tongue as it quoted -some of the jeers of unsympathetic friends and relatives, who had derided -my plan for borrowing the camp, when summer was gone, and staying on -alone at the Lake of Many Islands. - -“Good-by,” had smiled my sister. “You say you mean to stay a year, but -you’ll tire of solitude long before the winter. We’ll see you back at -Thanksgiving.” - -It was only mid-September, but I wanted to see her then at that very -instant. - -There had been a farewell dinner, the family assembled, to prophesy -disaster. - -“You’ll freeze your nose and ears off,” mourned a reassuring aunt. - -In vain I reminded her that no inhabitant seen in five summers’ sojourn -at the lake had been without a nose or ears; all had had the requisite -number of features, although some of those same features had withstood -the cold of well-nigh a hundred winters. But she was not consoled, and -continued to regard me so tearfully that I felt sure that she was bidding -farewell to my nose. - -“You’ll break a leg and lie for days before anyone knows you are hurt,” -said Cousin John. - -“You’ll be snowed in and no one will find you until spring,” said Brother -Henry. - -“You are a city woman and not strong. What do you know of a pioneer’s -life? It is the most foolish plan we ever heard of,” chorused all. - -Descending from prophecy to argument, they continued: - -“Of course you will have a telephone.” - -“That I will not,” I answered. “I have been jerked at the end of a -telephone wire for years. I want rest.” - -“At least you will have a good dog. That will be some protection.” - -“A dog would drive away all the wild things. I want to study them,” I -objected. - -“Then, for mercy’s sake, find some other woman to stay there with you. -Surely there is another lunatic willing to freeze to death on the -precious island. You should have a companion, if only to send for help.” - -“I don’t want a companion,” I protested, tearfully. “I won’t be -responsible for another person’s comfort or safety. I will do this thing -alone or not at all.” - -“I am tired to death,” I stormed. “I need rest for at least one year. I -want to watch the procession of the seasons in some place that is not all -paved streets, city smells and noise. Instead of the clang of car bells -and the honk of automobile horns, I want to hear the winds sing across -the ice fields, instead of the smell of asphalt and hot gasoline, I want -the odor of wet earth in boggy places. I have loved the woods all my -life, I long to see the year go round there just once before I die.” - -At which outburst they shrugged exasperated shoulders and were silent, -but each one drew me aside, at parting, and pressed a gift into my hand. - -“Be sure to let us know if anything goes wrong. Write to us if you need -the least thing. Don’t be ashamed to come back, if the experiment proves -a failure”—and so on and so on, God bless them! - -Of all this the bogy reminded me as he danced ahead up the winding trail. - -The house looked lonely, even in the brightness of the late afternoon. I -hurried supper, to be indoors before the twilight fell. Big Canadian -hares hopped along the paths and sat at the kitchen door, their great -eyes peering, long, furry ears alert, quivering noses pressed against the -wire screen. Grouse pecked on the hill side, as tame as barnyard fowl. -From the water came the evening call of the loons. - -The scant meal finished, I ran across the platform from the kitchen to -the main house and locked up. Somehow, I did not want any open doors -behind me that evening. Then I loaded the pistol and laid it on a shelf -at the head of the bed, along with the Bible and the Prayer Book. If any -marauder could know how dreadfully afraid I am of that pistol, he would -do his marauding with a quiet mind. I never expect to touch that weapon. -It shall be cleaned and oiled when any of the men come over from the -mainland, but handle it—never! I would not fire it for a kingdom. - -While it was still light I climbed into bed, and lay down rigid, with -tight-shut eyes, trying to pretend I did not hear all the rustling, -creaking, snapping noises in the woods. Heavy animals pushed through the -fallen leaves. Something that sounded as large as a moose went crashing -through the dry bushes. - -“A rabbit,” I whispered to myself. - -Creatures surely as large as bears rushed through the underbrush. - -“Grouse,” I tried to believe. - -From the lake came stealthy sounds. - -“Driftwood pounding against the rocks, not really oars,” I murmured to my -thumping heart. - -Then light, pattering footsteps on the porch. - -In desperation I raised my head and looked out. It was a little red fox, -trotting busily along, snuffling softly as he went. I lay down and -closed my eyes firmly, determined not to open them again no matter what -might happen, then must have dozed, for, suddenly I was aware of a light -that flooded all the room. - -There through the northeast window, large and round and beautiful, shone -the moon, the great Moon of the Falling Leaves. It was like the sudden -meeting with a friend, reassuring, comforting. A broad band of light lay -across my breast like a kind arm thrown over me. The path of the -moonbeams on the water seemed the road to some safe haven. With the -moon’s calm face looking in and the soft lapping of the waves as lullaby, -I fell asleep—and lo! it was day. - -This house, the living room of the camp, that is to be my home for the -coming winter, stands on a bluff overhanging the lake. It is a one-room -shack, 16×20 feet, surrounded by an eight-foot porch. It is one-storied, -shingled, the porch roof upheld by birch log pillars, beautiful still -clothed in their silvery bark. There are eight windows, two in each -corner, and through some of them the sun is always shining. - -Adjoining this main shack and connected with it by an uncovered platform -are the kitchen and storeroom, but these will not be used in winter. The -stores and I will have to stay in the big house if we are not to freeze. - -From these buildings little trails run off through the woods to the dock, -the pump, the summer sleeping shacks, and a path goes all round the -island close to the shore. Away from these beaten tracks are all sorts -of hidden nooks and lovely, dim seclusions. - -This little rocky island, one of scores that dot the face of the lake, is -all a tangle of ferns and vines and wildflowers. It is thickly wooded -with white birch, poplar and wild cherry. There are also oaks, maples, -pines, and great clumps of basswood, and innumerable little cedars are -pushing up everywhere. - -Making a way through the overgrown paths in the early morning, I break -through myriads of spiderwebs, stretched across from bushes heavy with -dew. They feel like the tiniest of fairy fingers brushing my cheek, and -laid on my eyelids, light as the memory of a caress. Butterflies dressed -in black velvet, with white satin frills and sapphire jewels, flutter on -ahead, and the stems of the birches are seen through a gold-green glow, -like sunlight shining through clear water. When I sit on the sandy -bottom, with the whole lake for my washpot, small fishes, wearing coral -buttons and jade green ruffles on fins and tails, bump their blunt noses -against my knees. - -Sounds from the mainland come across the lake, blurred and indistinct. -On the island I hear only the wind in the trees, the water beating -against the stones, and the hum of many insect wings. - -There is something queer about the island. I am convinced that it stands -on some magnetic pole or other, that puts every clock and watch out of -order as soon as it is landed here. Cheap or fine, every timepiece -breaks a mainspring, and then we fall back on the sundial to tell us -what’s o’clock. We can always know when it is noon, provided the weather -be sunny. When it is cloudy we guess at the time and wait for the next -fine day. - -This sundial stands in a clearing beside the house, and bears for its -motto, not the high-sounding Latin quotation that seems to belong to -sundials, but the trite assertion, “Time is valuable.” A statement -wholly untrue, so far as this present life of mine is concerned. A fine -bass, now, or a tin of beans perhaps is valuable, but surely not time, in -a place where there is nothing to do but eat, sleep, and think. - -Yet when I stood to-day, on this lonely bit of land, in the midst of an -empty lake, waiting for the shadow to travel to the mark, I seemed to -catch, for one fleeting instant, some idea of the terrible, inexorable -passing of the hours. - -“Set thy house in order, set thy house in order,” something seemed to -say, “for never, for thee, shall the shadow turn back upon the dial.” In -that moment I stood alone in space, on this old clock the earth, swinging -with the whirling of the spheres. - -The lake too has its mystery, a strange light that shines from the point -of one of the islands. No one lives on that land; there is no farmhouse -near it on the shore, nor is it in line with any dwelling whose light -could seem to glimmer from its point. The flare is too high and too -steady for fox-fire, the glow that comes from rotting wood, and though -men say they have explored the place repeatedly, there has never been any -sign of a campfire there. But every now and again that light shines by -night, like a beacon, and no one has ever explained it. - -Perhaps it is the phantom of the council fire, round which the red -warriors sat in the days when this land was theirs. For there were -Indians hereabout, and not so very long ago; and people on the mainland -tell of a great fight that raged here when a band of the Mississagua -Nation, led by the chief White Eagle, fought with an invading war party -and of a day of battle from dawn until the going down of the sun when the -lake was red with blood. On the sheer face of the cliff of the opposite -island are red veinings in the rock. If one pretends very hard, they are -pictures of two war canoes left there by some artist of the tribe. The -people here believe in them devoutly. - -“They were painted in blood,” they say. - -A very indelible blood it must have been, for those tracings have -withstood the wash of high water for many a year. - -Whether the picture writing is genuine or no, there is plenty of evidence -that Indians lived along the shores of Many Islands, and there is a -pretty story told of the wedding of a girl, White Eagle’s daughter, to a -young brave of her tribe. The Indians came down the lakes and through -the portages to Queensport, in their fine canoes, and the lovers were -married there by the priest at the mission. Afterward they were all -entertained at dinner by the big-hearted wife of the principal merchant -of the town. That lady’s daughter tells me that for many seasons -thereafter the chief’s daughter would bring or send beautiful birch -baskets, filled with berries or maple sugar for the children of her -hostess. - -The bride is described as slim and young, with big, dark eyes. The -wedding dress was dark blue cloth, trimmed with new-minted five- and -ten-cent pieces, pierced and sewed on in a pattern—this worn over a vest -of buckskin, beautifully embroidered. - -What became of you, little Indian Bride, girl of the grateful heart? -Were you happy here at Many Islands, or was it life-blood of your brave -that helped to redden all the waters? Did you move back and back with -your wandering people, or are you lying under the cedars on some green -slope of the shore? I shall never know, but I shall think of you and -wonder. - -There are no Indians here now, except one old squaw, who lives far back -on the road to Maskinonge and tans buckskins in the fine old Indian way, -but the plow turns up the arrowheads, and once in a while a bowl or pipe, -proofs that the red men lived and fought here. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -THE Lake of the Many Islands, long, irregular, spring-fed, lies in a cup -of the rolling Ontario farmlands. At the south its waters, passing -through a narrow strait, widen into beautiful Blue Bay. At the north -they empty, in a series of cascades, into the little river Eau Claire. -The town of Les Rapides, its sawmill idle, the ten or twelve log houses -closed, stands at the outlet, a deserted village. The eagles soar to and -fro over the blue lake; the black bass jump; the doré swim. There are -hundreds of little coves and narrow channels—waters forgotten of the -foot, where only the hum of insect wings and the rattle of the kingfisher -are heard, and where the heron stands sentinel in the marshes and the -loons have their mud nests on the shores. - -“Crazy as a loon,” that is, of all phrases, the most libelous. For the -loon is the most sensible of fowl and possessed of the most distinct -personality. No other water bird has so direct and so level a flight. -He lays his strong body down along the wind, and goes, like a bullet, -straight to his goal, purposeful, unswerving. He has three cries, one a -high, maniac laugh, which is, of course, the reason his wits are -slandered; then a loud, squealing cry, very like the sound of a pig in -distress; and last a long, yearning call, the summons to his mate, -perhaps, that he sends out far across the water—a cry that seems the very -voice of the wilderness. At twilight, and often in the night, I hear -that lonely cry, echoing down the lakes, and the faint, far cry that -answers it. - -“There will be wind to-night,” the weather-wise say. “Hear the loons -making a noise.” - -The birds come to the bay back of the island, and swim about there as -friendly as puddle ducks. If I go too close, closer than Mr. Gavia Immer -thinks safe or respectful, down he goes and stays for some minutes under -the water, to emerge far away, and in quite a different quarter from the -one in which I expected to see him. No one on earth could ever predict -where a loon will come up when he dives. He looks at me austerely, -twisting his black head back on his shoulder, until I would swear he had -turned it completely round on his white-ringed neck. Then he gives his -crazy laugh and disappears again. - -The loon is protected in Canada. No one may shoot him or molest him. -But once in a while one comes across a boat cushion made of a bird skin, -its gray and white feathers very soft and thick and attached to the skin -so fast that it is well-nigh impossible to pluck them. That is the -breast of the loon, the great wild bird of the northern lakes, that the -game law has failed to save. When I see one of these skins I hate the -vandal who has killed the bird. - -The Blakes are my nearest neighbors—not nearest geographically, for the -Drapeau farm lies closer to the island; but near by reason of their many -friendly acts and kind suggestions. If I am ill or in trouble, it is to -Henry and Mary Blake that I shall go for help. - -Henry Blake of the keen, ice-blue eye, the caustic tongue and the good -heart. There was never anything more scathing than his condemnation of -the shiftlessness and, what he considers the general imbecility of his -neighbors, and never anything kinder than his willingness to help one of -them in a crisis. He will sit for an hour, pencil in hand, laboring to -explain to some unsuccessful farmer that wood hauled at next to nothing a -cord can only land the hauler in a ditch of debt, and when the hapless -one has departed, fully determined to go his own way, to hear Henry spit -out the one word, “Fat-head,” as he turns back to his book, is a lesson -in the nice choice of epithet. - -When it comes to judgment on the manners, the morals, and the methods of -their neighbors Henry and Mary Blake sit in the seats of the scornful; -but, after all, they are somewhat justified, for they came over from “The -States.” Henry, an invalid, bought a rundown island farm, and they have -brought it to a good state of cultivation and paid off their mortgage, -all in ten years. - -But while they are free in their criticisms of the natives, who live from -hand to mouth, one notices that the Blakes are always willing to do a -good turn, and are usually being asked to do one. Is a house to be -built? Henry is called on to plan it. Does a churn spring a leak, or a -cow fall ill? Mary goes to the rescue. Does a temperamental seed-drill -choke in one of its sixty odd pipes? Henry is sent for to find the seat -of the disorder and to apply the remedy. - -I also went to him, when deliberating the relative cost of a log house -and one of board. Mr. Blake discussed the matter with me in the kindest -way, summing up his advice in a sentence, that reached my muddled brain -in some such statement as the following: - -“It all comes to this. You can get one cedar log, 6×14 for twenty cents. -Three goes into twenty-one seven times, so board or log, it would come to -the same thing.” - -It wasn’t what he said, of course, but I hastened to agree, lest I should -be a fat-head too. - -Everything on the Blake farm is a pet, from the handsome young Jersey -bull, to the tiniest chick, hatched untimely from a nest-egg. They all -run toward Mary as soon as she steps from the kitchen door, and as she -hurries from house to barn there is always a rabble of small ducks, -chickens, calves, and kittens hurrying after her. The other day, when -she, Henry, and Jimmy Dodd, their adopted boy, set off for a tour of the -lake, a calf swam after them, and tried so earnestly to climb aboard -that, perforce, they turned back to shore and tied the foolish creature, -lest he should drown himself and them. - -Like almost every family in the countryside, the Blakes have adopted a -small boy, giving him a home and training and enough to eat, which he -never had before in all his forlorn life. They are kindness itself to -Jimmie, but Henry regards him with the same foreboding he feels for all -other native-born Canadians. He trains him, but in the spirit of “What’s -the use?” - -“Jimmie here,” he philosophizes, “he can’t seem to learn the first thing; -and if he learns it, he can’t retain it. I have taught him to read, but -he can’t remember a word; and to write, but he forgets it the next day. -Mary even put him through the catechism, and a week later he didn’t know -one thing about it. So what are you going to do? I figure out,” he goes -on meditatively, “that the people who learn easy are the ones who have -been here before. They knew it all in another life, maybe in another -language, and all they have to do is just to recall it. But Jimmie -here—well, I guess this is his first trip.” - -All the while Jimmie of the towhead and the thin, wiry legs and arms is -grinning at his critic with a wide, snaggle-toothed smile of great -affection. - -The Blakes’ house stands on the site of an old log hut, of two rooms and -a lean-to shed. In digging the cellar they came upon a walled-in -grave—the boards almost rotted away—and in it lay a skeleton. Whose? No -one knows, for that grave was dug before the time of anyone now living at -Many Islands. Was it some Indian warrior laid there to sleep? Was it a -settler of the old pioneer days? No one can tell and no one cares. The -Blakes built their comfortable eight-room house over his bones and -thought no more about them. - -Yesterday Mary and I drove to Queensport, the county seat, fifteen miles -away, that I might show myself at the bank and the stores where I am to -trade this winter. The start was to be early, and I rose at dawn to have -breakfast over, the cabin cleaned, and I myself rowed over to the farm. -The woods lay wrapped in a heavy mist. Not a wet leaf stirred. The -water looked like mouse-colored crêpe, and the sun hung like a big, pink -balloon in a sky of gray velvet. But before our start the mists had -burned away and the day was glorious. - -The road lies through a rolling country, all hills, woods, lakes, and -glades. Queensport stands at the head of a chain of lakes. It boasts -two banks, a high school, churches of all denominations, and a dozen or -so shops and houses set in gardens. We dined at the hotel, the Wardrobe -House; we transacted our business at the bank, and turned then to our -shopping. We went to the harness shop for bread, to the grocer’s for a -spool of thread, to the tailor’s to enquire the cost of a telephone. -Then I bethought me of my need for some rag carpet. I did not really -want that carpet that day, indeed, I had not the money to pay for it. I -only thought of inquiring for it while I was in the town. - -We were directed to the hardware shop as the most likely place for -carpets, and I had no sooner mentioned my errand when a voice came out -from behind a stove saying eagerly: - -“I know where you can find just what you’re looking for. My old mother -has forty yards of as fine a rag carpet as you could wish to see. Say -the word and I’ll drive you right out to the farm and show it to you.” - -Whereupon a tall, wiry, keen-faced man rose up and dashed out of the -shop, returning in an instant with a buggy and a wild-looking black -horse. Despite my protests we were bundled into the vehicle and driven -at a gallop, through the main street of Queensport, and the driving was -as the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi. Past farms and fields we flew, -stopping with a mighty jerk at the door of the mother’s house. There the -carpet was rolled forth before me, and there Mary Blake and our energetic -friend measured me off twenty yards of it, by a nick in the edge of the -kitchen table. - -In vain I pleaded and explained my poverty. Our abductor waved me a -careless hand. - -“Money,” he assured us, “is the last thing that ever worried me. You may -pay for the carpet when and where you choose.” - -On the way back to town my new friend was properly presented. His name -was William Whitfield. Later I heard varied tales of his peculiarities. -There was talk of a horse trade, to which Bill Whitfield was a party. -The other man came out of the transaction the richer by one more -experience, but the poorer as regarded property. It was told me that men -said freely that Bill Whitfield drunk could get the better of any two -sober men in the Dominion when it came to a bargain, and, as I -contemplated my roll of carpet, leaning against the dashboard, I -understood why I had been as wax in his hands, and I could only be -thankful that it had not occurred to Mr. Whitfield to sell me the whole -forty yards. - -Back we jogged, Mary and I, along the quiet roads, discussing our -bargains and the news of the town. We passed the schoolhouse just as -“Teacher” was locking the door for the night. The dusty road was printed -all over with the marks of little bare feet, all turning away from the -school gate and pointing toward home. The sun was sinking in a flaming -sky as we came to the shore of our own lake, where the rowboat lay on the -sand awaiting us, a pair of tired travelers, glad to be nearing home. - -I would not be a bigot. To each man should belong the right to vaunt the -glories of his own beloved camping ground. There may be other places as -beautiful as this Lake of the Many Islands, although I cannot believe it. -But Many Islands at sunset, its quiet waters all rose and saffron and -lavender, under a crescent moon; when the swallows skim the surface and -dip their breasts in the ripple, and the blue heron flaps away to his -nest in the reeds—Well! I shall see no other spot that so moves my heart -with its beauty, until my eyes look out beyond the sunset and behold the -land that is very far off. - -I drift on past the islands, where the cedars troop down to the water’s -edge, and the white birches lean far out over the rocks. The colors -fade, the far line of the forests becomes a purple blur, and stars come -out and hang in a dove-gray sky. I land at the little dock, safe hidden -in the cove; I scramble along the dark trail to the house, while the -loons are laughing and calling as they rock on the waves. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -THE days are still warm, but autumn is surely here. The wasps are dying -everywhere and lie in heaps on all the window-sills; the great water -spiders have disappeared, and all day long the yellow leaves drift down -silently, steadily, in the forests. Wreaths of vapor hang over the -trees, and every wind brings the pungent fall odor of distant forest -fires. The hillsides are a blaze of color, with basswoods a beautiful -butter-yellow, oaks, russet and maroon and sugar maples, a flame of -scarlet against the dark-green velvet of the cedars and hemlocks. Each -birch stands forth, a slender Danæ, white feet in a drift of gold. The -woods here on the island are thinning rapidly. All sorts of hidden dells -and boulders are coming to light. Soon the whole island will lie open to -the sight, and then there will no longer be anything mysterious about it. - -Dried heads of goldenrod, life everlasting, and a few closed gentians are -all that are left of the flowers; but the red and orange garlands of the -bittersweet wave from every bush, the juniper berries are purple, and the -sumacs are a wonder of great garnet velvet cones. - -From a walk round the trails I bring in an assortment of seeds: beggar’s -ticks, stick-seeds, Spanish needles, pitchforks—“the tramps of the -vegetable world,” Burroughs calls them. They cover my skirt, they cling -to my woolen leggings, they perch on the brim of my hat. Little -pocket-shaped cases, pods with hooks, seeds shaped like tiny twin -turtles, and furry balls like miniature chestnut burrs. As I pick and -brush and tear them off I wish I knew what plants had fathered every one -of them. - -At the approach of cold weather the small animals and the few birds that -are left draw nearer to the house. Grouse are in all the paths, flying -up everywhere. They rise with a thrashing, pounding noise and soar away -over the bushes, to settle again only a little further on. Last evening, -at twilight, two of them came on the porch, the little cock ruffling it -bravely, wings dragging, fantail spread, ruff standing valiantly erect. -A hen followed sedately at his heels. They are very pretty, about the -size of bantam chickens. How I hope that I shall be here to see their -young in the spring! - -This afternoon a red squirrel came round the corner of the house and sat -down, absentmindedly, beside me on a bench. When he looked up and saw -what he had done he gave a shriek and a bound and fled chattering off -toward the sundial. But he will come back and will probably be darting -into the house when he thinks my back is turned, for there is nothing -half so impudent or so mischievous as the red squirrel. I am told that -they do not “den in” as the chipmunks do. - -The rabbits do their best to help me get rid of my stores. There are -hundreds of them about. They sit under the bushes, peering out; they -appear and disappear between the dry stalks of the brakes. At evening -they come close to the house, and catch bits of bread and potatoes thrown -to them, then sit in the paths munching contentedly. They are not -rabbits, correctly speaking, but Canadian hares, with long brown fur, -bulging black eyes, furry ears, fringed with black, and very long hind -legs. One of them comes so close and seems so fearless that it should -not be difficult to tame him. I have named him Peter. These hares turn -snow-white in winter, I am told. Even now their coats are showing white -where the winter coat is growing. - -In the dusk the porcupines come pushing through the fallen leaves, -snuffling and grunting. Away in the woods the bobcats scream and snarl. -The natives accuse the bobcat of a pretty trick of lying flattened out on -a limb, waiting for his prey to pass underneath, then he drops on its -back to tear with tooth and talon. They warn me not to walk in the woods -after dark, for fear of this Canada lynx. - -But my natural histories say that, while the lynx sometimes follows the -hunter for long distances, he does it only because he is curious, and -that there is no authentic record of the bobcat’s ever having attacked a -man. So I shall continue to take my walks abroad, without fear that a -fierce tree cat will drop on me. But late in the night, when I am waked -by that eerie sound, that begins with a low meow, like the cry of the -house cat, and goes on louder and louder, to end in a horrid screech, -full of a malevolent violence, I cover my head and am glad that I am safe -indoors. I know that the lynx has come forth from his lair in a hollow -tree and is hunting my poor rabbits. - -There is no telephone line to the island; sometimes I am stormbound for a -week, but in some underground way, the news of the neighborhood reaches -me sooner or later. Therefore, when I came out of doors the other -morning, I was instantly aware of a sense of impending disaster, that -hung over all the landscape. There was no cheerful popping of guns in -the fields, no hoarse voice bawled to the cattle. At Blake’s the cause -of the silence was explained. All the men round Many Islands had been -summoned to the County Court at Frontenac, to be tried for the illegal -netting and export of fish out of season. A knot of angry men had -gathered on the shore, discussing the summons; anxious women hovered in -the background; speculation was rife as to the identity of the informer. - -It could have been none of our men, for the obvious reason that all were -in the same boat. Black Jack Beaulac, Yankee Jim, Little Jack, Long Joe, -William Foret, all had received the same summons. It must have been an -inspector from Glen Avon. - -“Did we not all remember a strange, white boat in the lake? That was, -without doubt, the fish warden come to spy out for nets.” - -I know very little about the legality of nets versus hooks, or the open -and closed seasons for fishing, but even to my ignorance there seemed -grave doubts about the line of defense to be offered, and I was conscious -that, being an alien and a “sport” (vernacular for sportsman, that is, -summer visitor), the matter was not being freely discussed in my -presence. - -Next morning, while it was yet dark, Foret’s motor boat was heard, -chugging solemnly round the shore, gathering up the victims to take them -to court. All day the women went softly, each wondering what was -happening to her man, and devising means for scraping up the money for -fines, if fines it had to be. Henry Blake went off to town to the trial, -and the day passed gray and lowering. - -At red sunset the boat turned in at the narrows, but before she hove in -sight the very beat of her engine signaled victory. She came swinging -down the lake, her crew upright, alert, the flag of Canada flew in the -wind, her propeller kicked the water joyously. As she made the round of -the lake, to Blake’s, to Beaulac’s, to Drapeau’s, to the Mines, it needed -none to tell us that all was well. - -Foret touched at the island last to give news of the fight. The case had -been dismissed for lack of evidence. There had been no conviction, no -fines. - -“How did it happen that there were no witnesses?” I asked. - -Foret took out his pouch and stuffed his pipe carefully before he -answered. - -“There was eight or nine fellers there from Blue Bay,” he said. “They -looked like they’d come to testify, but, after we had talked to them a -bit, it seemed like they hadn’t nothing at all to say.” - -“What had you told them?” I persisted. - -“Well, we told them that if any man felt like he’d any information to -give, concerning netting fer fish, he’d best make his plans to leave the -lake afore twelve o’clock to-night. We meant it too; they knowed that. -Black Jack give them some very plain talk, Black Jack did. I guess,” -with a grin, “I guess that I was about the politest man there.” - -“I was fined once,” William went on, reminiscently, “twenty-five dollars -it was too, an’ it just about cleaned me out. They put me on oath, you -see, an’ of course, when a man’s on his oath he can’t lie. But the next -time I went to town I seen a lawyer, an’ he told me they hadn’t no right -to ask me that question. A man ain’t called on to testify against -himself. So now, when the judge asks me: ‘Did you, or did you not, net -fer fish?’ I says, ‘That’s fer you to prove. Bring on your witnesses.’ -Howsoever,” he went on, “as long as all this has come up, I guess we’d as -well eat mudcats fer a spell.” - -So mudcats it was, until the herring began to run. - -Foret has kept me supplied with fish this fall, explaining carefully that -he will sell me pickerel, herring, and catfish but not bass. Bass, being -a game fish, may not be caught for the market. I have paid for the -pickerel by the pound and the bass have been gifts, for, as William -justly remarks: “What are a few bass, now and then, in a friendly way?” - -Foret is long, lean, powerful, with thin, keen face, steady, dark eyes, -and the long, silent tread of the woodsman. Sometimes he works in the -Mica Mines; sometimes he farms a bit, or fells trees. More often he -hunts and fishes, but always he is a delightful companion, because of his -unconquerable optimism and fervent interest in all that concerns a matter -in hand. He never admits a difficulty, no obstacle ever daunts him, and -no one has ever heard him say an unkind thing about any living creature. - -When William goes off to a dance, Jean Foret is wild with anxiety. When -he drinks a bit too much and the other men throw him into a hayfield or a -barn, to sleep it off, she ranges the county in a despairing search. -When he sobers and comes home, subdued and bearing gifts, who is so -contrite as he? - -“Never again will I go to a dance. There’s nothing to it at all,” he -assures you. “A man’s better off to home.” - -But once in so often William takes his fling—only he is never ugly or -quarrelsome when he drinks. Even when his mind has lost control, he is -quiet and peaceable, they say. - -The Forets live on the mainland, three miles off, along the shore. -William is building their house by degrees. This season he went as far -as the inner wall, frame, studding, windows, chimney, and floor. There -is also an outer casing of builder’s paper tacked on with small disks of -tin. The whole edifice stands on stilts, about five feet off the ground, -giving fine harbor for the hounds, and a pig or two beneath. The first -time I called to see them William made a great show of driving these -animals forth. - -“The boards is so thin,” he apologized, “that it seems like I can smell -them dogs up through the floor.” - -When I remember that one thickness of board and a few sheets of paper are -all that stand between the Forets and the winter blasts, I shudder. Not -so the Forets. They are apparently quite undismayed and look forward to -the approach of winter without misgiving. - -The house is divided into two rooms, each about ten feet square. There -are lace curtains at the tiny windows, bright pictures, mostly colored -calendars, a gay rag carpet, and over all the comfort of an exquisite -neatness, for Mrs. Foret is the cleanest housekeeper imaginable—Jennie -Foret, with her snapping, black eyes, her dark hair upreared in a -militant pompadour, her trim, alert figure, and quick, light movements. -Where did she acquire her love of order and her dainty, cleanly ways, I -wonder? - -It is a friendly place. Chickens, ducks, geese, cats, dogs, horses and -cows roll, run, squawk, and squeal all over the hillside. In the cove -before the house live-boxes are moored, motor boat and skiffs lie at -anchor. There are nets and skins drying on the fences. Two bunches of -ribbon-grass do duty for a formal garden, standing sentinel on either -side of the path that winds to the door. The house looks away across the -“drowned lands” where the wicked roots and snags of the submerged forest -stand in the water, threatening navigation. The channel to the landing -is winding and treacherous. But, once at the door, no guest is ever -turned away. Wandering miner, tramp, bewildered emigrant, each is sure -of a meal, a bed, and something to set him on his way. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -WILD geese flying over, cold mornings, colder nights, warn me that it is -time to lay in supplies of firewood, oil and food against the coming of -winter. Last evening a laden rowboat passed the island, going eastward -under the Moon of Travelers. In the stern were a stove, a chair, a -coffeepot, a frying pan, a great pile of bedding, and, surmounting all, a -fiddle. The man at the oars threw me a surly “Good night,” and turning, -looked back at me with a scowl. It was Old Bill Shelly, the hermit of -the countryside—trapper, frogger, netter of fish, and general -ne’er-do-well. He has built log shacks all round the shores—little, -one-room affairs, filled with a miscellaneous assortment of nets, guns, -dogs, all forlorn and filthy past description. When one becomes -uninhabitable, he leaves it and moves on to the next, but at the approach -of cold weather he always goes into winter quarters at Blue Bay, and his -flitting, like the flitting of the other wild things, means that all -nature is getting ready for “_le grand frête_.” - -Poor Shelly! his is the only hostile glance that I have encountered in my -wanderings. Even Old Kate, the witch at Les Rapides, has smiled at me. - -“Mind Old Kate,” the neighbors caution me. “If she ever crosses her -fingers at you, it’s all day with you then.” - -But when I met her in the road she spoke in quite a friendly way. - -“Cold weather coming,” she said. “Get in your wood.” - -Doubtless she thinks me another as crazy as herself. - -So I must set about getting enough wood to last until the January sawing, -and must pack eggs and butter against the time when hens stop laying and -cows go dry, for there is no shop nearer than Sark, six miles away, and -even if one could reach it, through the winds on the lake, or the drifts -in the roads, there would be no butter or eggs to buy. - -Tom Jackson, at the far end of the lake, has consented to sell me eight -cords of hard wood; but to bring it to the island we must hire the big -scow that ferries mica from the mines, and must have Foret’s motor boat -to tug it. - -This life is a great education as regards the relative values of things. -Wood and water, oil and food, are seen here in their true perspective. -Already I have learned to rate the wealth of a family by the size of the -woodpile, that stands, like a rampart in the dooryard, for I know what a -big stock of logs means in thrift, foresight, and hard labor. I know -what it cost to get my own wood to my hand. - -City folk can pass a loaded woodcart without special emotion, indeed, -half the time they do not see it, so concerned are they with the price of -theater tickets, or the cut of the season’s gowns. But I shall never -look at one without seeing again a great scow moving slowly on the blue -bosom of a lake, and I shall smell the delicious odor of fresh-cut maple, -beech, and cedar, far sweeter than the breath of any summer garden. - -Ah me! How prosaic will seem the city’s conveniences of pipes and -furnaces as compared with the daily adventure of carrying in the logs, -and battling down a windswept trail to dip the pails into a pit of -crystal ice water! Never again shall I turn on the spigot in a bathroom -without a swift vision of that drift-filled path through the woods that -leads out on the lake, to where the upright stake marks the water hole, -hidden under last night’s fall of snow. - -To one who has only to push a button or strike a match to have a room -flooded with light, the problem of illumination is not perplexing. Here, -the five-gallon oil tank must be ferried across the lake to Blake’s farm; -whence it must be again sent by boat to Jackson’s shore, and there loaded -on a wagon for Sark. Back it must come to the shore, to Blake’s, and to -the island storehouse—all this taking from ten days to two weeks, -according to when Henry Blake is sending in to the store. - -The city postman is no very heroic figure, but little Jimmie Dodd is, as -he beats his way across the lake, and through the high drifts on the -island, his slender body bowed under a great bag of mail, his small face -blue with the cold. Letters mean something to us here. They leave the -train at Glen Avon, they come by stage to Sark, then they follow the oil -tank route over water and wood trails to me, and it takes as long to get -a letter from “The States” as to hear from England, “The Old Country.” - -To-day a shrill, childish yell sounded from the water. There was Jimmie, -in a boat, with a great basket of eggs. He was fending carefully off -from shore, as the high wind threatened to dash his fragile cargo against -the rocks. Before those eggs were loaded into the skiff a woman had -walked five miles with them on her back. I spent a long, happy -afternoon, standing them upright on their small ends in boxes of salt. -When they were all packed, twenty-four dozens of eggs seemed a great -number for one woman to eat, even if she expected to have a long winter -in which to eat them. - -The wood is all stacked on the porch, but it was hard work to get it -there. The scow docked on a beach at the far side of the island, there -the logs were gayly thrown ashore, and there Tom Jackson washed his hands -of all further responsibility concerning them. The duck-shooting had -commenced; no man could be found to draw that wood through the island to -the house, so there it stayed. - -At length William Foret came to my aid and promised to haul it, and I was -jubilant. I did not then know that Foret will promise any one anything. -No man can promise more delightfully than he. He is always perfectly -willing, apparently, to help anyone out of any dilemma, he recognizes no -difficulty in the way, and to hear him make light of one’s most pressing -problem is to come to the conclusion that there is no problem there. So -when William promised to get the wood to the house I believed him and was -content. - -Meanwhile the days went on, each colder than the last. Each morning I -toiled to and fro from the beach, carrying enough wood, two sticks at a -time, to last the day. Each evening I made a pilgrimage along the shore -to Foret’s to ask why tarried the wheels of his chariot. Sometimes he -was at home and greeted me with a charming cordiality, more often he was -away, fishing or hunting or cutting down a bee-tree. Always he was -coming to the island the very next day. The Forets were cut to the heart -to learn that I was carrying my own wood. But for this reason or that, -William would have been there long ago. I was not to worry at all. That -fuel would be stacked before the snow fell. - -I always started to Foret’s with wrath in my heart, I always left there -soothed and comforted, and by the time I had eaten supper in the boat, -had watched the sunset over the islands, and had listened to the bell on -Blake’s old red cow, I would go to bed really believing that William was -coming the next day. - -Sure enough, he did appear one afternoon and attacked the woodpile with a -very fury of energy, trundling load after load up the trail for perhaps -an hour. Suddenly he sat down his barrow and gazed fixedly out across -the lake. - -“There, I heard my gun,” he observed. “It’s two fellers from Glen Avon, -come to have me cut them down a bee-tree. I told the woman”—meaning Mrs. -Foret—“to take the little rifle and shoot three times if they come, an’ -that’s her. I got to go.” - -“Oh, Mr. Foret!” I expostulated, almost with tears, “have you the heart -to leave this wood? Here, you take my pistol and shoot for them to come -over and lend a hand with this work.” - -But William was already climbing into his boat. - -“It’s the little rifle,” he said, sentimentally, “I’ve got to go,” and -away he chugged, leaving me raging on the shore. - -After all he did come back, and the very next day, Mrs. Foret and little -Emmie, their adopted child, with him. We all carried wood, Jean and I in -baskets, little Emmie, one stick at a time in her small arms. By evening -it was all stacked and we were exhausted. There it stands, eight feet -high, all round the house and the place looks like a stockade. - -After supper William cleaned and oiled the famous pistol; we women washed -the dishes and little Emmie skirmished about, getting in every one’s way, -while Jean Foret shrieked dire threats of the laying on of a “gad” that -one knew would never be applied. The crows flew home across the sky. -The child crept close to William’s side and fell asleep. He moved the -heavy little head very gently, until it rested more comfortably against -his great shoulder. - -“Our little girl would have been just the age of this one, if she had -lived,” he said. - -There was a sudden hush, while I remembered the Foret baby that had died -at birth, when Jennie had almost died too, and when Dr. Le Baron had said -that she could never have another. - -Presently we gathered barrow, baskets and sleeping child, and I watched -their boat go off, threading its way between the islands and points, a -little moving speck on the amber water. - -Across, on the shore, Joey Drapeau was plowing for the fall rye. His -voice, bawling threatening and slaughter to the steaming horses, came -across to me, softened by the distance. It was Saturday night. Soon the -work would be done for another week. Then the men would go out on the -lake, jerking along in their cranky little flat-bottomed punts. They -would sing under the stars, girls’ voices mingling with their harsher -tones. - -Little fiery clouds broke off from the sides of the crater, into which -the sun had dropped, and were drifting across the quiet sky. A long -finger of light crossed over the island and ran like a torch along the -eastern horizon, turning the treetops to flame color and burnished -copper, and the upland meadows to gold. - -On the island the woods were dark, and somewhere in their depths a -screech owl’s cry shuddered away into silence. - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -NOVEMBER is the month of mosses. Every fallen tree, every rotting stump, -every rock, the trodden paths, and even the hard face of the cliff, are -padded deep with velvet. The color ranges from clear emerald, out -through the tints to silvery, sage green, and back through the shades to -an olive brown, almost as dark as the earth itself. Round the shores the -driftwood is piled high on the beach. It looks like bleached bones of -monsters long dead, huge vertebrae, leg bones, skulls and branching -antlers. The trees are bare, the brakes dry and crumbling, but the north -point of the island, its one naked ugly spot of the summer, is now -covered with a blood-red carpet. A close-growing, grassy weed has turned -brilliant crimson and clothed it with beauty. Far away on the lake I am -guided home by that flare of color on the point. - -The birds are gone, all but the crows, that perch on the tallest trees -and lift their hoarse voices in a mournful chorus. But now is the time -to go bird’s-nesting, to find the homes of all the vireos, warblers, -creepers, and sparrows that made the island their breeding ground. The -nests of the vireos, woven of birch bark, bits of hornet’s nests, grass -and scraps of paper, are easy to find, for the pretty, hanging baskets -are fastened in the crotches of the bushes and low saplings. The others -are not so readily discovered, and it was by merest accident that I came -across the home of the brown thrasher, who made the summer vocal with his -beautiful song. It was on the ground and so near the house that I wonder -that we did not walk into it. It is a mere bunch of twigs, so loosely -twisted together that it fell apart when it was moved. - -Every afternoon I go faggotting, bringing in armloads of dry sumac and -fallen branches. They are not especially good for kindling, but now that -the deer season is on, no man will work; so until after November -fifteenth, the reign of the Hunter’s Moon, the brush pile must serve. It -takes constant gathering to collect enough to start the hardwood fires, -and a wet day sets me back sadly. I pile up as much as I can in the -empty sleeping shacks, to keep it dry, and I can only hope that the snow -will not come before someone has been induced to lay aside his gun and -cut a cord or two of driftwood kindling. - -Butterflies are always coming in on the twigs. With their wings folded -flat together, showing only their dry undersides, they look so like old -withered leaves that it is only when the warmth of the room wakes them, -and they flutter off to the windows, that they can be recognized as -butterflies at all. One flew to the south window yesterday and crawled -there, beating his delicate wings against the glass all morning. He was -brown, tan and yellow on the upper side but underneath so like a dry, -woolly old leaf as to be an amazing bit of nature’s mimicry. As I looked -at his poor, torn wings and feebly waving antennæ he seemed suddenly the -very oldest thing, the lone survivor of a forgotten summer, a piteous -little Tithonus, to whom had been granted the terrible gift of -immortality, without the boon of an immortal youth. - -At first I thought that he was being given a respite from the common fate -of butterflies, for I did not then know that the angle wings can last -over the winter, lying dormant in protected places, and that the last -brood of a summer can live until another spring. I even planned to -outwit nature by feeding this one and keeping him alive in the artificial -summer of the warm house. I made a sirup of sugar and water and offered -it but the butterfly would none of it, only crawling and beating his -wings in a vain effort to escape through the glass into the bleak -November sunshine. At length I carried him to the door, and he fluttered -off to a bush and clung there. After turning away for a moment I went -back to find him; he was gone; he had become a dead leaf again. - - [Picture: “Peter the rabbit, is turning white very rapidly”] - -Peter, the rabbit, spends most of his time at the door, waiting for a -chance crust. He fsits on his haunches, rocking gently back and forth, -making a soft, little knocking noise on the porch floor. If I am late in -coming out at mealtimes, he looks at me with so dignified an air of -patient reproof that I feel quite apologetic for having kept him waiting. -His meal finished, he washes his face and paws carefully, like a cat, -then sits in the sun, eyes closed, forepaws tucked away under his breast -and ears laid back along his shoulders. He is turning white very -rapidly. At first, only his tail, feet, breast and the ends of his ears -were lightly powdered, but now he looks as if he had hopped into a pan of -flour by mistake. - -Other hares, now lean and wild, come out of the woods at dusk and try to -share Peter’s bread. But he turns on them fiercely, driving them back -over the hill, with an angry noise, something between a squeal and a -grunt. If anyone thinks a rabbit a meek, poor-spirited creature, he -should see Peter, when threatened with the loss of his dinner. -Evidently, he believes that he has pre-empted this territory and all that -goes here in the way of food, and he means to defend his claim. - -Rufus, the red squirrel, torments Peter unmercifully, dashing across the -ground under his nose and snatching the bread from between the rabbit’s -very teeth. He is there and away before the rabbit knows what has -happened. Poor, slow little Peter stood these attacks in bewildered -patience for a time, but now he has worked out a plan for getting even -with the squirrel that serves him fairly well. He sits on his crust, -drawing it out inch by inch from under him as he nibbles, but even at -that Rufus gets about half. I am training the rabbit to take his food -from my hand, for nothing thrown on the ground is safe for an instant -from the little red-brown robber. It took some very patient sitting to -overcome Peter’s timidity, but after the first bit was taken the rest was -easy. Now he comes fearlessly to me as soon as I appear. - -The squirrel is growing very tame too, but he will never be as tranquil a -companion as the rabbit. He lacks Bunny’s repose of manner. He is -sitting on the windowsill now, eating a bit of cold potato. He turns it -round and round, nibbling at it daintily. Now and again he stops to lay -a tiny paw on his heart—or is it his stomach? The area of his organs is -very minute and it may be either. - -There is something very flattering in the confidence of these little -creatures of the island. How do they know that they may safely trust my -kindness? How can they be sure that I will not betray them suddenly with -trap or gun? - -The rabbit came into the house yesterday, padding about noiselessly on -his cushioned toes. He stopped at each chair and stood on his hind feet, -resting his forepaws on the seat. He examined everything, ears -wriggling, nose quivering, tail thumping on the carpet. Suddenly he -discovered that the door had blown shut and then he went quite wild with -fear. He was in a trap, he thought, and tore round and round the room, -jumping against the window panes, dashing his head against the walls -until I feared that he would injure himself before I could reach the door -to open it. Poor little Peter, he is not valiant after all. He comes in -still, but always keeps close to the door, and the way of escape must -always be open. - -The men on the mainland hunt over the islands, putting on the dogs to -drive off the game. When the ice holds, the hounds will come over of -their own accord to course the rabbits. I should like to feel that for -the term of my stay this one island could be a place of safety for the -animals that take refuge here, and so I have paid visits of ceremony to -the neighboring farms to explain that I shall spend the winter and to ask -that the dogs be kept off my preserve, as far as possible for the sake of -my pets. I may say that my wish has been respected in the kindest way, -and my neighbors have done their best to make the island a sanctuary for -the birds and beasts. The first assurance of each visitor has been, “I -tied up my dogs afore I started over.” It was the opening remark of an -early caller who strode into the room this morning as I was eating a late -breakfast. A reassuring salutation, for without it I might have feared -that the speaker had dropped in to do me a mischief, his appearance was -so very intimidating. He was tall and very lean, a sort of cross between -an Indian and a crane. His greasy, black hair hung in rattails on the -turned-up collar of a dingy red sweater. He wore a ragged squirrel-skin -cap, tail hanging down behind—which headgear he did not remove, and he -carried a murderous looking ax. Following came a boy of about sixteen, -whose smile was so friendly and ingratiating that I felt comforted when I -saw it. The two drew up to the stove, lit pipes, conversed, and in the -round-about course of their remarks I gathered that they had heard of my -need of kindling wood and had come to cut me a cord. Presently they -retired to a secluded spot on the shore and chopped away, emerging every -half hour or so to bring a load up to the house. - -In this country men eat where they work, so toward noon I bestirred -myself to prepare what I considered a particularly good dinner for my -“hands.” I had a theory that my chances of getting future kindling cut -depended on the good impression made on these first workmen. I had -corned beef, potatoes, peas, and tinned beans. I made hot biscuit, cake, -stewed apples, and prepared the inevitable pot of strong tea. The man -drew his chair to the table with perfect self-possession, speared a -potato from the pot with his knife and remarked: “You ain’t much of a -cook, are you?”—adding, kindly, “I think I’ll just try yer tea.” - -He assured me subsequently that he had no particular fault to find with -my dinner. He only meant to put me at my ease and to make conversation. - -When he departed in the evening, after having cut and stacked an -incredible amount of wood, he assured me that he would be ready to work -for me at any time. I had only to “holler” and he would drop a day’s -hunting to come to my aid. So the dinner could not have been so -unsatisfactory after all. - -News of the Great War has come to Many Islands. William Foret returned -from Glen Avon the other day with great tales of armed men guarding the -railroad bridges against the Germans. He also brought the information -that I am a German spy. He heard that at the station. - -“That woman on the island is there for no good,” the loafers were saying. -“She’s a spy. She’s got a writing machine there an’ she’s sending off -letters every day.” - -One inventive soul was even asserting that I am not a woman at all, but a -man in woman’s clothes and that there is a wireless station here. - -But William stood up for me bravely. - -“Spy, nawthin,” he scoffed. “What could she be a spyin’ on there on that -island? There’s nawthin’ there but rabbits. No, as I understand it, -she’s some sort of a book-writer off fer health. She’s got no wireless, -that I know, fer I’ve been over the ground there time and again.” - -But the crowd was not convinced. - -“She’d ought to be investigated,” they declared. - -Then William rose to the occasion nobly. “She’s no German spy,” he said. -“She’s an all-right woman, and ef any man feels like makin’ any trouble -fer her, me an’ Black Jack and Yankee Jim stands ready to make it very -onhealthy fer him.” - -“I told them,” added William, with a delighted grin, “that you’d a little -gun here an’ you’d use it on the first man that come on the island -without you knowed him fer a friend. But I didn’t say that you only -stood five feet five in yer boots and didn’t weigh over a hundred -pounds.” - -Under the shield of William’s favor and the wholly undeserved reputation -of being a good shot, I continue to sleep o’ nights, but I have no fancy -for being investigated. - -Last night a boat stopped at the shore, long after dark, and I was -startled for a moment until I heard a chant that rose at the dock and -continued up the trail to the house. Uncle Dan Cassidy had brought over -the mail and a Thanksgiving box from home, but he was taking no chances. - -“Friends, friends, don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” he sang until he stepped on -the porch. - -But while war and its rumors excite us, all topics pale in interest -before the fact that the herring have begun to run. Whether battles are -lost or won we still have to eat, a pig or a sheep does not last very -long and the fish are a great part of the winter food. - -“They save the meat,” says Harry Spriggins. - -So when the first silver herring came up in the net there was great -rejoicing. Then the little skiffs and punts started out, dancing and -curtseying on the waves. The nets were stretched across the narrows -between the islands, and, during the herring run, no other work was done. -The season is short; there is no time to waste. The run began this year -on the twelfth, the greatest catch was on the eighteenth, the fishing was -over on the twenty-eighth. The fish do not come up except at a -temperature of about thirty-four. - -These are the bright, frosty days—days when the blood runs quick and the -air tastes like wine; when the water is deep-blue, the waves run high and -the whitecaps race in to the shores. - -The little boats bob up and down, the long nets come up spangled with the -gleaming fish, and the tubs and boxes are piled high with the silver -catch. As the fishermen pass they stop at the island and throw me off a -herring or two. Every house on the mainland reeks; barrels and kegs -stand in every dooryard, and everywhere the women and children are busy -cleaning the fish. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -THE time of great winds has come, the heavy November gales that roar down -the lakes, lashing the water into white-capped waves, dashing the -driftwood against the rocks and decking the beaches with long wreaths of -yellow foam. The swell is so strong and the waves so high that even the -men do not care to venture out. When I must get over to Blake’s farm I -hug the shore of the island to the point, then dash across the channel -between this land and his, and the wind turns my light skiff round and -round before I can catch the lee again. - -All night the house rocks and shivers and the trees creak, groan and -crash down in the woods. I am afraid to walk the trails because of -falling branches, for if I were struck down I should lie in the path for -days and no one would know that I had been hurt. - -These winds give the strangest effect of distant music. I am always -thinking that I can almost hear the sound of trumpets, blowing far away. - -Inside the house is warm and comfortable, with its creamy yellow walls of -unpainted wood, its many windows, its pictures, its books; but I am -lonely; I cannot settle to any occupation. The constant roaring of the -wind unnerves me, the gray, scudding clouds depress me. A hound on the -shore bays and howls day and night. I have heard no human voice for more -than a week. - -The storm died away in a smothering fog that settled down on the very -surface of the lake, blotting out everything. I could not see one inch -beyond the shore. The mainland was hidden, the opposite island was -invisible—everything was gone except the land on which I stood. I could -hear voices at the farms, the sound of oars, and people talking in the -boats as they passed. Men were hunting on the mainland, almost a mile -away. I could hear their shots and the cries of the hounds, but I might -as well have been stricken blind, for all that I could distinguish. All -sorts of fears assailed me. Suppose men should land on the island in the -fog, how could I see to escape them? Suppose the fog should last and -last, how would I dare to go out in a boat for any provisions? Suppose I -should be ill, or hurt, how could I signal to the farm for help? - -By evening the fog had thoroughly frightened me; it was time to pull -myself together. So I cooked a particularly good dinner, read a new book -for awhile, then went to bed praying that the sun would be shining in the -morning. - -After being asleep for what seemed hours, I was aware of a loud shouting, -followed by heavy steps on the porch and a voice calling as someone -knocked and pounded on the door. I stumbled out of bed, half asleep, and -groped my way to the lamp, fortunately forgetting all about the pistol -laid by my side for just such an emergency. When the door was finally -opened, the shapeless bulk of a woman confronted me—the very largest -woman I have ever seen. She loomed like a giant against a solid bank of -fog that rolled in behind her. - -“I don’t know where I am,” she announced. “I’m all turned round. I’ve -been rowing hours and hours in the fog, and I’ve a boy, a pail of eggs, a -mess of catfish and a little wee baby in the boat.” - -“For mercy’s sake,” I ejaculated, “what are you doing out in a boat with -a baby on a night like this? Who are you anyway?” - -“I’m from Spriggins’ farm,” she answered, “the place where you gits yer -chickens at. I’ve been over at Drapeau’s spending the evening and I -started to row home two hours ago. But the fog got me all turned round, -and when I struck this shore I says: ‘This must be the island where the -woman’s at. Ef she’s to the house I’ll wake her and git me a light.’” - -I gave her a lantern and she went off to the shore, while I threw fresh -logs on the smoldering fire and tried to wake myself. - -Presently a dismal procession returned: a boy, laden with shawls and -wraps, the woman carrying a baby. When that infant was unwrapped, it -needed not its proud mother’s introduction to tell me whose child it was. -Harry Spriggins is a small, wiry man, with sharp, black eyes and a face -like a weasel. The baby was exactly like him. They were a forlorn trio, -and, oh, so dirty! My heart sank as I surveyed them, realizing that they -were on my hands for the night. Then I felt properly ashamed of myself, -for if the poor soul had not found the island she might have been on the -lake in an open boat until daylight; and by this time a rain was falling, -quite heavily enough to have swamped so unseaworthy a craft as her small, -flat-bottomed punt. - -For some time we sat gazing at one another, while I tried to determine -what should be done with my guests. Finally I sent the boy to the -storehouse for extra mattresses, and prepared them beds on the floor. -Clean sheets were spread over everything. Probably the woman had never -slept on clean sheets before, but I reasoned that sheets could be washed -more easily than blankets, and just then washing seemed to me very -essential. - -About one o’clock we all settled down for the night, but not to sleep—oh, -no! The woman was far too excited for that. Thanks to the fire that I -had made, in my stupidity, and to the air in the cabin, I could not sleep -either, so I heard a great deal of the inside history of the -neighborhood, before morning. - -I learned that minks are a menace to the poultry industry here about. In -Spriggins’ own barnyard, a flock of thirty-six young turkeys were found -all lying dead in a row, with their necks chewed off—a plain case of -mink, and a dire blow to the finances of the family. - -At three o’clock I had the life history of a Plymouth Rock rooster, of -superlative intelligence, that always crowed at that precise hour. At -four I was roused from an uneasy doze by the query: “Do you know anything -about Dr. So-and-So’s cure for ‘obsidy’?” - -After puzzling over the word for some minutes I gathered that “obesity” -was what was meant, for my guest went on, pathetically enough, to tell me -how hard her work was and how she suffered in doing it, burdened with -that mountain of flesh. - -“There’s another cure,” she went on. “It’s Mrs. So-and-So’s, but it -calls for a Turkish bath, and where could I get that? Beside, I could -never do all that rolling and kicking.” - -Peering through the gloom at what looked like the outline of an elephant -on the floor, I did not see how she could, but I felt that if there were -any known way of getting that woman into a Turkish bath I would -cheerfully bear the expense. - -At six I gave up the struggle and rose for the day, stumbling about from -cabin to kitchen to cook breakfast in the semi-darkness, for the fog was -still thick. At nine, the day being a little lighter, I made the mistake -of suggesting that the boy row over to Blake’s for some bread and the -mail. He departed, and stayed for hours. Soon his mother began to -fidget and finally set off for the shore to search for him, leaving that -changeling of a baby in my care. - -There it lay on my bed, staring at me with its black beads of eyes, and -looking as old as the Pharaoh of the Exodus and as crafty. The mother -stayed and stayed away. I had visions of being left with that child on -my hands all winter. I saw myself walking it up and down the cabin -through the long nights. I saw myself sharing with it my last spoonful -of condensed milk, but, as I surveyed it, I knew what I would do first. -I would give it the best bath it had ever had in its short life and I -would burn its filthy little clothes. - -But while I was harboring these designs against that innocent child its -mother came back, her hands full of green leaves. She had not found the -boy, but she had gathered what she called “Princess Fern.” - -“This is awful good fer the blood,” she announced. “Ef yer blood is bad, -this will make it as pure as spring water; if it’s pure, this will keep -it so. It’s good fer you either way.” - -The mention of blood led naturally to the recital of the various -accidents she had seen, and I learned that there are several blood -healers in the neighborhood—persons who can stop the flow by the -recitation of a certain verse of Scripture. A man can perform this -miracle for a woman and a woman for a man, but a man cannot cure another -man, nor a woman another woman. This charm must never be revealed. It -can only be transmitted at death. It is a sure cure for blood flow and -quite authentic, according to Mrs. Spriggins, who has seen the blood -stopped. - -While we were discussing this mystery the boy came back, smilingly, from -quite a different direction from the one in which he had been sent. He -had never found the farm, but had been all this time wandering in the -fog. It was all too like a nightmare. I did not tempt fate by offering -any more suggestions. Instead, I bundled the party into their various -wrappings, led them to their boat, and turned their faces firmly in the -direction of home. Then I sat on the porch, tracing their progress down -the lake by the wailing of that wretched baby. When the sounds had -finally died away, I went in and scrubbed the cabin from end to end with -strong, yellow soap. - -And the sequel to all this? She was not Spriggins’ wife at all, but -“Spriggins’ woman,” and she was not lost. - -When I mentioned her visit the neighbors shook their heads. - -“You couldn’t lose old Jane on Many Islands,” they scoffed. “She wanted -to see you, that was all; and she knowed you wouldn’t let her land if she -come by day.” - -But two men were lost on the lake that night, and I believe that Jane was -lost too. - -With the rural love of scandal and the usual disregard of all laws of -probability, the people accuse this woman of all sorts of outrageous -crimes. It is said that she murdered her daughter for the girl’s bit of -life insurance, that she has strangled her own babies, that she bound her -aged aunt face downward on a board, and pushed her out on the lake to -drown. And here was I, all ignorant of the character of my guest, -gravely discussing with this alleged criminal the proper feeding of -infants and the rival merits of toilet soaps. - -I stopped at her house the other day to inquire my way. She greeted me -with much cordiality. - -“You was certainly fine to me that night,” she said. “I donno what we -would a-done, ef you hadn’t took us in. The baby would a-been drownded, -I guess.” - -Now I am glad that I was “fine” to her, for poor Jane is gone, and she -died as she had lived—without help and without hope. - -Her children’s father was away at a dance in Sark when she fell in their -desolate house. Seeing that she did not rise, one frightened child crept -out of bed and covered her nakedness with an old quilt. In the morning -two little boys, crying and shivering, made their way along the shore to -the place where the man was sleeping off his debauch. - -“Come home, Pop,” they cried. “Mom’s dead.” - -But he would not heed them. - -“It’s only one of them spells she gits,” he grunted. “She’ll be all -right.” - -“No, it ain’t no spell, Pop,” they cried. “She’s dead, I tell you. -She’s cold.” - -Then the neighbors, who had never gone to that house when Jane was alive, -went now and comforted the children. They followed the poor body along -the ice to its grave, and Mrs. Spellman, who has six little ones of her -own, went over and took the baby home. - -There are a great many of these irregular unions here, for Canada is no -land of easy divorce. If you are a poor man, and have any predilection -for being legally married, you must stay with the wife with whom you -started. Divorce and remarriage are not for you. - -In a little book of instructions for immigrants and settlers, published -by one of the newspapers, the matter is made very plain: - -“In Manitoba, Ontario, Alberta, and Saskatchewan there is no divorce -court. Application must be made to the Dominion Parliament, by means of -a private bill, praying for relief by reason of adultery, or adultery and -cruelty, if it is the wife who is seeking a divorce from her husband. -The charges made are investigated by a special committee of the Senate, -and, if a favorable report is presented to the House, the bill usually -passes.” But the little book goes on to state, very simply, that “The -expense of obtaining the bill is very great, exceeding in any event five -hundred dollars.” - -So for men like Harry Spriggins, whose wife deserted him, or for Black -Jack’s woman, whose husband beat her, there is no way out. They simply -take another mate, and stand by the arrangement as faithfully as may be. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -WINTER has thrown a veil of lace over the islands, a wet, clinging snow -that covers every tree-trunk, rock, and stump, and turns the cedars to -mounds of fluffy whiteness. The paths lie under archways of bending, -snow-laden branches, and all the underbrush is hidden. The island wears -many jewels, for every ice-incrusted twig flashes a cluster of diamonds, -the orange berries of the bittersweet, each encased in clear ice, are -like topaz, and the small frozen pools between the stones reflect the sky -and shine like sapphires. - -There have been snows since the first week in November, but this is the -first that has remained, and how it shows the midnight activities of all -the wild folk! The porch floor is a white page on which they have left -their signatures. Here, by the storeroom door, are innumerable little -stitch-like strokes. They were made by the deer mouse’s wee paws. There -are the prints of the squirrel’s little hands and a long swathe, where -his brush swept the snow. The chickadees and nuthatches came very early. -Their three-fingered prints are all over the woodpile, and on the paths -are the blurred, ragged tracks left by the grouse’s snowshoes. Over the -hill runs a row of deep, round holes, showing that a fox has passed that -way, and the rabbit’s tracks are everywhere. - -Every day the water freezes farther and farther out from the shores, and -it is increasingly difficult to force a channel through it to the open -lake. The bay in front of the Blake’s house is frozen straight across, -and I land far away on the point and scramble through the bushes to the -house when I must go over for the mail. Frozen cascades hang down over -the rocks, pale-blue, jade and softest cream color. The rocks themselves -are capped with frozen spray and the driftwood wears long beards of ice. - -Walking along the beach to-day I heard a great chirping and twittering, -like the sound made by innumerable very small birds. Could a late flock -of migrants be stopping in the treetops? I wondered. But when I -searched for the birds there were none. The chirping noises came from -the thin shore ice, whose crystals, rubbed together by the gently moving -water, were making the birdlike sounds. Now and then would come a sudden -“ping” like the stroke on the wire string of a banjo, and sometimes a -clear, sustained tone, like the note of a violin. - -As the ice grew thicker these sounds all stopped and over all the land -broods a profound silence. The winds are still, no bird voices come out -of the woods; even the waves seem hardly to rise and fall against the -shores. It is as though all nature were holding her breath to wait the -coming of the ice. - -“When the lake freezes over, when the ice holds,” we have a habit of -saying, and, looking across the uncertainties of the shut-in time, when I -shall not be able to use the boat and when no one can cross over to me, I -too am longing for the ice. - -The boat can no longer be left in the water. Any cold morning would find -it frozen in until spring. It must also be turned every evening, lest it -fill with snow in the night, so I haul that heavy skiff out on the sand; -and, sure enough, the accident, so confidently predicted by my friends, -came to pass, for in the turning the boat slipped, and down it came, full -weight across my foot. - -I am somewhat a judge of pain. I know quite a good deal about suffering -of one kind and another, but this hurt was something special in the way -of an agony. It turned me sick and dizzy, and for several minutes I -could only stand and gasp, while the trees turned round and round against -the sky. When their whirling had slowed down a bit, and I had caught my -breath, I hobbled down to the edge of the lake, kicked a hole in the thin -ice with my good foot, and thrust the hurt one into the icy water. Then -I spoke aloud! I did not in the least mean to say the words that came to -my lips, no one could have been more surprised than I when I heard them, -but with my horrified face turned up to the evening sky, and the -consciousness that there was no way in the world of getting help if I -were badly hurt, I said, “Great God Almighty!” - -Thinking it over, I am inclined to believe that the ejaculation was, -after all, a prayer. - -Knowing that I should probably not be able to walk for days, I then -hobbled to and fro from the house to the lake, filling every pail and -tub. Then I carried in as much wood as I could, and at last took off my -shoe. - -It was a wicked-looking injury, a foot swollen, bruised, and crushed. I -blessed my little medicine chest, with its bichloride and morphia -tablets, its cotton and gauze, that made the long hours of that night -endurable. For more than a week I did my housework with a knee on the -seat of a chair that I pushed along before me round the cabin and the -porch. No one came to the island, nor could I get far enough from the -house to call a passing boat. - -One afternoon there was a great sound of chopping in the narrows between -this island and Blake’s Point. I called, but no one answered. Later I -learned that Henry Blake had left a herring net there and that it had -frozen in. But at that time I felt only the faintest interest in -whatever was going forward. They might have chopped a way through to -China and I would not have cared. - -The long days dragged on, while my hurt foot slowly healed. I may say -here that it was never fully healed until the following spring. I had -always to keep it bandaged even after it had ceased to pain and it was -not until May that I could forget that it had been injured. - -On the eighth the calm weather broke in a day of wild winds and flying -clouds, when the waves rolled in on the shores, and the driftwood pounded -on the beaches. At evening, when the storm had lulled, the lake looked -like a wide expanse of crinkled lead foil. - -Next morning I waked to a bright blue day and dazzling sunshine. At -first I feared that I had been suddenly deafened, the stillness so -stopped my ears. Then I realized what had happened. There was no sound -of the moving water. The ice had come! - -The lake was a silver mirror that reflected every tree, every bowlder, -every floating cloud. The islands hung between two skies, were lighted -by two suns. An eagle, soaring over the lake, saw his double far below, -even to his white back, that flashed in the sunlight when he wheeled. - -In the glancing beauty of that morning my heart flung open all her doors, -my breath came quickly, and my spirit sang. For the first time in my -life I understood how frost and cold, how ice and snow, can praise and -magnify the Lord. - -That evening the snow came, turning the lake into a vast white plain -“white as no fuller on earth could white it,” that lay without spot or -wrinkle under the Indian’s Moon of the Snowshoes. - -This was the ninth of the month. Then followed long, silent days, when I -read and sewed and dreamed, and forgot what day of the week it was, or -what time of the day, and wondered how long it would be before someone -could come over from the mainland to tell me that the ice was safe to -walk on. - -Each afternoon I hobbled to the beach and paraded there, according to -agreement with Mary Blake, to let her see that I was still alive. The -rabbit came in and sat by the fire—a queer, silent little companion. The -red squirrel scampered all over the outside of the house, peeping at me -through the windows, and whisking in at the open door to steal a potato -or a nut, when he thought my back was turned. Funny little Rufus! He -spent a long, hard-working day, stealing the contents of a basket of -frozen potatoes put out for his amusement. For months afterward I found -those potatoes, hard as bullets, stuck in the crotches of the cedars all -over the island. - -From the ninth to the nineteenth I saw no one and heard no voice. Then I -descried two men walking across the lake. They carried long poles, with -which they struck the ice ahead to test its thickness. Each stroke ran -along the ice to the shore, with the sound of iron ringing against stone. -I saw the stick fall some seconds before I heard the noise. - -I had never seen men walking across a lake before. I had never realized -that this lake would become a solid floor on which men could walk. I -shall never forget the excitement with which I watched them do it. - - [Picture: The House] - -Half an hour later Jimmie Dodd burst in, with red cheeks and shining -eyes, to tell me that the ice would hold. - -The way to the farm being once more open, I made my Christmas cake, -mixing it here in the cabin and carrying it three quarters of a mile -across to the Blakes’ big oven. The finished loaf came back over the -ice, an excellent cake, as all my Christmas visitors testified. - -For let no one assume that because the inhabitants of this island are few -there has been no Christmas here. On the contrary, the feast began on -Christmas Eve and lasted for a week. The tree, a young white pine, was -cut on the island, the trimmings came from Toronto, and great was the -anxiety lest the ice should not be strong enough to bear the wagon that -brought them over from Loon Lake Station. But the final freeze came just -in time, and we, the rabbit and I, spent happy days tying on all the -glittering trifles that go to the making of that prettiest thing in the -world—a Christmas tree. There was a big gold star on the topmost twig. -There were oranges and boxes of candy for all invited and uninvited -children round the lake, and when all was finished, our first visitor was -a storm-driven chickadee, that wandered in and stayed with us, perched on -a glittering branch. - -On Christmas Eve the Blakes came and had cake and coffee and viewed the -tree. On Christmas day, came the little Beaulacs, from Loon Bay, some -walking, some in arms, some dragged in a big wooden box over the ice, and -were refreshed with tea and bread and butter and cake, after which they -sat round the tree, regarding it with great eyes of wonder. Next day the -Forets came to help me eat the Christmas duck and tinned plum pudding, -and after them the Big John Beaulacs, from far back of Sark. - -So it went, with a party every day, while the brave little tree stood -glowing and twinkling at us all. It was interesting to note how many -errands the men found to bring them to the island while the Christmas -tree was standing, and how their heavy faces lightened at sight of it. -Surely it fulfilled its purpose, sending out messages of good will and -friendliness and the love of God from the feather tip of each tiniest -twig. - -At midnight on Christmas Eve I went out on the porch and walked to and -fro there in the biting cold. The rabbit, that had been sleeping, a -bunch of snow-white fur, on the woodpile, hopped down and followed at my -heels. The lake was a shield of frosted silver. The moon shone bright -as day. One great star blazed over the shoulder of the opposite -island—it might have been the very star of Bethlehem. So diamond clear -was the air, so near leaned the sky, that I might almost have reached and -touched that star. The night was so white, so still that I fancied I -could almost hear the angels’ song, and in the rainbow glory of the -moonlight could catch swift glimpses of the flashing of their wings. - -We walked there, the rabbit and I, until the cold drove me in, to sleep -beside the tree and dream of a procession of little Beaulacs, creeping -over the ice, each one with a star in his hand. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -THE Beaulacs belong to a tribe of French Canadians that has peopled half -the countryside. They have various nicknames—Black Jack, Little Joe, -Yankee Jim, Big John, Rose Marie, Marie John, and so on. The Little Jack -Beaulacs live at Loon Bay, round the point and three miles away. The -road to Loon Lake Station starts at their landing. They live in a barn, -a sixteen-by-twenty-foot log structure, banked with earth to keep out the -cold. In its one room, along with a double bed, a cooking stove, table, -sideboard, sewing machine, rocking chair, boxes, pots and pans, and a -clutter of harness and old junk of all kinds, live John and Rose and the -six young Beaulacs, beginning with sixteen-year-old Louis and ending with -the baby. There is one door and a small window, that, so far as I know, -has never been opened. In summer, when the door is left ajar, the room -is apt to be further inhabited by hens, ducks, cats, and even a lamb or -two. - -The house stands in a clearing on a perfectly bare hill, but in summer, -the whole slope is golden with sheets of tansy, and the small dug-out -milk house is shaded by a giant lilac bush, sole remnant of some -long-forgotten garden. At the foot of the hill, rotting, flat-bottomed -boats wallow in the mud, and there the little Beaulacs spend happy days -fishing for mudcats, wading for frogs, screaming, wrangling, and throwing -stones into the water. - -They have not always lived in a barn. They have had two other houses, -each burned to the ground, with all the pitiful furnishings it -contained—crushing blows to people as poor as the Beaulacs. After the -last fire they moved into the barn, the only shelter left standing, -intending to build again in the spring. But log-hauling is work, -building materials cost money, and time went on. Now they have settled -down contentedly in the barn, and will stay there, I doubt not, until -this roof falls down about their heads. They have no fear of another -fire. That would be impossible, for, as one of the children tells me, -the last one happened on the full of the moon—sure sign that they can -never be burned out again. - -Like other men of the settlement, John Beaulac works at the mica mine, -hunts, fishes, and farms a bit. Rose walks barefoot over the fields, -after the plow, digs the small garden, raises chickens, picks wild -berries, and sells frogs to the summer campers, contriving thus to supply -the few clothes and groceries needed. For the rest, they live a happy, -carefree life in the open, and the young Beaulacs scramble up somehow. - -Rose handles the boxes of supplies that come from Toronto for the island, -driving them in from Loon Lake and bringing them across the lake by wagon -or boat, as the time of the year permits. Last time she refused, very -firmly, to allow me to pay for that hauling. - -“We ain’t agoin’ to tax you nothin’,” she declared. - -When I expostulated, she only shook her frowsy head more violently. - -“No,” she said, “we do it fer you fer nothin’. It ain’t like you had a -man here to do fer you,” she reasoned. - -Then she looked at her own man with pride and at me with a vast pity, -because I had no man to work myself to death for. - -In a pioneer neighborhood, where every woman must have some man, however -worthless, to hew the wood and care for the stock, and where every man -must have some woman, to cook and to keep the house, however lazy a -slattern she may be, I, who live alone, pay for my wood and draw the -water, must be a creature not to be understood. - -Yesterday the Beaulacs invited me to go with them to the races in -Henderson’s Bay—a trying out of the neighborhood horses before the yearly -races to be held at Queensport next week. Scrambling and falling down -the slippery trail, in answer to their halloo, I found a straw-filled -wagon body set on runners and drawn by Beaulac’s old mare. She, not -having been “sharp shod,” slipped and slid, threatening to break a leg at -every step, while the wagon slewed from side to side over the ice. It -was the first time that I had driven over a lake. My heart was in my -mouth all the way. - -Henderson’s Bay, a long arm of Many Islands, stretches for a mile into -the land. It is a beautiful horseshoe, with the farm house at the toe. -The course was laid out on the dull green ice, little cedar bushes set up -to mark the quarter miles. An old reaper, frozen in near the shore, -served as the judges’ stand. - -We drew up at the side of the track, in the lee of a high rock that -somewhat sheltered us from the piercing wind. It was a friendly scene. -The encircling arms of the shore stretched round and seemed to gather us -close. The smoke from the house chimneys curled up to the low-leaning -gray sky, and Henderson’s herd, led by a dignified old bull, strolled -down over the hill as though to see the race. Far away on the ice, black -spots appeared, later discerned to be fast-moving buggies, sleighs, and -wagons coming to the meet. When they were all assembled there must have -been as many as seven vehicles. There were four horses to be tried. -They were harnessed in turn to a little two-wheeled affair called a bike. -There is only one “bike” here, so no two horses could run at a time, and -there had to be a great unhitching and harnessing again after every trial -of speed. Joe Boggs, the neighborhood jockey, drove with arms and legs -all spraddled out, like a spider, and urged on his poor steeds with wild -cries of: “Hi-hi-hi-hi”—enough to frighten a sensible horse to death. - -I have never beheld a more professional looking horseman than Mr. Boggs. -His disreputable old squirrel-skin cap, that hung off the back of his -head, his high boots, the bow of his legs, the squint of his eye, even -the way he chewed a straw between races, bespoke the true jockey. One -felt that if Joe Boggs could not put a horse over the track, no one -could. - -Rose Beaulac too was a keen judge of a horse. She criticized the entries -unsparingly—Rose, with her long, dry-looking coon skin coat, and her -dirty red “tuque” cocked over one eye. - -“That old mare,” she would say, cuttingly, “I knowed her in her best -days, and then she wasn’t much.” - -That settled the mare for us. Our money was not on her. - -There was, however, one horse that she did consider worth praise. She -told me with awe that his owner had refused four hundred dollars for -him—a staggering sum. So valued was this animal that he was not to be -allowed to run any more until the Queensport races, but when it was -learned that I wished to admire him, his owner consented to put him once -round the course, for my pleasure. - -After the contestants had each done his best—or worst—the meet broke up, -with many “Good-days” and “Come-overs,” and we drove back over the ice, -the old mare plunging and sliding along seemingly quite accustomed to -being driven, at a gallop, over a sheet of glass. - -The eye swept the outline of the shore on which stand the seven -homesteads of this arm of the lake. Each roof shelters a family of a -different race and creed. Many Islands is a type of the whole of this -strong, young country, that takes in men of all lands and minds, gives -them her fertile prairies almost for the asking, and makes them over into -good Canadians. - -There are the Blakes, from “The States,” and aggressively American; the -Jacksons, Canadian born and Methodist; the Hendersons, English and Church -of England; the McDougals, Scotch and Presbyterian; the Cassidys, Irish -and Catholic; Harry Sprig-gins, a sharp-faced little London cockney; and -the Beaulacs, true French Canadian. Once in a while a Swede wanders in -and hires out for the wood-cutting, or an Indian comes along through the -lakes in his canoe, and camps for awhile on one of the islands. Amid all -the differences of belief and the clash of temperament, the people manage -to be friendly and neighborly; the children play together; the young folk -marry, and the next generation is all Canadian. - -They all speak English, but when one stops to listen, literal -translations of idioms and queer turns of phrase stand out. Foret always -speaks of a “little, small” bird or tree or what not, and for him things -are always “perfectly all right.” - -“Do yer moind thot pig, I sold Black Jack?” asks Uncle Dan Cassidy. - -“’Ow har you to-d’y?” inquires Harry Spriggins. - -“Oh, not too bad,” answers John Beaulac. “_Pas trop mal_,” he is saying, -of course. - -When John has finished a job he stands off, hands in pockets, and -observes: “That iss now ahl bunkum sah.” After a moment’s pondering one -knows that “_Bon comme ça_” is what he means. - -They speak of coming home through the “Brooly.” That is the scrub wood -through which a forest fire once swept. It is the land “brulé”—burned -over. While they live in Canada their talk is of far away lands, and it -is to the “Old Country” that they mean to return some day. - -And from the house on the island I see the life go by—the stern, bare -life of the country—with its never-ending toil, its uncounted sacrifices, -its feuds, its ready charities and the piteous, unnecessary sufferings of -the sick. Blessed be the rural telephone, lately come to Many Islands, -that has made it possible for Dr. LeBaron to reach a patient the day he -is called. Thrice blessed the tinkle of those little bells that bring -the voices of the world to the farms, shut in behind the snowdrifts. To -the women, dulled with labor and shaken with loneliness, they are the -little bells of courage. - -I stopped at a farm the other day—a very lonely place. Scarce were the -first greetings over when the young mistress of the house said, proudly: -“We have the telephone here. Would you care to talk to any of your -friends?” - -Something in her tone, the eager shining of her eyes, brought a rush of -tears to my own. It was the supreme effort of hospitality. She was -offering me the thing that had meant life itself to her, the dear -privilege of speaking with a friend. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -WE are at the very heart of winter now. It is “_le grand frête_,” that I -have been secretly dreading, and all my ideas of it are changing as the -quiet days go on. Winter in the woods has always seemed to me the dead -time—the season of darkness and loneliness and loss. I find it only the -pause before the birth of a new year. If I break off a twig, it is green -at the heart, when I brush away the snow, the moss springs green beneath -it. Close against the breast of the meadow lie the steadfast, evergreen -rosettes of the plantain, sorrel, moth mullen, and evening primrose, -waiting in patience for the melting of the snow. I never dip a pail into -the hole in the ice without bringing up a long trailer of green -waterweed, or a darting, flitting little whirligig beetle—the -gyrinus—somewhat less lively than in summer, to be sure, but still active -and alert. There is a big, fresh-water clam lying at the bottom of the -waterhole. He breathes and palpitates, lolling out a soft pink body from -the lips of a half-open shell. - -Yes, winter here is only a slumber, and everything is stirring in its -sleep. They all proclaim again the old, old covenant, made with the -perpetual generations, that promise of the sure return of seedtime and -harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night, that shall -not cease while the earth remains. - -The colors of winter are slate-blue and gray, laid on a background of -black and white. The chickadees and nuthatches wear them—black velvet -caps, gray coats, white waistcoats. In the mornings long, slate-blue -shadows stretch away from the points of all the islands, and every -smallest standing weed casts its tiny blue shadow across the snow. The -ice is darkly iridescent, like the blue pigeon’s neck and head. - -The dawns come late, the sunsets early, and in the twilight the mice -steal out from the woods and climb up and down on the window screens, -little misty, gray blurs moving swiftly against the soft, gray dusk. - -Through the long evenings, when supper is over, the curtains drawn and -the long sides of the big box stove glowing red, I read and think and -dream. All the while the timbers of the house crack and snap with the -cold, the trees twist and creak in the wind, and the ice groans and -mutters. Now and again it gives a long sigh, as though some heavy animal -were imprisoned under it and were struggling to escape. I imagine him -heaving at it with a great shoulder, grunting as he pushes, and sinking -back to rest before pushing again. Late in the night comes a long roar, -as though the beast had broken forth and were calling to his mate. - - [Picture: A point of one of the Islands] - -Most people undress to go to bed. Here I undress and dress again, -putting on heaviest woolen underwear, long knit stockings, flannel gown -and sweater over all. I creep into bed and lie between flannel sheets -and under piled blankets, and throw a fur coat across the foot, in -preparation for that first hurried dash across the room at dawn. - -There is only one anguished moment in the twenty-four hours. It is when -the fire has burned out, and the cold wakes me. My movements then are -reduced to the least possible number. Almost with one motion I spring -out of bed, fling the window shut, tear back the whole top of the stove, -throw in fresh logs, put on the coffeepot, then skurry back to bed to -doze until the cabin is warm. - -There is not the least trouble about keeping my stores cool. The problem -is to prevent their freezing. The potatoes and eggs freeze in the very -room with me, a pot of soup, set in the outer vestibule, is a hard block -from which I crack a piece with the ax when I wish a hot supper. The -condensed milk is hard frozen, the canned plum puddings rattle about in -their tins like so many paving stones, and it takes all day to heat them. -Early in December, I laid a jagged bit of ice on the corner of the porch, -and there it lies, its shape quite unchanged through weeks of bitter -weather. - -There is an inch or two of ice over the waterhole every morning. When I -go to fill the pails, I take the little ax along to chop my cistern open, -but gradually the walls of ice close in and about once a week someone -must cut me a fresh waterhole in another spot on the lake. - -The drying of the weekly wash is a most perplexing thing. Clothes hung -outside the house freeze immediately of course. If they are hung inside, -the room is filled with their steam. My only plan is to heat the cabin -red-hot, hang them indoors, bank the fire for safety and take to the lake -or go a-visiting, for a certain number of clean clothes one must have, if -only to keep up one’s self-respect. - -This morning I woke so stiff with cold that I was almost afraid to move -in bed, lest a frozen finger or toe should drop off. There was no more -sleep, so, cowering over the stove, I watched the sunrise, more augustly -beautiful than I have ever seen it. The bright crescent of last month’s -moon hung, point downward, on a sky of mouse-gray velvet. Over it stood -the morning star. Along the eastern horizon lay a line of soft -brightness, that glowed through a veil of gray gauze. Very slowly this -bright line widened while the snow field grew slate-blue, then purple, -and the jagged tree line of the forest stood out in silhouette, black -pines, cedars, and hemlocks against a yellow sky. Trees and bushes near -at hand stole out from the shadows, patterns of black lace against the -white ground, and sharply visible. The horizon line was now tinged with -red, the sky was changing to a tender yellow-gray, shading to pale green -as it neared the zenith. The paling moon hung now against a background -of rose and saffron. The star still blazed above it like a lamp, until, -suddenly, a fiery streak appeared on the horizon, and star and moon faded -away before the red disk of the sun. - -Toward noon the cold was less intense, and I ventured out to get some -long-delayed mail at the farm. Not a bird was abroad, not a rabbit track -lay on the paths. In fur coat, fur hood, and high rubber boots I plowed -a way across the lake, where the level snow, knee-high, drifted in over -the tops of the boots and formed an icy crust around my stockinged feet. -At the farm I learned that the thermometer at Loon Lake Station had -registered thirty-five degrees below zero at seven o’clock that morning. -Even then, in the sun, on the Blakes’ south porch it stood at twenty -below. - -At home in the afternoon all my little pensioners were out to greet me. -The white-breasted nuthatch was clinging, head down, on a birch pillar, -his head, twisted back at a neck-dislocating angle, showed his black cap -perched over one eye, and gave him an indescribably rakish, disreputable -appearance. - -“Yank, yank,” he observed, irritably, as though to chide me for keeping -him waiting so long for food. The air was full of the plaintive winter -notes of the chickadees. Peter, the rabbit, was sitting hunched against -the kitchen door, a forlorn little figure. - -The feeding of my live stock has become quite a large part of the duty of -each day. The rabbit waits at the door for his slice of bread, and, if -that door is left ajar, he is quite apt to hop inside and help himself to -anything he finds standing on the hearth. The squirrel has his toast and -cold potato on the woodpile, the birds their crumbs. The bushes present -a very odd appearance, hung with bits of bacon rind for the chickadees. - -The other night there came another little boarder, in the person of a -very small deer mouse, that slipped into the cabin and fell down between -the wire screen and the lower casement of the north window. Between the -netting and the window frame there is space enough to make a very -satisfactory runway for a very tiny mouse, and there he cowered, peering -at me, with terrified, bright eyes. The window panes open in on hinges, -like a French casement, so my first impulse was to shut the upper half -and keep him prisoner, knowing that if he once ran at large in the house -I could never catch him, and that he would make havoc among the stores. -He looked so hungry, trembling there, with his tiny, pink hands clasped -on his breast, that I dropped him down a bit of bacon. Then he shivered -so piteously that I dropped also a fluff of absorbent cotton, which he -seized and instantly made into a little Esquimeau hut. This he placed in -the corner best sheltered from the wind, turned its door in toward the -glass, and retired, closing that opening with a bit of cotton, and I saw -him no more by day. - -A deer mouse is the prettiest little beast imaginable, somewhat smaller -than the house mouse, and with very large eyes. His fur is dark brown, -very soft and thick and with a darker streak along the spine. His breast -is white, his legs white too, ending in tiny pink paws with wee -fingernails, the exact size of the eye of a number five needle. His ears -are long and fringed with black, his head very much like the head of a -doe. He is nocturnal in habit, staying up in the morning until after his -breakfast and mine, then retiring for the day, to come out at twilight -and run up and down the window screen for exercise. So long as I keep -this window closed he can’t get out, and I can study him through the -glass at my leisure. - -Who ever sees a deer mouse at home? Walking through the stubble field -one sometimes starts one, and away he goes like a flash. Here I have -this little wild thing living in my house, apparently quite content. He -shall stay as long as he seems well and happy. When I think he is pining -he shall go free, but he is quite as well off in his little hut as he -would be in the cast-off vireo’s nest that is, in all probability, his -winter home. Snow drifts in and covers it, to be sure, but he seems snug -and warm and is growing sleek and fat on a diet of bacon and apple. - -Since the coming of the ice I find that I must keep more cooked stores on -hand, not only for myself and for the birds and beasts, but for the -frequent visitors that come driving up the lake to the door. They race -along the ice in sleighs and buggies and stop at the island. When they -come they stay to the next meal, so there must be materials for a party -always ready. It is only fair to state that the rule works quite as well -the other way round, for I am always welcome to drop in at any house near -which I happen to be at meal time. Any passing guest may draw his chair -to the table and partake of what is set thereon. No apologies are -offered for the food. It may be only a pot of tea and a biscuit, but -whatever it is you are welcome, and that, by your leave, is hospitality. - -Oh, Many Islands, place of the good neighbors! I close my eyes to see -picture after picture passing across the screen of memory. There is -Henry Blake giving his time and labor that my house may be warm and -weather proof; there is Mary Blake with daily gifts of good things to eat -and counsel for my inexperience. I see the little fishing boats bobbing -against the rocks as the men stop at the island to throw me off a bass -and some silver herring as they pass with the day’s catch. There are -John Beaulac’s two little girls scrambling through the bushes to bring me -some venison when father has killed a deer, and I see Anna Jackson -putting a big jug of maple syrup in the sleigh that brings me home on a -Sunday. - -I see too Granny Drapeau’s earnest old face, as I hear her say: - -“Eh, but I was feared for you last night, when the wind blowed so strong. -I couldn’t sleep fer thinkin’ of you, all alone on that island. Come -daylight I says to Andy, ‘Look over an’ tell if you kin see her smoke.’ -For if ever that smoke is not a’risin’ I’ll send one of the men over to -see what’s wrong.” - -Daily kindnesses, daily acts of friendliness for the stranger woman, who -came from nowhere, to stay awhile and will go away, they know not where. - - - - -CHAPTER X - - -JANUARY the twenty-second was a great day in the county. It was the date -of the “Tea Meeting,” given under the auspices of the English Church, for -the benefit of the destitute Belgians. It was also a great day for me, -being the first and the last time that I shall appear in Many Islands’ -society, when society meets at night. To drive seven miles in the bitter -cold, to return to a stone cold house in the middle of the night, -requires a love of foregathering with one’s fellows that I do not -possess. So not until I have trained the rabbit to keep up the fire -shall I venture out at night again. I had been invited to the festivity -by Mrs. Jackson weeks before. Having very little notion of the proper -dress for such an occasion, I ventured to ask counsel of a young visitor -who dropped in opportunely. - -“What do the women wear to the Tea Meetings here?” I inquired. - -She surveyed me with an appraising eye. “Well now,” she said, kindly, -“haven’t you a nice, dark waist here with you? A lady of your age would -naturally wear something dark and plain.” - -At once I cast away all idea of a serviceably plain attire and determined -to array myself in all the finery I had with me here; chiffon gown, long -gloves and velvet hat with plumes. “Lady of my age, indeed!” - -And when I arrived at the entertainment every soul was in her best, and -my attire entirely appropriate. I waited with some pleasant anticipation -for the moment when my little friend should spy me and was not -disappointed in the expression that swept across her pretty face. As a -plain dresser I was evidently not a success. - -The start was to be an early one. In the middle of the afternoon I raked -out the fire, fed the animals, hid the key under the woodpile and started -down the lake to the Jackson farm, following a fresh-cut sleigh track -that glittered like a silver ribbon flung down on the blue ice. Now and -again the solid floor under me would give a groan and a heave and I would -spring aside, my heart in my throat despite my knowledge of the two feet -of solid ice beneath me. Then I would assure my quaking spirit that -where the woodsleds could drive I could surely walk, and would travel on. - -At Jackson’s there was a pot of bean soup on the stove, and, as a -comforting repast on a cold day, I know of nothing that approaches hot -bean soup—it stays by one. We drove off in the big farm sleigh, seven -miles to the town of Fallen Timber, passing through Sark with its five -houses and the Cheese Factory, and by farms each of which contributed its -heavily laden sleigh to the long line of vehicles bound for the meeting. - -The town hall of Fallen Timber stands on a bleak hillside. It is a room, -about thirty by forty feet in size, with a six-foot wide stage at the end -and a box stove in the middle. The stovepipe goes straight to the -ceiling, across, and out by a hole in the wall at the back of the stage. -The walls are of a dirty, leprous-looking plaster, with here and there a -small bunch of ground pine tacked on by way of decoration. At the back -of the stage a strip of once white muslin bore the inscription: “Welcome -To All” in letters a foot high. - -The seats are planks laid on the stumps of trees, the stage curtain is of -red and green calico. - -Now and again this curtain was pushed aside, disclosing the preparations -for supper, and such piles of cookies, cakes, and sandwiches I never -expect to see again. In the phrase of this neighborhood there were -certainly “plenty of cookings.” - -The great folk of the evening were late—the rector and his wife, the -member of Parliament, who was to preside for us, and the orator, who was -to address us. But we did not mind the delay. We had come to meet each -other, and the time passed pleasantly enough. I was seated almost -exactly on the stove, ventilation there was none, and the hall was -packed, but what of that? It was good to feel thoroughly warm, at no -expense to oneself, and there’s too much fuss made about fresh air -anyway—at least in the opinion of many of my neighbors. - -The orator was the typical political speaker—portly, bland, slightly -humorous and very approachable. He made an excellent speech, outlining -the causes that led to the Great War, and telling of Germany’s policy and -her hopes. He explained the part that Belgium had played, in holding -back the tide of invasion until France had had time to mobilize, and it -was all very clear and convincing. He laid stress on the spontaneous -outpouring of loyalty in the colonies, and quoted one of the first -messages received from India—the telegram from a Rajah that read: “My -Emperor, what work has he for ME and for my-people?” - -As he went on to enumerate them—Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand and -all the islands of the seas—I forgot the little hall, the crowd, the -heat, and caught something of Isaiah’s vision of the Great House of God, -that shall be exalted high above the hills, and of the time when all -nations shall flow unto it. - -After the speech came supper, huge plates of sandwiches and many kinds of -cake, with pitchers of steaming tea. The men ate three and four of these -platefuls with as careless an air as who should say: “What are five -pounds or so of food washed down with quarts of strong, boiled tea? A -mere nothing.” - -What was worse, the children ate quite as much as their elders, but I -have long since ceased to forebode anything for the youth of this favored -land. Apparently, they cannot be harmed. - -After supper, at about eleven-thirty, came the real object of the -meeting—the entertainment by “local talent.” It began with the chorus: -“Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching.” Followed then a -recitation, “My Aunt Somebody’s Custard Pie.” - -This was delivered in a coquettish, not to say soubrettish manner by a -little miss in a short white frock, and with a coral ribbon wound round -her curly, dark hair. Her assured manner struck me and not pleasantly. -Later I understood it. She was “Teacher” in charge of Number Six, better -known as the Woodchuck School. I am told that the Boards of Education -cannot keep these rural schools supplied, the girls marry off so fast; -and I can well believe it, judging by this one. She was evidently the -belle of the neighborhood. In the comments that the boys were making all -round me the other girls were all very well, but “Teacher” was easily the -favorite. - -“She’s a good teacher,” I heard one declare, hoarsely fervent. “She’s -did well by Number Six. I could make out every word them children -spoke”—a fact that really seemed to give him cause for satisfaction. - -The night wore on with drill after drill, song after song, recitation -after recitation. Despite my fatigue, I was interested. As I watched -the audience something took me by the throat. It was somehow so -pathetic. Those heavy men, those work-worn women were not interested -because their children were being shown off. No indeed. They liked the -performance because it was just at their level, and that fact threw a -searchlight on the bare monotony of their lives. We finished at about -two o’clock with “Tipperary,” and “God Save the King,” and, as every -national anthem is an assault on the feelings and makes me cry, I sang -and wiped my eyes with the rest. - -The night skies here are seldom black, like the skies of the south, they -are more often a soft, misty gray. The stars, instead of being sharp -little points of light, are big and indistinct and furry. It is always -light enough to see the road, even at the dark of the moon. We drove -along through the bitter cold, Big John Beaulac’s hired boy, Reginald, -standing in the back of the sleigh, by way of getting a lift home. He -was regretting, all the way, that some people had not eaten all their -“cookings” and that so much good food had been wasted on the floor. I -fancied that Reginald Bean would fain have eaten even more than he did. - -At the shore we dropped Mrs. Jackson and the three little sleeping -Jacksons, and drove on down the lake. At the narrows I, being almost -frozen to the seat of the sleigh, insisted on being set down to walk, and -took my way along the side of the island, treading in the footprints that -I had left in the snow when I had set out—was it the day or the week -before? - -I groped my way among the trees and along the trail to the house, lighted -a fire and looked at the clock. I had been walking through the woods at -four o’clock in the morning, and with as little concern as though it had -been that hour of a summer afternoon. - -Then, as though to rebuke my temerity, I was frightened on the lake the -very next day. - -I was walking briskly along on the ice, singing at the top of my lungs, -because just to be alive on a day when the air was so cold and clean, the -sky so blue and the snow crystals so brilliant, was happiness, when I -came full on a figure that robbed the morning of its joy. - -It was Ishmael Beaulac, the imbecile, shambling heavily along. He spoke, -then turned and followed me some distance, his air half menacing, half -cringing, and I was frightened, for I realized that for miles around -there was no one to come to my aid, if Ishmael should take it into his -poor, crazed brain to do me harm. But he wandered off again, and, as I -watched his bent figure shuffling away in the snow, I was shaken with a -great compassion. I have never seen a face so marked with evil. Lined, -swollen, and inflamed with some loathsome eruption, the low, receding -forehead, with coarse, black hair growing almost to the line of the -eyebrows, a wide, loose-lipped mouth, and cunning shifty eyes—it is a -face that has haunted my dreams. - -I asked Rose Beaulac about him. - -“John and I was a sayin’ that we’d ought to tell you about Ish,” she -said. “Now that the ice is come, likely he’ll walk over to the island. -But don’t you be afeared of him. Just make out like you’re goin’ to -throw hot water on him an’ he’ll run.” - -“Oh, poor creature!” I cried. “I couldn’t hurt him.” - -“It ain’t needful to scald him,” said Rose, with an air of great cunning. -“I always holds my finger in the water to see if it’s cool enough afore I -throws it. He’s awful ’fraid of water, Ish is,” she observed, and -remembering Ishmael’s appearance I could well believe it. - -“But don’t you ever make over him,” Rose went on, “and don’t you ever -feed him or you’ll have him there all the time. Don’t leave any knives -or old boots around where he can git them. Ish don’t know nothin’ about -money; he’ll walk right past your purse to steal a pair of old boots. -But he won’t hurt you—at least we don’t think he will.” - -“I have heard that his father, Old John, was cruel to him,” I ventured, -with some diffidence, for Old John or Devil Beaulac was Little John’s own -Uncle. - -A look of distress flitted across Rose’s face. - -“Old John was a very severe man, very severe,” she said. “He treated -Ishmael awful bad. He must have hurted him very hard, for now when the -men is teasin’ him if one of them lifts an ax or a spade, and makes to -run at him, Ish goes perfectly wild. They say Old John used to hit him -on the head. That would make him so crazy-like, wouldn’t it? Yes, poor -Ish has had it awful hard, there’s none but will tell you that,” she -sighed. - -The neighbors are less reticent about old John. By their account he was -a man outside all law, a giant in strength and of a fiendish cruelty. -Finally his tyrannies grew intolerable, and his sons set on him, beating -him until he died. Then they threw his body into an old mica pit, filled -the pit with stones and went their way. No one interfered. The old man -was thought to have earned his doom and the sons were never brought to -trial. But even now, when poor Ishmael’s fits of madness come upon him -they say he goes to that pit and throws great rocks into it, cursing the -memory of his father. - -Much of this may be untrue, but the story haunts me. In the figure of -this poor maniac, hurling his stones and shouting impotent curses to the -unheeding sky, I see a time when the earth was young, when men dragged -the offender out from the great congregation and stoned him to death -before the face of an angry God. I marvel that in this place so near to -civilization such stories can still be told. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - - -WE are no longer tenderfeet, the rabbit and I. We have come through a -blizzard. For the better part of a week we have been “denned in” along -with the squirrels, chipmunks, coons, bobcats, and bears. We have melted -snow for drinking water, because the drifts cut us off from the lake and -buried the waterhole. We have dug our firewood out from under a pile of -wet whiteness. The mouse came through safely too, although the snow -sifted in through the window screen, and covered him, house and all. - -The storm began on the second of February, in the evening. All night -long the wind howled with a violence that threatened to lift the house -bodily and deposit it out on the lake. It searched out every crack and -crevice, chilling me to the bone. It wrenched and tore at the heavy -wooden shutters, it tossed and twisted the trees, every now and again -throwing one to the ground with a grinding crash. It whistled, it -moaned; and, with it came the snow, in blinding, whirling gray clouds -that blotted out everything. The lake was obscured, the outlines of the -neighboring islands were lost. I could see only a smother of drifting, -dancing flakes. - -The day passed fairly well, for the mere necessity of keeping up the fire -was an occupation in itself. - -“This,” said I to Peter, “is the beginning of the true Canadian winter. -I hope it does not stay too long.” - -Peter, having been born last summer, has had no experience of any other -winter. No memories of former blizzards troubled him. He hoped that the -bread would hold out. - -At about three o’clock in the afternoon Satan inspired me to go out on -the porch, to survey the prospect. Immediately I smelled smoke. - -Now, there is but one thing of which I have been afraid, and that is -fire. A blaze started here would inevitably sweep the island and no one -could stop it. I smelled tar paper burning. - -“What a pleasant thing it would be to borrow the cherished summer camp of -a friend and burn it down for her! What a safe thing for oneself it -would be to go to sleep in a smoldering house and have it break into -flames in the night.” - -I sniffed and sniffed despairingly. I scrambled out into the snow to -examine the chimneys; I burrowed under the porch floor to look at the -foundations; I climbed the ladder to make sure of the roof, and still -that smell of burning tar persisted. I had a horrible misgiving that -there was fire smoldering between the outer and the inner walls. - -There was nothing for it but to get to the Blakes and tell them of my -fears. If Henry could assure me that there was no way of a fire’s -starting, I would believe him and go to bed content. If I had not that -assurance, I should be forced to sit up all night waiting to escape into -the snow. Whatever the weather I had to get to the farm; that was all I -could think of. - -I dressed as warmly as I could and set forth, through the drifts, to the -edge of the island. I made fair progress until I stepped off the land on -to the lake. Then I began to have some idea of what I, in my ignorance, -had undertaken. - -The lake was like the ocean done in snow. The wind had piled great -breakers of snow one behind another, their crests curled over at the top, -exactly like the waves on a beach. Only these breakers were curled over -the opposite way. They turned over toward the wind, not away from it. -One long ridge followed another with a deep, scooped out furrow to -windward. Looking down on the lake from the level of the porch, these -waves did not look very high. When I stepped off into them they came up -to my armpits. - -Even then I had not sense to turn back; even then I had no idea of any -real danger. The wind was at my back. I could feel it behind me like a -wall, as I climbed through each succeeding hillock of snow and out across -the intervening three or four yards of level ice. Wave followed wave, -each higher, deeper, more suffocating than the last. Sometimes I could -walk for a few feet on the top of a drift before sinking into its depths. -I scrambled, fell, rolled, crawled, climbed, and thought that I should -never reach the shore. Counting helped me, as I pulled each foot up out -of the clinging mass and set it down a few inches nearer the land. - -“One, two, three, four,” I said aloud, timing my steps to the pounding of -my laboring heart. My breath was coming in gasps, a pulse beat in my -temples, my head swam, there was a ringing in my ears as I plodded on, -now with eyes shut. - -A thin, washed out moon came out and looked through wisps of ragged -clouds. Its light served only to make the scene more desolate, the -distance from the shore more terrifying. The only idea that remained in -my stupified brain was that I must somehow find strength to go on lifting -heavy feet one after the other; that I must struggle up from each fall, -must breathe deep and keep a quiet mind. - -At last I reached the deeper drifts that fringed the shore, skirted the -hidden waterhole, found traces of the cattle tracks, dragged myself along -the path and finally stepped, with the very last remnant of strength, up -on the porch and into the warm bright kitchen. When Mary Blake caught -sight of me, she sat down suddenly and said: “My God!” - -They had not attempted to get to the water hole that day, but had given -the cattle melted snow. They had gone only as far as the barn and -henhouses. Even the house dog had stayed indoors. - -I gasped out my fears and Henry Blake laughed at them. There was no way, -he said, for a fire to have started and if one had caught, the house -would have been flat to the ground long before I had crossed the lake. - -I heard him with disgust. If that was the way my panic looked, it was -high time for me to return to my home on the island. I rose with much -dignity and walked off to the shore, before the Blakes had adjusted their -minds to the move. - -This time the wind was in my face, making the going ten times harder than -before. About forty yards out from shore I stopped and turned my back to -the blast to catch my breath, and there was Henry, dressed in his great -fur coat, striding out after me and looking for all the world like a bear -on its hind legs. - -When I saw his thickset figure struggling against the gale it seemed -suddenly a hatefully inconsiderate thing to have brought him away from -his warm fire and out into the storm and I called: - -“Go back, Mr. Blake. There is no fire. Don’t attempt to come after me.” - -But Henry only stumped on. - -“I know there’s nothing burning,” he retorted. “We’re a long way more -worried about you than we are about the camp. You might get confused and -lose your life in this storm.” - -On he went ahead of me and I was thankful to follow humbly in his -footsteps. - -We reached the house, and, as we stood in the warm room fighting for -breath, I said: - -“Mr. Blake, there is some Scotch here. Will you drink some?” And Henry -said he would. - -After that I was content to stay indoors until he came with the horses -and broke the tracks through the island. - -Such heaps of snow lay piled on the lake and in the woods that it should -have taken months for it to disappear; but in three days there came a -thaw and melted it all away. - -The thaw came not a day too soon, for the sixteenth was the time set for -the long anticipated sawing bee at the farm. During January Henry Blake -and Jimmie had been felling trees and dragging them to the house in -preparation for the arrival of the perambulating sawmill, that goes from -farm to farm as soon as the ice will hold. There was a pile of logs, ten -feet high by thirty feet long piled butt end to in the dooryard. When a -farmer announces a bee his neighbors gather from far and near, leaving -their own work to help him put through the particular job in hand. He is -expected to attend their bees in return. The farmer’s wife, who earns a -high seat in heaven if ever woman did, works for days beforehand, cooking -for the ten or a dozen hungry men who will come down on her for dinner, -supper and, perhaps, breakfast, with a night’s lodging thrown in. - -Mary Blake had made bread of the lightest and finest, had killed -chickens, taken fish out of brine, and pork from the barrel; had made -cakes and pies; had brought out pickles and preserves, and when I arrived -she was creaming carrots and onions and boiling the inevitable potatoes. - -It was a cold, gray day, with the surface of the lake awash. As I -splashed my way through the water, ankle-deep on the ice, I heard the -saw, clear and high, like the note of a violin. There were ten men -working at the bee. The little gasoline engine was drawn up on a bobsled -at the kitchen door, and even as early as ten o’clock it had eaten out a -big hole in the side of the stack of logs. William Foret and Jock -McDougal were at the machine shoveling snow into the boiler, William in a -bright blue jersey and with a squirrel skin cap set at an angle over his -dark, eager face. Henry Blake was at the wheel, to take the sawed-off -chunks from the feeders and throw them to the pile. The rhythm of his -movements was exact. A reach toward the wheel, a heave, a toss over his -shoulder to the ever-increasing pile of chunks and a return to the -wheel—all this at the rate of a chunk every three seconds. This -position, being the hardest work, is always taken by the host at a bee. - -Little John Beaulac, Tom Jackson and Uncle Dan Cassidy lifted the logs -and carried them to the saw, where Black Jack held them against the -blade. There were two or three extra men standing ready to take up the -work when one or more should be exhausted. - -In the midst of the fray a sleigh was sighted, far out on the ice. It -was bringing Jim McNally from far back of the mica mine. He had heard of -the bee and had come, at a venture, for fear that Henry might be -“shorthanded.” He brought a pail of fresh eggs for Mary Blake and a -great sack of turnips. There was a mighty skurry and mystery about -slipping a bag of salt fish under the seat of the sleigh, for him to find -when he reached home. - -At half past eleven the men trooped in to dinner, with many facetious -remarks about the strength of their appetites and the advisability of -letting the dirtiest man wash first. - -After a very short smoke time they were at work again and I sat at the -kitchen window, watching the saw bite through the big logs. The men’s -rhythmic movements, the swift interplay of the bright colors of their -jerseys, the long scream of the toothed blade, all lulled me to vacuity -of mind. Long after dark, when I was back at home, I could hear the -sound of the wheel coming across the lake. That song of the saw tells me -just where the mill is working for the day. Going out on the porch I can -tell whether the bee is at Blake’s, Drapeau’s, Foret’s or the mines. - -The Blakes are very up to date in their use of the gasoline engine. Many -of the farmers still use the old treadmill, where four teams of horses -walk round and round all day, turning the wheel. Invited to a bee at the -Jacksons’, the other day, I took a camera along, for a picture of the old -tread will soon be a treasured possession. The men had paused in their -work in the kindest way to allow themselves to be “took.” I was walking, -with great dignity, down the slippery hillside, when a treacherous bit of -ice was my undoing. I fell and my demoralization was complete. - -Camera flew one way, walking staff another, arms and legs spread out to -the four points of the compass, as I went shooting down that hill. When -I had gathered my scattered members and my wits together, and was -scrambling up with the foolish grin of the newly fallen, I looked -appealingly at the sawing gang, expecting to hear the inevitable laugh. -Not a face did I see. Every man’s back was turned. The picture was -taken amid a sounding silence. - -Commenting on that display of good manners to Uncle Dan, I said -fervently: “Never in my life did I see such perfect breeding. It is -almost impossible to help laughing when anyone falls, but not one of -those men smiled. I never expected such politeness.” - -Uncle Dan’s Irish eyes twinkled. - -“You’d ought to have heard what the b’ys said when you left,” he -observed. - -Pondering that cryptic remark, I am inclined to think that it is just as -well that I do not know all that is being said of me in the work gangs -and around the kitchen fires of Many Islands. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - - -HOW do we know when the turn of the year has come? The calendar gives -March twenty-first as the official birthday of spring, but that has -nothing to do with it. One February day will be all winter, hard frozen -and dreary, and on the next, quite suddenly, through some spirit line of -sense, a message will reach us that spring, her very self, is on the way. -After that, no matter how many days of sleet and snow may follow, we know -that for us the winter is past. - -So it was yesterday, here on the island. With a mind adjusted to the -thought of weeks of snow and ice to come, I stepped out of doors and into -the spring. The air was balmy as May, the sky a turquoise and the lake a -pearl. The furry gray buds of the poplars had puffed out in the night. -The three little fingers of the birches were swelling and lengthening. -Suddenly my eyes were dazzled by a flash of bright blue light, and a -magnificent jay darted through the air and perched on the bare branch of -a basswood. After the small, drab-hued chickadees and nuthatches, that -jay looked as large as an eagle. Then I looked at little Peter, and lo! -he was turning brown. The white hairs of his winter coat were falling -off, his spring jacket was showing through. - -The ground under the trees is dusted over with myriads of brown scales, -chief among them the bird-shaped pods of the birches, that carry two wee -seeds under their pinions. In the open the snow is gray with patches of -briskly hopping snow fleas that move along over the meadows at a lively -rate. The nature books tell me that these are insects that live in the -mosses and lichens, and that they come out on warm days for exercise. -They are exercising for dear life to-day. - -Here and there on the white carpet are the fairy writings left by the -wind last night. It bent down the dry tips of the sedges, and traced -circles, bows, triangles, mystic runes that look as though they meant -great news, if one could only read them. - -But the snow still covers the ground. Rufus still tunnels under it, -shaking the crust violently when he goes in for some hidden store of -food. The rabbit roads, pressed hard by hundreds of small, skurrying -feet, still run crisscross under the cedars, and the heavy woodsleds -still travel down the middle of the lake, like giant caterpillars, -crawling along. - - [Picture: The heavy woodsleds still travel down the lakes] - -Behind the opposite island the men are cutting ice. Uncle Dan stands at -the side of a dark pool of open water, and works away with a saw as tall -as himself. The rectangular blocks, two feet thick, slide up the -inclined boards to the sleds and are driven off to the icehouses in -preparation for the summer’s shipment of fish to the towns. They are -beautiful, those blocks of ice, so clear and clean and blue. - -With the fine weather has come the news that the Rector of the English -Church and Mrs. Rector are coming to the island for a visit. The island -is in much excitement. Salt bacon and potatoes do not seem just the -right fare to offer guests so important and who are coming from afar. My -mind is set on chicken, and the word has gone forth round the lake that -“the English minister is coming and the woman on the island wants a -fowl.” - -Now, all our turkeys, ducks, and chickens are fattened for the fowl fair, -held at Queensport in December, when the poultry dealers from Toronto and -Montreal, and even from “The States,” go through the country buying up -the stock. The greater part of the yearly income of some of us depends -on the prices paid for the fowl. My only chance of having chickens -through the winter was to engage a neighbor to save me a dozen young -cockerels and to pay him for their feed, having them killed as needed. I -had long ago eaten all these chickens and the prospect of getting any -more was slight. Even Rose Beaulac, fertile in resource, could give me -no hope. - -I never found the chicken, but I had a visit from Rose the day before the -party. She told me that she had given John his gun and had sent him up -Loon Bay to shoot me some grouse. Then the conversation languished. -Rose is a very shy little woman; it took her nearly an hour to come to -the real point of her call. She would not lay aside her coonskin coat, -she would not remove her dingy tuque; there she sat, struggling with her -errand. - -At last it came out: - -“Might she bring the baby to be christened when the Rector came?” - -Then for another half hour she rambled on about people who never had -their babies christened and what a sin that was, and of those who never -registered their children’s births, and how those children could never -inherit property. Once in a while she said something about things “not -being legal,” until I was quite bewildered and do not know to this day -whether, in her opinion, the unbaptized or the unregistered infant is not -legal. But the upshot of it all was that the youngest Beaulac was to be -christened next day. - -The hour set for service was two o’clock, but such was Mrs. Beaulac’s -determination not to be late that she and the baby’s eldest sister -arrived at eleven. There was no sign of the father, John Beaulac. There -I had made my mistake. I had let him know that a sponsor would be needed -and that he was expected to stand. So when the godfather was demanded -none could be found. - -“Where was John?” - -“Gone to Queensport with a load of wood.” - -“Andy Drapeau, the baby’s uncle?” - -“Gone to Glen Avon.” - -The other uncles were off hunting at Loon Lake; Louis, the eldest -brother, had disappeared entirely. So when the time came for sponsors, -the Rector’s wife and I had to stand, and for this poor baby, whose -father owns not one rod of ground, and who is sheltered in a hovel built -for the cattle, we gravely renounced “the vain pomp and glory of the -world.” And because, in my hurry, I had forgotten to temper the water in -the improvised font, the new little soldier and servant of Christ yelled -valiantly when the ice water touched him. - -It was a scene I shall not forget: the cabin, with its bunk in one -corner, its big stove at one end, the pots and pans on the wall behind -it; the tools; the fishing tackle and the stores. The Rector, wearing -white surplice and embroidered stole, stood in the center of the room -beside the white-covered table that held the bowl of water and the Prayer -Book. - -Old Mrs. Drapeau, the baby’s grandmother, had crept across the ice to -witness the baptism, the first she had seen, she said, in twenty years. - -The meeting closed with tea and cake; then the christening party -withdrew, the little new Christian sleeping peacefully in the wooden box -in which his mother dragged him away over the ice. - -We three who were left settled to dinner and a long afternoon’s talk. At -teatime the Rector observed that the Woodchuck School was a mere seven -miles away, and that he might as well have a service there while he was -so near. So we dashed away across the lake, used telephones freely to -collect a congregation, opened the school house, and, by the light of two -guttering candles, said our prayers, sang our hymns, and listened to a -simple, direct, and practical sermon. Back across the ice I drove in the -flare of the northern lights, that made the night almost as bright as -day. - -The Rector is a young man and an energetic one—and he has need to be—for -his parish covers much ground. It extends from the church at Queensport, -out to Godfrey’s Mills, fifteen miles away to the south, and back to -Fallen Timber, twelve miles to the north. Besides these three churches -he has four or five irregular stations in the schoolhouses dotted about -within the radius of his activities. On Sunday mornings he teaches the -Sunday school at Queensport and holds service there; in the afternoon he -drives to the Mills, and has Sunday school and Evening Prayer, at night -there is service at Fallen Timber. Up and down the roads he drives, day -after day, visiting the sick, baptizing the children, burying the dead. -He consoles, admonishes, encourages; he reproves our negligences, bears -with our foolishnesses, and somehow contrives to have patience with our -ignorance. - -Being a churchman to whom the decency and orthodoxy of services are dear, -it is hard for him to excuse our lax ways. It gives him genuine distress -when we know no better than to drape our flags over the cross, and his -face is set against the to us very pleasing decoration furnished by house -plants growing in tin cans and set upon the altar. When he marches up -the aisle and removes these attempts at ornament, replaces the vases and -the cross where they belong, we say nothing. It is evident that we have -made a mistake in our zeal. We don’t try that again, but something else -that proves just as reprehensible. But we are learning—the Rector sees -to that. If only the Bishop will let him stay, we shall be good -churchmen after awhile. But we say proudly and sorrowfully: “He’s too -good for a small parish like this. He’ll be moved to the city soon.” - -The only way the Rector spares himself is in the matter of writing -sermons. He confessed to me that he did not write three new ones a week, -but preached the same one at all three churches, thereby reserving, I -suppose, a few hours for sleep. - -And with all this unceasing effort—and the clergy of all denominations -work just as hard—there are families living here round Many Islands that -have never entered a church. They are as veritable heathen as any on the -far frontier. There was a death at a farm on the road to Loon Lake -station last week. The body was put into a rough box, thrust into a -shallow grave, and the work of the farm went straight on. And the -English rector, the Roman Catholic priest, the Methodist preacher and the -Presbyterian minister all live within a radius of twenty miles. - -Strange country, so civilized and so primitive, so close to cities and so -inaccessible. Strange people, at once so old and so young, so instructed -in vice and sorrow, and so ignorant of the simplest teachings of life. -Grown men and women in body but children in mind, with children’s virtues -and with adults’ sins. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - - -SINCE the first of December we have not seen the ground—only a great -field of white so dazzling that one understands the Indian’s name for the -March moon. Verily, my own eyes tell me why it is the Moon of -Snowblindness. - -The ice is still thick and clear, but the sun on its surface and the -moving water beneath are both wearing it away, slowly, surely. There are -clear pools on the lake at noon, and then the crows come down and drink, -marching to and fro, like files of small, black-clad soldiers. They -meet, and bow politely, speak to each other singly or in groups, then -line up and off they go with hoarse caws. They look so important that -they might be plotting all sorts of villainies. - -“Look out fer yerself,” laughs Uncle Dan. “I’ll put the curse of the -crows on yer.” - -A dire threat! What use to break one’s back planting the corn if one’s -evilly disposed neighbor can call winged battalions of those black -thieves to undo all a man’s work and bring him to penury? - -The snow is still thick in the woods, but on the hilltops and in the -open, bare patches of earth are beginning to show. Peter’s coat matches -the ground exactly, being a sharply mottled brown and white. Indeed, he -never did turn entirely white, like the wild hares in the woods. Even -when his fur was its snowiest there was always a brown, diamond-shaped -patch on his forehead, and, so far as I know, he was the only hare so -decorated. No matter how far from home he strayed, I could always -recognize him by his brown brand. - -This simple life has its inconveniences. I was eating a belated -breakfast the other morning, when bells on the lake and later a sleigh at -the door announced a visitor. It was a perfectly unknown man who -informed me that he had been sent by Mrs. Swanson to bring me to her -house to spend the day. He had to wait outside, in the piercing wind, -until a hasty glance round the combined sleeping, cooking, and reception -room reassured me as to its condition for the entrance of a stranger. -Then he sat beside the stove, pipe in hand, and inspected me gravely -while I prepared for the long drive down the lake. - -The day was bright and blue and snapping cold. A point of light flashed -from every facet of the roughened ice. The horse was fresh, the wind at -our backs, and we fairly flew past Jackson’s, over the bare roads and out -again on beautiful Blue Bay, lying like a sapphire in its setting of -silvered shores. - -The pony was a broncho, my companion told me, calling my attention to a -brand to prove it. He was all that, and a tree-climbing broncho to boot, -for soon we came to a perpendicular bank as high as the side of a barn, -and I was given to understand that the pony was going to clamber straight -up, with the sleigh dangling at his heels. I left the vehicle and -scrambled up on my own feet, but the animal went up the side of that hill -like a cat at a wall, and without one second’s hesitation. - -Arrived at the house I inquired of my hostess if my escort was her son. - -“Oh, no,” she answered. “It was only Clarence Nutting, the hired man.” - -Evidently, “hired man” means something very different here from what it -has hitherto meant to me. It means friend, protector, helper, and member -of the family. Mrs. Swanson, Susie Dove, the hired girl, Clarence -Nutting, and I all dined together; after dinner we played dominoes. When -Clarence brought in the fresh eggs from the barn he suggested: “Better -give Miss X some to take home with her.” Later he invited me to come -back, and soon, to spend several days. - -Through the long, sunny afternoon, we sat round the stove in the pleasant -best room, with its well-starched lace curtains, each with a bunch of -artificial roses sewed on its folds, its oak sideboard decorated with -rose-bordered crêpe paper napkins, its crayon portraits and wonderful, -hand-made hooked rugs. We women had our crocheting, but little Susie sat -very upright, her small, work-roughened hands clasped on her -plaid-covered knees, her toes, in their shiny best shoes, just reaching -the floor, while Clarence played for us on his new graphophone. - -Clarence, in his high boots, patched trousers, and flannel shirt, handled -his music box with the tenderness of a lover. He dusted each record -after using it, as carefully as a mother powders a baby. As he played -tune after tune, I saw in that instrument, God knows what of pleasures -foregone, and temptations put aside while he saved out of his meager -wages the price of that graphophone. He had discovered a way to use the -thorns from a hawthorn tree instead of wooden needles. They gave a very -soft and lovely tone. His records were the usual collection sold with -the machine—a few dances, a few Negro dialects and songs, some good -marches and some hymns. After nearly a year of hearing no tunes at all, -I enjoyed them, every one. When the concert was over, Clarence played: -“God be with you till we meet again.” - -After tea came the sleigh and we drove home to the island, this time in a -blinding snowstorm. Conversation was not so lively as in the morning. I -was thinking of all the evidences I see here of man’s unquenchable thirst -for beauty and music and the pleasant things of life, that not the most -incessant toil nor hardest privation can ever wholly destroy. I was -remembering how I had gone over to the Blakes’ to use the telephone one -afternoon and had had to wait for an hour because Clarence Nutting’s new -instrument had come, and all the receivers on the line were down while he -played it for the neighborhood. I thought of poor Harry Spriggins’s -delight in a magazine, of Mary Blake’s habit of keeping a glass of fresh -flowers in the center of her table, of the time when Mrs. Drapeau, having -no white tablecloth, had spread a clean sheet over her table for company, -and of the Beaulacs’ joy in the blossoming of their lilac bush. - -Then I began dreaming of a big, comfortable shack somewhere on the shore, -to which the people could come, as to a common meeting ground, social -differences and local feuds forgotten. I saw it furnished with a -cupboard full of cups and plates, a piano or victrola. There should be a -circulating library there and games, I decided, and I saw the boys and -girls dancing, singing, cooking popcorn, candy and fudge, in the -evenings. I imagined a group of women drinking tea and sewing while -“teacher” played. - -A few days later I went with the Rector and Mrs. Rector to drink tea with -the wife of the owner of a big lumber mill, and there I saw what one -woman has done amid just such conditions as are here at Many Islands. - -There were the pretty little church, the parish house, the Sunday school -room, all built by Mrs. Baring, and I heard of the reading circles, the -concerts, the cooking classes that she has organized for the people among -whom she has had to live. - -There too I saw the Canadian mother in war times and marveled at her. -Mrs. Baring has sent the light of her eyes, the pride of her heart, the -son who was winning honors at his university and had a great future -before him, overseas to the trenches. I saw picture after picture of -him—Harold as a baby, as a child, as a boy, as a man. He was shown in -his little knickers, his first long trousers, his khaki. - -“Yes, he is in France now, but of course we do not know where,” the -mother said. “I send him two pairs of socks, some handkerchiefs and -shirts every week. The boys like that better than one large box -occasionally—they lose their clothes so. We hope that things reach him, -but we do not know. We have not heard from him for two months now.” - -All this without a tremor of the firm lips, with not the shadow of a -cloud over the serene blue eyes. - -The Rector told me afterward that not once has that mother alluded to the -possibility of her son’s return. She gave her supreme gift without hope -of any reward. Withal her interest in affairs is as keen, her charities -as wide, her hospitality as gracious, as though she had never a care in -the world and her boy were safe at her side. - -After supper we climbed over the slippery hillside to the church for -Evensong. Our hostess sat at the organ at the side of the chancel and in -full view of the congregation. During the service I watched her calm, -clear profile. She went through the intolerably pathetic petitions of -the Litany without wavering, as we prayed for those who are fighting by -land and sea and air; for the prisoners, the wounded and the dying, and -her sweet, steady voice led our responses. Only once did I see her -falter. It was during the singing of the hymn. Her pretty ringed -fingers went on pressing the keys; she played, but she could not sing. - - “The Son of God goes forth to war, - A kingly crown to gain, - His blood-red banner streams afar, - Who follows in his train?” - -Her eyes looked past us, straight across the world. Her lips were parted -in a smile sadder than tears. She was shedding her heart’s blood, drop -by drop, for the safety of the empire. - -We do not talk much about the Great War here at Many Islands. Indeed, it -is only when I go to the towns that I realize that Canada is at war. -Once in a while one of our boys speaks of going to the front, and only -the other day Andy Drapeau was saying, “Ef it comes to drafting, I’ll -volunteer. I’ll fight of me own free will. No man shall make me go.” - -But at that, Andy was merely talking. He had no idea of enlisting. - -No, as always, it is the men of the cities who will go first, and the -reason is not far to seek. It lies in the fact that the bucolic mind is -almost totally devoid of imagination—it cannot picture what it has never -seen. It can form no vision of an empire. It can think of this county -as part of the Province and the Province as part of the Dominion, but of -Canada as part of a great federation it cannot conceive—the thought is -too big. Our vision is bounded by the limits of our own experience. We -know that Britain, France, and Russia are fighting Germany and Austria, -but the fields of Europe lie very far away, while our own fields are very -near. - -We all know Germans. We have worked beside them in the hayfields and the -mines. They seem good fellows enough, not companionable because they -speak an outlandish sort of lingo that we doubt their being able to -understand themselves. But why should we fight them? Of the Hun we can -form no idea, thank God. He is outside our experience. - -We have a patriotism, but it is local, parochial. If this war were a -baseball game between the rival teams of Sark and Fallen Timber, we could -understand it fast enough. We would “root” for our side and, if need be, -fight for it. But the far-off struggle of nation with nation leaves us -cold. We cannot picture it. - -But when the first wounded came back from the trenches, and when the -stories of Saint Julien and Festhubert were told at the firesides, then -went the men of rural Canada forward gladly to fill the places of those -heroes whose deaths are Canada’s undying glory. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - - -APPROPRIATELY enough, on this first day of the calendar spring, I am -warned that the ice is unsafe and that I must stay on the island until -the lake is open water. The natives still venture out, but they know the -look of the thin spots and even they are very cautious. Two men started -over from mainland this morning, axes on shoulder, hounds at heel, but -they turned back at the shore, and the dogs, after stepping daintily on -the dark, spongy crust, turned back also. The middle of the lake is -still hard, but there are ditches of water round the edges of the land. -The ice has heaved up into long fissures stretching away from the points, -the clear green water showing between their open sides, and from this -island to the Blakes’ point there is a great crevasse. - -Mary declares that she has known Henry to start off in a sleigh over the -lake when the ice was only three inches thick; when he had to drive fast -to keep from breaking in and when the water spurted up from the holes -made by the horse’s hoofs. But Henry was going for the mail, and when he -has been deprived of news for two or three weeks, the papers become -things to risk one’s life for—which is proof that Henry will never be a -true Many Islander. The rest of us are quite willing to wait until -spring, if need be. - -So I am “denned in” once more, and before I am free all sorts of things -will have happened. There will be hundreds of little new calves and -lambs lying beside their mothers in the meadows, and scores of -thin-legged colts running beside the mares in the pastures. I shall also -be shut in when the sap buckets hang in the “sugar bush” and the great -black kettles steam over the fires in the dooryards, and I can only hope -that some of my friends will remember to put my name in the pot, and to -save me some syrup and some maple sugar. - -Forced to take my exercise on the island, I find new things everywhere, -as I tramp round and round the trails. The snow under the evergreens is -covered with last year’s dry needles; the hemlocks, pines and cedars are -putting on their new, bright green fringes. Under the rotting leaves, -innumerable little new plants are pushing up, princess fern, wild -strawberry, Canada mayflower, and countless other small weeds and herbs, -whose names I do not know. When the leaves and needles are raked away -each stalk is seen standing in a tiny pool of clear ice. - -The spring peepers are whistling in the lowlands, the hylodes blows his -little bagpipe, away in the wood the grouse is “beating his throbbing -drum”—no other description fits that thrilling sound—and the first -honeybees are buzzing out from a clump of birches and winging away over -the lake. Underneath all the other spring sounds is the measured -“tonk-tonk” of the air escaping through the holes in the ice, and the -thin, silver sound of trickling streams. - -The red-headed woodpecker is here, his crown a spot of splendid crimson -against the snow. “Ker-r-ruck, ker-r-ruck,” he cries as he darts from -tree to tree, his white tail coverts flashing in the sunlight. - -There has been a deer on the island. Through my dreams one night I heard -sounds of a great commotion, the cries of dogs, the crashing of animals -through the underbrush. In the morning, not ten paces from the kitchen -door, the snow was all trampled, soiled and covered with bunches of long -brown hair. Evidently, the place was the scene of the poor animal’s -agony, for those hairs were soaked with blood. - -I grieved, for I have liked to think that the island was a place of -refuge for all hunted things—at least for this one year. But if the dogs -had dragged down the deer and killed him, what had become of the carcass? -I wondered. They could not have eaten it so clean that no trace of skin -or bones remained. I pondered this as I followed the deer’s small, -shapely hoof-prints from the shore and up over the hill and through the -bushes all hung with bunches of tell-tale brown hair. I traced the dogs’ -tracks also, as they crossed and recrossed the trail, and following them -came to an old mica pit, hidden far back among the cedars a gash in the -hillside, ten or twelve feet deep and four or five yards long, ringed -round with bushes and with a young birch growing in its depths. Indeed, -I fell headlong into that hidden pitfall, and had time to hope, as I went -down, scrambling over the edge and clutching at branches, that I was not -going to land full on a wounded deer. - -All tracks stopped at this pit, and the mystery remained a mystery until -late in the spring, when it leaked out that Andy and George Drapeau had -heard the cries of the hounds, had watched their chance, had come over, -dragged off the dogs, and skinned and carried away the deer. - -Now the season for hunting deer lasts from November first to November -fifteenth. Only one deer may be shot by each hunter. No hounds may be -allowed to run at large during the closed season and any dog found -running a deer may be shot on sight, and the person shooting this dog may -not be prosecuted. Thus the month of March is not the time for fresh -venison. Venison out of season is “mountain goat,” to be eaten privately -and without boastfulness. Nor is it safe to display a deer’s spring -coat. But if the Drapeaus had left me that hide, would I have informed -on their dogs? I wonder. - -My own stupidity robbed me of the only other deerskin rug that I might -have had. Little John Beaulac offered me a beautiful—and seasonable—one -which I bought and sent to the squaw at Maskinonge for tanning. Some -weeks later I mentioned my good fortune to William Foret. - -“Are you having the hair left on?” he asked. - -“Hair left on!” I echoed. “Of course. I never heard of having the hair -taken off. I want the skin for a rug.” - -“Well, you’d ought to have said so,” said William. “Mostly they tans -them for leather round here. They makes fine moccasins and mittens.” - -Sure enough, that Indian woman had patiently scraped off all the hair and -I received a superfine piece of buckskin, which was presented to Little -John, I having no use in the world for moccasins or mittens when I should -return to the city. - -The Drapeaus live on a long peninsula to the west of this island and half -a mile away. From this dock I see their barns in silhouette against the -sunsets. Their land rises in fold on fold of meadow, with here and there -a clump of cedars or maples, then a soft slope and slanting cornfield. -Their house is the typical Canadian log shack, a building about sixteen -by twenty feet, divided by a board partition into a kitchen and a tiny -bedroom. A trap door opens into the cellar; a ladder leads up to the -loft where the boys sleep. There is a shed, built at right angles to the -south wall, and here Mrs. Drapeau keeps her washtub, churn, and milk -separator. The place is always crowded with lounging men; the dogs are -everywhere under foot, and the air is thick with the smoke from many old -pipes. - - [Picture: “The Drapeaus live on a long peninsula to the west of this - Island”] - -Herring nets hang from the rafters, harness on the walls; drying skins -are stretched across the uprights. In the muskrat season dozens of -furry, brown rats are nailed, by their tails, to the outside walls, and -inside the house great pails of bloody water, piles of raw skins, and -heaps of rats fill the small room. - -The Drapeaus believe in the division of labor, and the work of the family -seems portioned out in a thoroughly satisfactory way. Andy, the eldest -son, is the farmer, Lewis the hunter and George the fisherman. - -Mrs. Drapeau, though not an old woman, goes back to the early days of the -settlement and knows all the hardships of pioneer life. - -“I mind the time,” she says, “when this land was all wilderness and when -the bears and the wildcats come up to the very door. Once I seen four -bear start over across the lake from Blake’s point to your island. They -swum across the narrows, the old he-bear in the lead, the biggest of the -young next, then the little cub and the mother behind. Me an’ the boys -was in the boat—we had been a berryin’—and when the boys seen them bear -they went wild. They rowed up along the island after them, but they -couldn’t go fast enough with me in the boat, so they landed me and rowed -along to head off the bear, an’ blest if they didn’t turn ’em right back -along the shore to where I was a sittin’. I was right in their tracks. - -“‘You come back here an’ git me,’ I yelled, ‘an’ don’t you do another -trick like that agin, the longest day you live.’ - -“There was I a-hollerin’ an’ the boys a-laughin’ an’ the bear a comin’. -Why, I might ’a’ been kilt.” - -“What became of them?” I asked. - -“The bears? Oh! they got away. What with me a-screechin’ an’ the boys a -shootin’ they was so scared that they climbed off the far side of the -island, an’ the last we saw of them they was over to Henderson’s Bay, -their heads just out of water.” - -Mrs. Drapeau tells of the day when she and her husband came over to their -farm in a little flat-bottomed punt, a calf, the beginning of their herd, -tied foot to foot and bellowing in the stern. It was a hard fight to -clear the land and bring it to some sort of cultivation, and in a few -years Drapeau was killed in a lumber camp, leaving her with four young -children to feed. She describes the long winter nights when she spun, -carded, and wove the cloth that kept their shivering little bodies -covered against the bitter cold, of the backbreaking days in the fields -when she hoed the potatoes and planted the corn, that there might be food -for the hungry mouths, and of the long months when she worked at the -miners’ boarding house, cooking and washing for a score of men. - -“I never could have done it if it hadn’t been for my neighbors,” she -said. “They was awful good to me. The men cut my wood every winter as -come an’ ketched me my fish until the boys was big enough to work. Eh! -but I did have the hardest time the year my man died. Scarce was he laid -in the ground when the two biggest boys come back from the school at Loon -Lake with the smallpox. George and Andy had it and they had it fearful -bad. I thought sure the other two would have it too. The health doctor -come up all the way from Queensport an’ nailed a notice on my door, -tellin’ the neighbors to keep away, and he forbid me to cross the lake, -on fifty dollars fine. So there I was, the ice just breakin’ and me shut -in with my children that was a dyin’, as you might say. I didn’t want to -go to no one’s house, nor to have them come to mine, but I had little or -nothin’ to eat on the place, and I feared lest my children should starve. - -“But I done the best I could, and one day, when the ice was all broke, I -heard Bill Shelly, the frogger, passin’ in a boat. I hollered to him the -fix I was in and told him to fetch me some goods from the store an’ to -tell my father how we was shut in. Bill brung me the goods and we got -along some way, and when all was over an’ the boys was well, here comes -Robinson, the health doctor, to ask how we was all gettin’ along. He -stood off, twenty paces from the door with his white handkerchief to his -face. I was minded to set the dogs on him. - -“‘Why don’t you come in?’ I says, ‘All’s safe now. You needn’t to be -afraid. You shut me in here, with my dyin’ children, and not you ner no -one else come anear me, not even to the shore, to ask did I have so much -as a hundred of flour to keep us alive. How did you know we wasn’t all -starved together? Get you off this land,’ I says, ‘fer you haven’t got -the grace of God in yer heart.’ He got off and I ain’t seen him since, -but I ain’t never fergot him.” - -All this she tells me, sitting before the fire, her gray woolen petticoat -turned back over her knees, a black three-cornered shawl laid over her -head and pinned firmly under her pointed chin, She was a beauty once. -She is a pretty old woman still, with her flashing black eyes and silver -hair. Even now, at sixty odd, she milks seven cows, makes all the butter -and cheese, cares for the hens, the turkeys and the pigs, works a small -garden, cooks for the boys, nurses them when they fall ill, and finds -time to make wonderful patchwork quilts. Mrs. Drapeau can tell the names -of all the quilt patterns known to Canada. - -I love these patchwork quilts. They speak of thrift and industry and -patience, and of the leisure of a life in which small bits of cloth are -of more value than the time it takes to stitch them together. Who in the -cities has time nowadays to sit and make a patchwork quilt? They bring -up pictures of bedfuls of little children, sleeping snug and warm under -mother’s handiwork, and of contented women sewing in the firelight. - -Their names are poetry—woman’s poetry. The Log Cabin stands for home, -the Churn Dasher is food, the Maple Leaf means Canada. The Road to -Dublin, and the Irish Chain speak of the homesick Irish heart, but I like -to imagine that the Prairie Rose was named by some happy woman who loved -the wide and blossoming fields of this new land. - - - - -CHAPTER XV - - -GOOD FRIDAY, a heavy fall of snow and winter come again. The ground is -white, the sky dull gray, the lake a dark, bluish green flecked with -windrows of snow. It is more than a week since I have walked on the ice. -It bids fair to be two weeks before I can cross in a boat. At this rate -the ice will never break—I had to chop out the water hole again this -morning. This waiting for the ice to go out is like waiting for a child -to be born, and it seems almost as solemn. It induces a calm, -philosophic, not to say fatalistic, viewpoint. You can’t hurry it, you -can’t stop it, you can’t do anything at all about it. You can only wait. - -Again, as in the fall when the ice was forming, there is that strange -blanket of silence over the island. There’s not a rustle in the dry -leaves, not a bird’s voice, not even the scraping of a hanging bough. -The ice field is growing darker, wetter, and cracking into long lines -that form geometric figures—squares, triangles, trapezoids—until the -lake’s surface looks like a gigantic spider’s web. For movement there is -only the water along the shores, creeping up over the stones. - -The evening was cold and gray, with a rising wind that whistled up the -rain. In the night came both the former and the latter rains and all -other rains between; then Easter Day, warm and blue and beautiful. As -the Easter lesson sank into my heart, along with the still beauty of sky -and sun and waking life, the first butterfly, emblem of the resurrection, -came forth from his winter sleeping place and fluttered to and fro among -the yellow tassels of the birches. - -The years remaining may be many or few for me, but to life’s end I shall -hope to keep some measure of the joy of that one Easter day. I pray that -I may always remember the tender blue of the arching sky, the white of -the wisps of floating cloud, the gray purple of the spring haze lying -over the forests; its silence and its peace. Looking out over the -breaking ice, I remembered the story of two boys who lost their lives in -the lake only last summer. They were forlorn little fellows, held in -bondage by a stupid, tyrannical father. They had never seen anything -that boys love—neither a circus, nor a picture, nor had ever heard a -band. They had never been allowed to go even to Frontenac, the county -seat, ten miles away. All they knew about was work and heavy sleep and -now and then a beating. But they were boys after all, and one bright day -they slipped away from the harvest field and went to the lake to go -afishing. Hearing footsteps and fearing their father’s anger, they tried -to escape it. The younger boy jumped into a rotting punt at the shore -and pushed off on the water. The elder hid behind a rock. - -Out on the lake the old punt filled and began to sink. The little -fellow, seeing that he was going down and knowing that he could not swim, -called out: - -“Good-by, Charley; Good-by, good-by,” his piping child’s voice sang over -the water. - -The elder boy heard him and plunged in to his aid. Both went down, and -when, at last, the grappling hooks brought up the bodies, the brothers -were locked in one another’s arms. - -A commonplace story, isn’t it? Such accidents happen almost every -day—somewhere. There’s nothing at all in it but childish joy in freedom, -dread of punishment, terror, then love and sacrifice, and, crowning all, -heroic death. I think of them not as “saints in glory” but as happy -youngsters, trudging, hand in hand the streets of the Eternal City; -seeing, hearing, tasting all the joys that life denied them here. - -Resigned to the thought of days and weeks of solitude, I was surprised by -the sound of a long halloo coming from the direction of Blake’s Point. - -It was Henry, standing on the extreme end of his land and calling over to -me. His was the first voice I had heard for days. - -“Come down to your point,” he yelled. - -Scrambling through the underbrush, sliding from rock to rock, plowing -through bogs, wading through patches of snow, I reached the shore, to see -Jimmie Dodd, trotting cautiously across the ice dragging his little -hand-sled, while Henry directed his way from the point. The sled held -loaves of bread, a pat of fresh butter—a great bag of mail and a box of -candy and fruit—the Easter greeting from home. The water was flowing all -round the shore; Jimmie could not come within many feet of the island, -but I waded out on the shelving sand and Jimmie crept as near the edge of -the ice as he dared and tossed the bags to me across the open water. -Then he trotted back again to the farm and I returned to the house to -enjoy my feast alone. - -Day followed day, slipping by swiftly, silently. The first phœbe has -come back and is twitching his tail and screaming his “Phœbe, phœbe, -phœbe,” all day long. - -Across the sky, in V-shaped wedges, the geese are flying over. From ever -so far I can hear their “honk-honk,” telling me why the April moon is the -Goose moon. - -The woodchuck, that lives in a hole by the sundial, comes out and waddles -slowly down to the lake’s edge to dip his black muzzle in the water. He -turns his rat’s face up to the sky, glancing hurriedly from side to side, -his little pig eyes rolling, the white ring of hairs surrounding his -snout standing like a ruff. He is so fat that his short legs hardly lift -his red-brown breast off the ground, and his bushy tail drags as he goes. -He walks with a rolling waddle, like a bear. His gray-brown coat is dry -and dusty. - -There are hundreds of wide-open clam shells lying on the sand under the -water, pearl side up. They are the shape and almost the size of the -soles of a pair of baby’s shoes. When I turned over the skiff, that has -lain on the shore all winter, there was a muskrat’s nest under it. The -animal had scooped out a hole in the beach, and a pile of clam shells -showed that he had feasted well. - -But though all these other small animals are coming out, I am forlorn, -for Peter, the rabbit, has disappeared! Up and down the island I have -gone, calling him, but he does not come hopping to my feet. No one will -acknowledge having shot him; indeed, it would be a hard-hearted hunter -that would kill so gentle and so trusting a creature. So either the -hounds got him or he felt the call of the spring and wandered away to the -woods full of fresh green. I prefer to think he did that, but I miss him -cruelly. - -Here, as in Kipling’s Jungle, spring is the time of new smells. All -winter there were some good smells—the odor of far-off forest fires; the -fragrance of fresh-cut logs; the not unpleasing, pungent scent of Blake’s -cow stable, that came over the ice to me on the crisp, frosty air, but -now there is a very riot of perfume. The rotting leaves, the barks of -trees, the swamps and even the rocks themselves, give forth an incense. -The poplars and the birches shake out sweetness from their waving -tassels, the new green fringes of the evergreens are fragrant, soon will -come the odors from wild cherry, basswood, and wild grape in flower, and -the scents of the new ferns, and then I shall go quite wild with delight -and shall long to shout my joy to heaven, as Rufus, the red squirrel, is -doing now. Far out on a birch limb, in the sun, he is clucking and -chirping away, his plumy tail waving, his whole little tense, -rust-colored body jerking as he gives tongue to his spring ecstasy. - -Rufus is not always so harmlessly employed. He and the phœbes wage -perpetual war over a nestful of eggs under the eaves. One or other of -the small householders must stand ever on guard against the red robber -that goes like a flash along the beam. What fluttering of wings, what -scampering of tiny feet, what chattering there is! But the birds will -win, they put the squirrel to flight every time. - -Once again I heard a call from Blake’s point. This time it was Mary, out -looking for new-born lambs. Her voice, borne on the wet wind, came clear -over the water between us: - -“How are you getting along?” - -“Oh, not too bad,” I shouted in the vernacular. - -“We think the ice will go out this week.” - -“Never,” I screamed. “At this rate it will last until June.” - -“Well, I don’t think it. We tried to get over to Jackson’s yesterday, -and the middle of the lake was opening so fast we could not make it.” - -“I’ll go to the shore every day at noon, and let you see that I am -alive,” I promised. - -“All right,” she answered. “Hang out a white cloth if there’s anything -really wrong, and we’ll try to get over to you somehow.” - -And away went Mary, a lamb in her arms, the ewe bleating at her heels. - -Then came a day of warm rain, followed by a high wind from the south, -that drove the breaking ice before it and piled great masses of -glistening white fragments on all the beaches. And, sure enough, on the -next Sunday, the eleventh, Henry Blake and Jimmie Dodd came across in a -boat, the first I had seen in the water for four months. - -That morning, when I looked out, instead of the solid floor of ice that I -had seen so long, there was a great stretch of dark and tumbling water, -over which two white gulls wheeled and dipped. For an instant I was -startled. I felt as though the island had somehow slipped its moorings -and was being washed away. Then I realized that the ice was gone and, so -far as I am concerned, gone forever, and that the winter, with its bitter -nights, its long quiet days, its flash of sunlight on silver surfaces, -became as the memory of a dream. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - - -WHAT is the first wild flower of the spring? Each of us has his own -first flower. It varies with the locality and the special season. Here -it was the hepatica, that lifted its little faintly blushing face from -the edge of a patch of melting snow. I plucked it, remembering the words -of Old Kate, at Les Rapides: “Ef you pluck yer first flower and kill yer -first snake, you’ll prevail over yer enemies for the comin’ year.” - -I did not trouble her poor mind by inquiring: “What if your enemy is also -plucking his first flower and killing his first snake. Who, then, would -prevail?” - -I know of no enemy, but I gathered the hepatica. Whether I shall kill -the snake remains a matter of doubt. If it is old Josephine, who will -soon be sunning herself on a flat rock at the bathing beach, I will not. -That snake has been a friend of mine too long. - -After the hepatica came the dicentra cucularia, or Dutchman’s breeches—a -wide patch of them, nodding from a shaded ledge of rock, and then the -trillium, lifting its white chalices by thousands through the woods. If -Saint Patrick had known the trillium, I cannot think that he would ever -have chosen the shamrock as his emblem of the Trinity. The -golden-throated flower rises three-petaled from a cup of three green -sepals. Below this is an inch or so of thick, green stem and below that -the leaves, three in a whorl. So three and three and three says the -plant with every part of its being. - -The air is full of the spring songs of birds and the dry whir of -innumerable wings. A colony of gold finches moved in last night, and -they are singing like hundreds of canaries in the cedars. “Konker-ree,” -call the redwings over in the meadow. “Purity-purity,” sings the -bluebird, and “Quick-quick-quick,” snaps the flicker. Busy brown -sparrows slip through the dry leaves. On an oak tree the woodpecker is -playing his xylophone, sounding a different note on each branch that he -strikes with his little red hammer. - -From the drowned lands come the boom of the frogs and the rattling signal -of the kingfisher, and to-day—the seventeenth of April—I heard the first -call of the returning loons. The water is very still, with schools of -pin-long striped fishes swimming in the sunny shallows. - -The leaves came out in a night. One evening there was only a purple haze -over the bare twigs, and the next day the swollen buds had burst out into -a very vehemence of leafage, and all the woods were green. The fields on -the mainland also turned green that day, and on the island the wild -cherry blossoms opened in drifts of white, that loaded all the branches. - -With all this newness out of doors, the thought of fresh foods possessed -me and I started forth on a foraging expedition, to find out whether the -hens had waked to their duty, and whether the cows were ready to give -milk again. Verily I was aweary of tinned milk, stored eggs, and packed -foods of all varieties. So I took the skiff and started for the -Jacksons’. - -The Jackson farmhouse stands on a high hill, commanding the lake. From -her kitchen door Anna Jackson can see every boat that passes. Therefore, -long before one comes to shore, she is ready, wearing a frilled tea apron -and a welcoming smile, when the panting visitor comes toiling up the -steep slope from the landing. To-day the winds were contrary and I took -her unaware, by creeping along the shore in the lee, and Anna, in her -work dress, was digging stones out of the garden. - -Grandma Jackson was knitting beside the stove in the sunny kitchen. A -peddler, a low voiced, dark-eyed young Jew, sat in the corner. At my -entrance he began unpacking his big oilcloth-covered case, drawing out -aprons, handkerchiefs, shirtwaists, stockings, until the floor was strewn -with its contents. Every article that one could name seemed stowed away -in that great pack—enough to have stocked a small department store. When -all had been displayed he began putting them away again. - -“That’s all what I got,” he said with a patient smile. Presently he -shouldered his load and walked away, bending under its weight. We heard -him coughing as he passed through the gate. - -These peddlers begin their travels with the spring, being heralded by the -telephones all along the line. It seems impossible that they should make -a living, but I suppose they do, for, after being shut in for a long -winter, few women can resist buying a ribbon or some lace when it is -brought to the very door. - -“That feller won’t sleep at Joshua White’s to-night,” quoth Grandma -Jackson, watching the stooping figure out of sight. “All tramps and -peddlers and such like always put up at Joshua’s. He’d give them all a -supper and a bed.” - -But Joshua White died yesterday, and his house was the “wake house” now, -for they still have wakes in this country—when the neighbors gather to -condole with the bereaved, extol the virtues of the deceased, and partake -of supper at midnight, when the whisky and the clay pipes are passed -around. In this case there would be no difficulty about praising the -dead man. Joshua White was a man of good standing, and wide charity, a -good neighbor and a kind friend. The community mourned his loss. - -“Joshua was an awful proud man too,” said Grandma. “Do you think that he -would ever carry a handkerchief with a colored border? Well, I guess -not.” - -At that moment the telephone bell rang. - -“Gran,” said Anna, after a moment’s conversation, “Mary wants to know the -age of Alec’s eldest boy. Can you tell her?” - -“I dunno,” answered Mrs. Jackson. “Let me see. No, I can’t remember. -Ask Mary haven’t they got some old horse or cow that they can reckon by? -There’s always some old critter on every farm that they counts the young -ones’ ages by. Alec’s Charley was born the spring they bought old Nance. -They must know how old she is.” - -Just then the three Jackson children came in from school, with their bags -of books and little tin dinner pails. There was no running or shouting; -they sat down quietly at table. Six-year-old Beryl’s small face was pale -and grave. She had started that morning at seven o’clock, had walked -four miles to school, had sat all day on a hard bench with her little -feet dangling. At noon she had eaten her dinner of cold potatoes, “bread -and jell,” cake and pie, and at four o’clock she had started home again, -trudging those four long, muddy miles to a put-away supper. No wonder -she looked subdued. She was tired in mind and in her frail, small body, -but she is getting an education. Beryl is at the head of her class. She -tells you this with a little grown-up air. - -It seems a topsy-turvey thing, this way of keeping schools open during -the winter, when only the children living close to the schoolhouses can -reach them through the snowdrifts and the mud, and closing them in summer -when the roads are good. I should turn things the other way round, and -give the long holiday in winter; but I am told that my plan would never -do. The farmers need the children. So in the rural districts the weeks -spent at lessons are few. It is only in the spring and fall that the -children can go to school and there is no such thing as “regular -attendance,” that bugbear of public instruction. - -After all, I fancy that the youngsters learn as much while they toss the -hay in the clean, hot meadows, or when they drive the cattle along the -shady roads to the lakes, as they would if penned in the little one-room -houses, where some eighteen-year-old girl, just from high school, -struggles with the work of all the grades at once. - -This thing of getting an education is a mighty matter in Canada. The -roads are dotted with schoolhouses, the papers have long columns of -advertisements for teachers, and it is always specified as to whether -Catholic or Protestant is needed. It seems the dear ambition of each -family to produce at least one teacher, and the Normal School at -Queensport turns them out by the score. On Monday mornings and Friday -afternoons vehicles of every description travel to and from town, taking -the girls home for Sundays and back for the week’s work. - -Students hire a room in Queensport for two dollars a month, and with it -goes the privilege of cooking on the family stove and sitting in a warm -room to study. Those who live near enough to town bring their food from -home, so food costs them nothing. Thus they work their difficult way -through to the little country schools. - -My neighbor, Mrs. Spellman, is doubly proud, for her two daughters are -teaching, one in Alberta, the other in far-away British Columbia. - -“It was hard work to give them their training,” she says. “Their father -had no patience with the notion of sending them to high school, so he -wouldn’t help. But I made up my mind that they should have their chance. -They’d not be tied down to a farm all their days, as I’ve been. Mary, my -eldest, was always such a home girl too. She wouldn’t hear of leaving me -until I promised that she should come home every week. There wasn’t -anyone to drive her to town and back but me, but I seen to it that she -got home. Every Friday noon I’d harness up and go for her, coming back -long after dark. Every Monday morning I’d be up before day, to feed the -horse and cook breakfast in time to take her back to school again, and -she never was late. I always had her there by nine o’clock. Sometimes -the roads were so dark that I’d drive all the way with the reins in my -two hands. I was afraid to hold them in the one hand lest I should get -them crossed in the darkness and pull the horse out of the road and into -the drifts. I’d feel sometimes as though my hands was frozen. But I -never missed a week all those two long years. When Nellie, my second -girl, went, it wasn’t so hard for me. The two stayed in Queensport -together, and they didn’t get so homesick. Yes, it was a hard pull, but -I’d do it all over again, for my children did well. They stood at the -head of their class. I’m proud of them when they come home, summers.” - -I have often wondered at these little schoolma’ams, with their youth, -their high spirits, and their wholly innocent love of pretty clothes and -beaux and good times. They have to board at one house and another, -accustoming themselves to all sorts of food, all kinds of families. They -must toil through rough weather to their work. They must learn to please -all parents, to conciliate school boards and supervisors. They must have -sense to steer a difficult way through neighborhood prejudice and to -avoid giving rise to gossip. A task for a strong woman, it has always -seemed to me, but I wonder no longer that so many succeed in it, since I -know something of the strength of the mothers who stand behind them. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - - -THE mudcat season has come. After the winter’s diet of salt herring, and -before the open season for bass and pickerel, comes the mudcat, alias -bullhead, to give us the taste of fresh fish again. From April fifteenth -until the fifteenth of May is the closed season for pickerel, and from -April fifteenth to June fifteenth it is forbidden to fish for bass, so -now the humble mudcat comes to his own. - -Over on the Drapeaus’ shore the men are all skinning bullheads for -market. They have rigged up a machine that twists off the heads and -strips off the skins at one turn of a handle. Andy Drapeau dips the fish -out of the live box, Black Jack skins and beheads them, George Drapeau -rakes away the offal, Harry Spriggins and Lewis Drapeau pack the fish in -barrels. The whole shore reeks of them, the beach is red with their -gore, for your bullhead is a very bloody fish. He is an ugly -creature—great head, thorny spines, wicked-looking mouth, but he tastes -very good indeed, if one has not seen Black Jack skin him. - -I have come in for the usual present, and have to restrain my friends, or -they would give me at least a half barrel. - -“Kin you git their inside out, ef I take the hide offen them?” asks Black -Jack. And I assure him that for the sake of fresh fish I can do -anything. - -John Beaulac was not there. The Beaulac baby—my godson—was “awful sick.” - -Later in the day came young Louis to the island to ask for the loan of -some alcohol. The doctor had seen the child, by chance, as he was -passing through the farm on his way to the lake, and had prescribed a -warm bath and an alcohol rub. Young Louis’ eyes were big with horror. -To wash a sick child was evidently the same thing as killing it outright. -I supplied the alcohol and, gathering up clean sheets, soft towels, a new -washcloth and talcum powder, took shipping for Loon Lake. - -Rose Beaulac sat in the center of a red-hot room, the window shut, the -door shut, every chair, box and square foot of floor space occupied by a -child or a dog, and held the gasping, moaning baby, despair in her face. -One look at its crimson cheeks and glazed blue eyes told me that it was -an ill child indeed. My thermometer showed a temperature of a hundred -and four when it came out from the burning little armpit. - -John stood beside the woodpile and called me as I left the house. - -“Was the baby very ill? Ought he to send for the doctor?” - -It was “Yes” to both questions. - -Then John did some figuring in his mind. His beady black eyes stopped -twinkling, his face grew stern and set. This has been a hard winter for -Jack. The war stopped the export of mica and the mines have been shut -down. Last year was a wet season when the hay floated in the meadows and -the grain sprouted in the stooks. It has been almost impossible to make -ends meet, but if the child needed the doctor—well, he must be called and -he’d be paid somehow. John left the decision to me. I must call the -doctor if I thought best. - -So away up the lake, three miles to the telephone, I rowed, and the -doctor promised to come the next day. - -“Tell John to have a boat at Henderson’s landing for me, at seven-thirty. -I can’t make the fifteen miles there and back over these roads to-night. -Meanwhile keep up the bathing and the alcohol rubs, and tell Rose to keep -that door open. Don’t forget that. Tell her that child must have plenty -of air”—an injunction that Dr. LeBaron did not in the least expect to -have obeyed when he gave it; it was merely a part of his general course -of education. - -How did those eight people manage to breathe in that stifling room; how -could that ill child survive in that foul atmosphere? I wondered, as I -laid my weary body down on my clean, cool bed. And if I were worn out, -what must Rose be, who had sat for three nights with that tossing, -suffering baby in her arms? - -Whether the lake is more beautiful in the early morning or at sunset, I -have never been able to determine. At six o’clock, as I pushed off from -the dock on the blue water, the thrasher’s liquid song followed the -rhythm of the oars. Out on the open bay the swallows wheeled and dipped -all round the boat, so near that I could have touched their burnished -blue-green backs. On the beaches the sandpipers ran tipping up and down, -their plaintive piping mingling with the robin’s song. A gentle breeze -roughened the water and every little ripple that hurried to the shore was -tipped with a winking star. - -At Beaulac’s all was in readiness for the doctor. Rose’s eyes were -glazed with sleeplessness, her face lined with fatigue; but she had found -strength to comb and braid her dark hair, the children’s faces had been -washed, and the baby had been dressed in a little new pink cotton frock. -There was a dishpan full of newly hatched turkeys behind the stove, for -even if one’s child is dying one must try to save the fowl, and there was -a basket of young kittens under the bed. But Richard, the pet lamb, had -been banished to the meadow and the hounds were tied to the fence. John -had gone for the doctor. Mary was alone with the ill child. She had -done all she could, she could only wait. - -“I’m glad you got me his picture,” she said with a piteous little smile -and looking over at a kodak print of the baby that we had taken some -weeks before. “He’s never been nowheres to have his picture took. I -guess I’ll be glad of that one.” - -Far out on the shining bay we saw the boat returning. There was only one -figure in it. John was coming back alone. The doctor had been stopped -by an accident case; he could not come until evening. Rose’s lips -trembled, but she made no complaint. What was the life of one baby when -there were so many, so many that needed the doctor? - -Back to the island for my midday meal, back to Loon Bay to meet the -doctor. This time there were two figures black against the evening sky. -John was rowing with quick jerks of the short, straight oars. In the -stern sat a bulky shape digging away with a paddle. Under its weight the -upward pointing bow waved from side to side. Over the gunwale amidship -came a steady stream of water. Mrs. LeBaron, the doctor’s wife, crouched -on the bottom, was bailing away for life. - -“By gol!” said John, in an aside to me, as the party climbed the hill. -“By gol! but the doctor iss a heavy man. I thought she was over two, -three times.” - -Oh, the method of these country doctors! There’s no talk of “Call me in -the night if the change should come.” No promise: “I’ll see you the -first thing in the morning.” No, Dr. LeBaron only gave his verdict. The -baby had pneumonia. The right lung was suffused. He was a very ill -child, but he might pull through—no one could tell. And all the time the -doctor’s deft hands were making up powders, counting tablets, measuring -drops. On every package he wrote the day and the hour the dose was to be -given. He set down the times for baths and nourishment, he told us what -symptoms we might expect. He gave his directions over and over again, -slowly, clearly, waiting for a repetition of his words. There was no -haste, no irritation at our ignorance, only infinite care, infinite -patience. Then he ordered out the children, the young turkeys and the -cats, shook hands with the mother, stepped into the boat and was rowed -away. If the child lived, we would not need him again; if it died, we -were to notify him at once, and twice a day he wished me to telephone him -the baby’s temperature, respiration, pulse, and a general account of the -progress of the disease. And then when excitement was at its height, -someone broke my thermometer, the only one in miles; there was no more -taking of temperatures—and the child got well! - -The last time that Dr. LeBaron came to Many Islands it was to treat Harry -Spriggins’ boy, who had cleft his kneecap straight through with an ax. -There was no fire in the house. The Doctor had to build one and boil a -pan clean before he could sterilize his instruments. There was no one -willing to help him give an anæsthetic, so he had to sew up that wound -while the boy sat and watched him do it. - -“How in the world did the child stand it, Doctor?” I asked. - -“Well, it was pretty hard on him,” answered the doctor. “I told him that -I’d thrash him within an inch of his life if he moved—it was the only -way—and the poor kid gritted his teeth and swore like a trooper all the -time. But the wound healed perfectly, almost without a scar, and the -joint did not stiffen.” - -“You would be quite surprised to know how little charity work I do,” -continued the Doctor, giving me a very direct look from his keen, gray -eyes. “There are not many bad debts on my books. The country people pay -remarkably well, all things considered.” - -A quick little smile flits over Mrs. LeBaron’s face at his words. I -imagine she could tell quite another tale. Doubtless she knows how much -of time and strength and pity is given for which no money can ever pay. - -“What do you call charity, Doctor?” - -It is not, of course, charity to charge Johnny Bagneau ten dollars for -driving twenty miles through the blinding snow; to sit, through the long -night and half the day, beside the bed where little John makes his -delayed entrance into life; to eat a breakfast of eggs in the shells and -a dinner of potatoes in their jackets, and to stand outdoors in the -bitter cold to eat them, because even the doctor, inured to filth and -foul air, cannot eat in that poor room. - -“No, the Doctor does not work for charity,” the people tell me. “He gits -paid for what he does.” - -Younger men come from the hospitals of Toronto and Montreal and hang out -their signs in Queensport for awhile. They get a percentage of the town -cases. They do not “go in” for the country practice. - -“They young chaps is all very good when there’s nawthin’ much the -matter,” says old Mrs. Drapeau. “But when it’s anything bad we wants the -old Doctor.” - -Yes, that is it. When danger threatens we want the man we know. He has -brought us into the world, he has stood by us through life’s trouble. It -is he who must sit beside us, steadfast amid the gathering shadows, as -the soul starts forth through the darkness of the long trail, to the land -where there shall be no more night. - -These country doctors! Up and down the roads they go, by night and day, -through storm and fair weather, treating everything, operating for -anything, nursing, instructing, overcoming prejudice, performing miracles -of healing despite incredible difficulties. To meet them is to come face -to face with the eternal realities. To hear them talk is to listen to a -tale that cuts down deep into the beating heart of life. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - - -THE May woods are full of color; the crimson of the young maple sprays, -the bronze and yellows of the new birch and basswood leaves reflecting -the tints of autumn. - -The brakes are unclenching their little, woolly brown fists, the new -ferns are uncurling their furry, pale-green spirals. The dwarf ginseng’s -leaves carpet the damp hollows, from their clusters rise innumerable -feathery balls of bloom. The little wild ginseng holds its treasure -safe—the small, edible tuber hidden far underground. There is no -long-nailed Caliban to dig for it here on the island. - -The trillium flowers are turning pink. After about two weeks of snowy -whiteness they have changed to a beautiful rose color, and oh, the -perfume that comes blown across those far-stretching beds of trillium! -No garden of summer roses was ever half so sweet. - -On the mainland trail, that winds along the shore from Drapeau’s to -Foret’s, the ground is blue with violets and yellow with adder’s tongue, -straw-colored bell wort and the downy yellow violet. Wild columbine -beckons from the rocky crannies, Bishop’s cap and Solomon’s seal wave in -the thickets, the wet fence corners are gay with the wine-red flowers of -the wake robin and the tiny white stars of the wild strawberry dot the -meadows. - -This is insect time. The air hums with the whirring wings of the May -flies, eel flies, woolly heads, and the great mosquitoes. They cling in -clouds on all the window screens, they come into the house by hundreds, -hanging on my clothes and tangled in the meshes of my hair. The wild -cherry trees are festooned with the webs of the tent caterpillars and the -worms are spinning down on long threads from thousands of teeming -cocoons. When I walk through the woods I am decorated with a pair of -little, live epaulets. - -The treetops are noisy with a convention of bronzed grackles discussing -all sorts of burning questions in their harsh, raucous voices. - -“Cheerily, cheerily, cheer-up,” begs a robin in a white pine. - -“I see you, I see you,” warns the meadow lark. - -“We know it, we know it,” answer the vireos. - -The sapsucker is back, beating a tattoo on the house roof. An empty -wooden box at the door rings like a war drum under the blows of his hard -bill. On the first morning he waked me I felt a sentimental pleasure in -the sound; it seemed spring’s reveille. On three successive mornings I -heard him with an ever-decreasing joy. On the fourth I sprang out of -bed, dazed with sleep, and, seizing a stick from the woodpile, I let fly -at that diligent fowl, and he dashed away with a squawk. So low may -one’s love of nature ebb at four o’clock in the morning. - -To-day, as I was dreaming on the porch, I heard a fat-sounding “plop,” -and saw a yard-long snake hanging in a crotch of a poplar, twisting his -wicked head and lashing his tail. Immediately a brilliant redstart flew -down and began darting at the reptile’s eyes, screaming and fluttering at -a great rate. The snake had probably gone up the tree for eggs, only to -be driven down by the small, furious householder. In a moment more he -slid down the trunk and disappeared under the house. - -The snakes on the island are harmless, I am assured. Therefore I do not -object to this one’s living under the porch, but I hope that he will stay -under it, and that I shall not step into the middle of his coils some day -when he is out sunning himself. The feel of a live snake under my foot -would throw me back some millions of years and I should become, at once, -the prehistoric female, fleeing in terror from the ancient enemy. - -The young rabbits are out, hopping softly down all the paths. They look -so exactly like the small brown plaster bunnies sold in the shops at -Easter that, when something frightens them and they “freeze” motionless -under a bush or fern, I can scarcely believe that they are not toys, -after all. Comical little creatures! They eye me with such solemnity. -I often wonder what makes babies and other young things look so very -wise. They seem to know such weighty secrets, that all the rest of the -world has long forgotten. - -The old hares also are coming round the house again. One ventures so -near and drives the others away so fiercely that I half believe he is -little Peter returned to me. - -Over at the farms the spring sowing is done—the wheat, the barley, and -the oats; and in the long twilights, and under the Planter’s Moon, the -farmers are putting in the last seed potatoes. Seed planted at the full -of the May moon gives the heaviest crops, they say. - -In the furrows, the big dew worms are working up out of the wet ground, -to be bait for the fish hooks. Here, our object in fishing being to -catch the fish, we use worms, frogs, anything that fish will bite, -leaving flies, spoons, and sportsman devices to the campers who fish -according to science and rule. - -Walking along the shore trail yesterday, I came upon Black Jack Beaulac, -sitting on a rock, fishing tackle beside him. He seemed deep in thought -and I wondered what new deviltry he was hatching there, for Black Jack is -the tease and torment of the countryside. It is he who starts the good -stories that go the rounds of the stores and firesides, and the slower -wits fly before his tongue like chaff before the fan. - -If Black Jack’s tales on the other men are good, theirs of his -performances are quite as well worth hearing. There is one of the time -when he stole a hogshead of good liquor, and carried it off single-handed -before the wondering eyes of the “Sports” encamped at Les Rapides. It -was Black Jack who plunged into the icy waters of the lake to the rescue -of the half breed drowning there, and it was he who came to the aid of -poor, terrified Rebecca North, whose husband had gone suddenly deranged -and was running amuck. The poor crazy giant has never forgotten the -treatment he received at those great hands. Long after his madness was -past he spoke with awe of Black Jack’s powerful grasp. - -Again there is the story of the race on the ice of Henderson’s Bay that -will never lose its flavor. I heard it from Uncle Dan Cassidy one wet -Sunday afternoon, as we sat round the Blakes’ kitchen fire popping corn -and capping stories. Uncle Dan has a brogue as thick as cream and a -voice as smooth as butter. No writer of dialects could ever reproduce -his speech. Translated, the tale runs thus: - -There was to be a great race to which anyone having a horse was welcome. -Yankee Jim Branch, a cousin of Black Jack’s, had an old nag, fit for -little, which he entered by way of a joke. Black Jack, being temporarily -out of horses, in consequence of some dealing with the local storekeeper -and a chattel mortgage, was not included in the company. There had long -been a feud between Black Jack and Yankee, so it was considered a good -thing that they were not both to be represented in the contest. - -It was a great occasion. The course was staked out on the ice with -ceremony, little cedar bushes were stuck up to mark the quarter miles, -and there was a flag at the judge’s stand. William Foret held Joe Bogg’s -big silver stop watch to mark the time, Andy Drapeau had a stump of -pencil and an old envelope on which to record it and the stakes were as -much as two dollars. - -The start was made, all horses had run, and the race, oddly enough, lay -between Bogg’s gray and Yankee’s old hack, when— - -“Ping!” - -A shot sang out from somewhere, far back on the point, and Yankee’s horse -dropped like a stone. His driver was leaning far out over the wretched -creature’s back, belaboring him with a great gad. The halt was so sudden -that away he went, straight on over the horse’s head, landing hard on the -ice. Up he jumped raging, and ran back to the stupified group at the -stand. - -“Is any man in the crowd got his gun?” he demanded. - -Every man was abundantly able to prove that his gun rested behind the -door of his own cabin. - -“Is Black Jack in the crowd?” inquired Yankee. - -He was not, and Yankee was immediately convinced that his cousin, Black -Jack, had fired that shot. - -Then in the midst of the excitement Black Jack himself appeared, striding -unconcernedly down the hill. He had been hidden among the bushes, far -back on the point, and, unable to endure the thought of Yankee’s bragging -if his horse should win, had raised his gun and shot the wretched animal, -at the very instant of victory, and when, in Yankee’s mind, the two -dollars was as good as spent. - -History does not tell what Yankee did to get even. Probably nothing, for -no one in the countryside cares to interfere with Black Jack. He is -known as a man of his hands and a good person to let alone. - -All this and more I remembered when I saw Jack sitting on the shore. But -he was not wearing his usual devil-may-care swagger and cheerful grin. -Instead, his square, dark face was grim, his great shoulders were bent, -his long arms hung relaxed and his black eyes gazed moodily over the -water. He looked tired and gaunt and gray. Presently he rose heavily -and, without seeing me, strode off to his boat, stepped in and rowed away -and the next I heard of him, he had enlisted and was off to Valcartier to -learn to be a soldier. - -Following his example went Little John Beaulac and his son Louis, to the -despair of poor Rose, and later, Charley McDougal and George Drapeau. - -“It’s the meal ticket with those fellows,” commented Henry Blake. “What -do they know about this war? They don’t even know what they’ll be -fighting for. No, it’s the money they’re after. The mines are not -working, there’s little or no wood-cutting to be done, and they’re up -against it for food. Jack thinks that he’ll get a pension for his woman -and a bounty for each one of the kids. The recruiting sergeants get so -much a head for every man they bring in and so, of course, they promise -these poor fellows anything. But they find out different after they’ve -enlisted. Black Jack’ll never stick at it. He’ll desert, and if he does -they’ll never catch him. He’s here to-day and fifty miles away across -the hills to-morrow. He travels like a mink, Black Jack does.” - -Poor Jack! He will find the restraint of barracks and drill intolerable, -he who has never known any law but his own will. Will he stand the life? -I wonder. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - - -NOVEMBER’S moon is said to be the Indian’s Moon of Magic, but here the -June moon is the wonder moon and “the moon of my delight.” It sails -resplendent in a luminous sky, pouring its brightness down on a lake that -gleams like a silver shield. Its beams rain down through the leaves in a -drenching flood of light, to lie in shining pools on the mossy ground. -It illuminates the hidden nooks of the forest, it makes the stems of the -birches look like slender columns of white marble, and the woods are so -bright that half the flowers forget to shut their eyes, and stay wide -open through the night. Slender, tall irises stand like ghost flowers in -the swamps; the thousand little bells of the false lily of the valley—the -Canada May Flower—swing in the breezes that run along the ground, and on -the low, south point of the island the rushes rattle stiffly and bow -their heads as the wind passes over them. They are the Equisetum, the -Horsetail rush, known to the Pilgrim housewives as scouring rushes, with -which they used to clean their pots and pans. - -Mary Blake tells me that she has used them and that the flinty, hollow -stems are excellent kettle cleaners. They do not suggest anything so -prosaic here in the white moonlight—rather they make me think of small -silver spears held upright in the hands of a fairy troop, the small, -green yeomen of the forest, on guard through the white night. - -There is great rushing and scurrying in the underbrush, for the deer -mice, the rabbits, and other small folk of the forest are awake and -active. The birds too are wakeful and chirp answers chirp from one nest -to another all through the night. - -This is going to be a good bird year judging from the number of broken -egg shells—blue, cream, speckled—that are cast from the nests to the -ground. There is a continuous sound of faint, wheezing cries, the voices -of nestlings, begging for food. - -A pair of robins have plastered their mud nest on a beam of the porch -roof, a red-eyed vireo has hung her birch bark cradle in a low bush under -the kitchen window, some phœbes have built on the lintel of the house -door. It seems impossible that so small a nest can hold so many -squirming little bodies as must belong to all those upstretched, gaping -yellow bills. The parent phœbes do not hesitate about telling me in good -round terms just what they think of me when I go too near their home, but -the robins do not scold me, they only go off to a bush and mourn. The -vireo cares not at all for anybody, but sits tranquil on her eggs and -eyes me fearlessly. - -I have seen a whippoorwill’s nest, a thing, I am told, that few people -ever find. It lies on the ground under the shelter of cedar poles that -serves John Beaulac for a wagon shed, and is so directly in the path of -the horses’ hoofs that I wonder it has not been trampled into the mold. -John’s small daughter, Sallie May, led me to it, and, as we approached, a -dark, slenderly trailing bird slid away through the underbrush, leaving -her two furry balls of nestlings rolling helplessly on the dry leaves of -their bed. They were about half the size of young chickens and were -covered with thick down of a red clay color that had so fiery and vital a -glow that it made me think of live coals showing through the ashes. We -took one look and hurried away lest the whippoorwill mother should become -frightened and forsake her nest, and two sweet and plaintive bird voices -be lost from the evening chorus. - -At Beaulac’s, where I stopped on the homeward way, a lively discussion -was going forward. The Bishop of Ontario was coming to Sark, for the -first time in many years, to hold service and to confirm, and there was -much speculation about who would join the English Church. - -“I’m a goin’ to be a Catholic,” announced poor Ishmael, the half-wit, -peering out from a dim nook behind the stove. - -“They tells me the priest kin cure the fits,” he went on, hopefully, “but -he won’t do it fer you lessen you bees a Catholic, so I’m a goin’ to jine -his church.” - -“I favors the Baptists, ef I favors any,” observed Bill Shelly, the -frogger. - -Whereupon John Beaulac retorted cruelly, that “We’d ought to send fer the -preacher quick and have Bill dipped right off the dock, clothes and all,” -further explaining that the suggestion was made in view of Bill’s general -appearance and his boast that he had not touched water since early in the -previous summer, and then only because he had “fell in.” - -Bill, so far from being offended, took this witticism in excellent part, -joining uproariously in the laugh that followed it. - -For the rest of that week, telephones were busy calling a congregation. -I was invited to drive to church in Mrs. Swanson’s spring wagon, and -reached her farm by a devious route on the great day. I rowed across the -half mile that lies between the island and the nearest point of mainland -and walked the wood trail from Drapeau’s to Foret’s. There William’s -motor boat was waiting to ferry me across the lake and up Blue Bay to the -Swan-sons’ landing. - -Here also there was a flutter of excitement, for Susie Dove was going to -be confirmed. - -Clarence Nutting too had wished to be of the class, but at the last -moment it had been remembered that he had never been baptized. As -baptism must precede confirmation the Rector, amid the hurry and work of -entertaining the Bishop and conveying him to and from the several -churches where there were to be services, had been diligently striving to -come up with Clarence to baptize him. - -But each time he searched for him Clarence was away, either in a distant -field or over in the next township, and so the Rector never caught him, -and when the service commenced poor Clarence sat humbly at the side of -the church with the men, and could not come forward. - -There was no trouble about little Susie. Her case was entirely clear. -Her new dress and white veil were spread forth on the spare room bed for -display and admiration; her hair was plaited in innumerable tight -pigtails as a prelude to subsequent frizzes. - -Susie looked quiet and subdued. There was a frightened expression in her -china-blue eyes. She could eat no dinner, she could not even taste her -pie, and soon she and Mrs. Swanson retired to dress. On the way to -church Susie sat silent, clutching her new Prayer Book in a moist and -trembling hand. On the homeward drive she confided to me that she had -been very afraid of the Bishop. - -“I knew my Commandments,” she assured me, “but I was not so certain about -the creed, and I was afeared lest the Bishop should ask me some hard -questions.” - -Her face then was radiant. The Bishop had been kind and had asked no one -any hard questions, and so this little one had not been put to confusion. - -The church at Sark is old and falling to pieces but it looked lovely that -day. Each window sill held a plant in bloom, its tin can covered with -gay, flowered wall paper—geraniums, fuchsias, patience plants—the -ornaments of many a parlor. Each window framed a picture of soft, -rolling meadows, fruit trees in bloom, homesteads nestled in the hollows, -and, over all, stretches of blue sky, flecked with wisps of floating -vapor. In the center of the church sat the group of ten or a dozen -candidates for confirmation. Through the misty veils their young faces -looked out, awed and grave and very sweet. There had been a great -disappointment for little Mary Spellman, for her veil had not come from -town with the rest. She looked like a gentle little nun, with a square -of plain white muslin laid over her flaxen head. Most of these girls -will not wear bridal dress at their weddings, so confirmation is the one -great occasion in their lives when they can put on the dignity and the -mystery of the veil. - -“Defend, O Lord, this thy child with thy heavenly grace”—The words seemed -to reach me from a great way off, repeated each time the Bishop laid his -hands on a bowed head. The Bishop’s voice was kind, his tone gentle -when, his sermon finished, he turned from the congregation to deliver his -charge to the class. I do not remember much of what he said, but I have -not forgotten his manner. It seemed to me, listening, that he must feel -a peculiar tenderness for these little cut-off country parishes. - -After service I was led forward to be presented to his Lordship. He said -that he had heard of “the lady from the Southern States who was living -alone at Many Islands.” I could not help feeling that the Episcopal eye -regarded me with a certain suspicion, as one not quite right in her -mind—which supposition was, I fear, confirmed by my own behavior, for -when Mrs. Rector said: “My Lord, I wish to present Miss X. to you,” the -unaccustomed sound of the title, and my own total ignorance of the proper -mode of addressing one called “My Lord,” gave me a foolish, flustered -manner that must have betrayed me. - -We locked the silent church, stripped of its flowers and white-robed -girls, and drove along the tree-shaded roads to the shore, where the -motor boat was waiting. The water was so still and so clear that we -could see every rock and pebble lying a dozen feet below. We passed over -schools of big fish, bass and pickerel, hanging suspended in a crystal -medium. Between the sheer walls of the Loon Lake Portage the sun was -going down in a lake of gold and the rocks were purple and red in its -glow. - -I walked the home trail slowly, lingering in the falling dusk. The odors -of the cedars, hemlocks, and basswoods came to me mingled with the wet -smell from the bogs and the perfume of the tiny twin trumpets of the -partridge vine, twining the damp moss. I came out of the dimness of the -woods to the path worn along the grass of meadows starred all over with -myriads of misty little globes, the seed heads of the dandelions. I -pushed the row boat off on the quiet water, and drifted while “the moth -hour went from the fields.” The sky was bright with the rising moon as I -climbed the island path. There was great scurrying of rabbits in the -underbrush and away in the misty thickets the whippoorwills were calling. - - - - -CHAPTER XX - - -IT is wild strawberry time in lower Canada. The fields are carpeted with -them and the fern-covered rocks hold each a little garden where the red -berries hang over the water like rubies in a setting of clustered leaves. -The birds are feasting royally and I walk along the edges of the meadows, -gathering handfuls of the ripe fruit. No one is at home any more. When -I stop at a house the women have all gone a-berrying. Thousands of -quarts go off to the markets, or are cooked here into jellies and jam, -for the delicacy of the winter is wild strawberry preserve. I had it -every time I went out to tea. Now they give me strawberry shortcake and, -O how good it is! No garden fruit can compare, in sweetness or perfume, -with the little wild berry of the fields. - -Not all my friends go berrying every day, however. Yesterday I was -kneeling on the dock busy washing my clothes, when a heavily laden motor -boat, with a row boat in tow, rounded the point and headed for the -island. In it were Mary Blake, Mrs. Swanson, Anna Jackson, and Jean -Foret. Rose Beaulac and Granny Drapeau sat in the little boat behind and -all space not filled by women of ample build, was piled high with pails -and baskets. - -“We’ve come to spend the day,” they hailed me. “Don’t get scared, we’ve -brought our dinners along.” - -“Dinner or no dinner, I am glad to see you,” I called back, waving an -apron in welcome. - -“We knew this would be our last chance to have a visit with you before -the campers come, so we’ve come to have a picnic.” - -Ah! What a happy, friendly day! These women—busy heads of households, -women of affairs—laid aside their cares, forgot their responsibilities -and enjoyed their party with the simplicity of children. And how good -was the chicken, brought already cooked in a shining pail, and the cakes -and pies in the baskets! Mrs. Swanson had journeyed in to Sark to buy -candy, and all that the store there boasted was the dear old candy of our -childhood, little chocolate boys and girls and rabbits, sugar hearts with -mottoes, jaw-breakers and pep’mint sticks. - -We sat long at the big table on the porch. We talked and talked, or, -rather, they talked; I listened, marking the shrewdness of their -deductions, the keenness of their comment, the kindliness of their -judgments. I heard all about the fine new store at Frontenac and the -bargains one and another had found. They described the magnificence of -the yearly celebration there when the Orangemen walk in procession. They -told me that this year Joey Trueman, the storekeeper, had not scrupled to -set off a whole twenty-three dollars’ worth of fireworks by way of -advertisement. - -We explored the scant five acres of the island, peeping in at the doors -of the little summer sleeping shacks, all swept and furnished for the -campers, and then, in the pleasant languor of the afternoon, I brought -out my stack of photographs and told all about my homefolk. - -For I too have formed the photo-displaying habit of this neighborhood, a -friendly, kindly custom that makes one free at once of the home and all -the family. I have never gone visiting here without being at once -presented with the album. Many a time has my hostess hurried in from the -kitchen to ask: “Has Miss X. seen the pictures yet?” - -Big, unmercifully true-to-life crayon likenesses of grandparents stare -down from all the parlor walls—ancestral portraits. There are -photographs of all the brides and grooms and babies, snapshots of sons -fighting “somewhere in France,” of daughters gone out to make homes of -their own on the far-off frontier, and there are the faces of those lying -safe under the cedars in the little graveyards close at home. I have -heard the life stories of all, and so it seems quite natural for me to -hand out my pictures too. - -As evening drew on and milking time approached, my guests gathered -together pails and baskets and, as we walked single file along the trail -to the dock, I tried to say something of what lies in my heart about all -the kindness they had shown me in the year gone by, but the lump that -rose in my throat choked back the words. They climbed into their boats, -that sank to the gunwales under their weight, and I watched them away -across the purple water. - -My holiday is over. In a very few weeks I must go back to the city and -take up my work—the same, yet never again to be the same. Here in the -quiet of the woods I am trying to take stock of all that this year has -done for me. - -It has given me health. I have forgotten all about jerking nerves and -aching muscles. I sleep all night like a stone; I eat plain food with -relish; I walk and row mile after mile; I work rejoicing in my strength -and glad to be alive. - -There has been also the renewing of my mind, for my standards of values -are changed. Things that once were of supreme importance seem now the -veriest trifles. Things that once I took for granted, believing them the -common due of mankind—like air and sunshine, warm fires and the kind -faces of friends—are now the most valuable things in the world. What I -have learned here of the life of birds and beasts, of insects and trees -are the veriest primer facts of science to the naturalist—to me they are -inestimably precious, the possessions of my mind, for, like Chicken -Little, “I saw them with my eyes, and heard them with my ears.” And I -shall carry away a gallery of mind-pictures to be a solace and -refreshment through all the years to come. - -The camp is ready for its owner. I have spent many hours in cleaning, -arranging, replacing, that she may find all as she left it ten months -ago. The island lies neat and fair in the sunshine, reminding me of a -good child that has been washed and dressed and seated on the doorstep to -wait for company. Never have the woods looked so fair to me, or the wide -lake, where the dragonflies are hawking to and fro over the water, so -beautiful. - -This is dragonfly season. Millions of them are darting through the -air—great green and brown ones with a wing-spread of three to four -inches; wee blue ones, like lances of sapphire light; little inch-long -yellow ones, and beautiful, rusty red. - -To-day I spent three hours on the dock watching one make that wonderful -transition from the life amphibious to the life of the air. Noon came -and went, food was forgotten while that miracle unfolded there before my -very eyes. - -I was tying the boat, when I saw what looked like a very large spider, -crawling up from the water and out on a board. It moved with such effort -and seemed so weak that I was tempted to put it out of its pain. But if -I have learned nothing else in all these months in the woods, I have -thoroughly learned to keep hands off the processes of nature. Too often -have I seen my well-meant attempts to help things along end in disaster. -So I gave the creature another glance and prepared to go about my -business, when I noticed a slit in its humped back, and a head with -great, dull beads of eyes pushing out through the opening. Then I sat -down to watch, for I realized that this was birth and not death. - -Very slowly the head emerged and the eyes began to glow like lamps of -emerald light. A shapeless, pulpy body came working out and two feeble -legs pushed forth and began groping for a firm hold. They fastened on -the board and then, little by little and ever so slowly, the whole insect -struggled out, and lay weak, almost inanimate, beside the empty case that -had held it prisoner so long. - -Two crumpled lumps on either side began to unfurl and show as wings. The -long abdomen, curled round and under, like a snail-shell, began to uncurl -and change to brilliant green, while drops of clear moisture gathered on -its enameled sides and dripped from its tip. The transparent membrane of -the wings, now held stiffly erect, began to show rainbow colors, as they -fanned slowly in the warm air, and, at last, nearly three hours after the -creature had crept out of the water, the great dragon-fly stood free, -beside its cast-off body lying on the dock. And - - “Because the membraned wings, - So wonderful, so wide, - So sun-suffused, were things - Like soul and nought beside.” - -Certain stupendous phrases rose in my mind and kept sounding through my -thoughts. - -“Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all -be changed.” - -There it stood, that living jewel, growing every moment more strong, more -exquisite, waiting perhaps for some trumpet call of its life. Suddenly -it stiffened, the great wings shot out horizontally, and with one joyous, -upward bound, away it flashed, an embodied triumph, out across the -shining water, straight up into the glory of the sun. - -When I came to myself I was standing a tiptoe gazing up after it, my -breath was coming in gasps and I heard my own voice saying: “It is sown -in weakness, it is raised in power. . . . Thanks be to God, which giveth -us the victory.” - -Then, standing there under those trees, clothed in their new green and -upspringing to the sky, and beside the lake, where the young ferns troop -down to the water’s edge, valiant little armies with banners, there came -to me one of those strange flashes of understanding, that pierce for an -instant the thick dullness of our minds, and give us a glimpse of the -meaning of this life we live in blindness here. - -I had seen those woods, all bare and dead, rise triumphant in a glorious -spring. I had seen that lake grow dark and still and lie icebound -through the strange sleep of winter. Its water now lay rippling in the -sun. - -Since my coming to Many Islands, one year ago, the Great War has broken -forth, civilization has seemed to die, and the hearts of half the world -have gone down into a grave. - -But even to me has come the echo of the Great Voice that spoke to John, -as he stood gazing on a new heaven and new earth: - -“I am the beginning and the end,” it said. “Behold I make all things -new.” - - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WINTER OF CONTENT*** - - -******* This file should be named 62303-0.txt or 62303-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/2/3/0/62303 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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