as almost a joke, under Mordaunt Muller's
assurances that it was easy fording, though the splashes flew far and
wide. Then there was what Philetus called 'a mash with a real handsome
bridge over it,' i. e. a succession of tree trunks laid side by side
for about a quarter of a mile. Here the female passengers insisted on
walking--even Cora, though her brother and Philetus both laughed her to
scorn; and more especially for her foot-gear, delicate kid boots,
without which no city damsel stirred. Averil and her sisters, in the
English boots scorned at New York, had their share in the laugh, while
picking their way from log to log, hand in hand, and exciting
Philetus's further disdain by their rapture with the glorious flowers
of the bog.

But where was Massissauga? Several settlements had been passed, the
houses looking clean and white in forest openings, with fields where
the lovely spring green of young maize charmed the eye.

At last the road grew desolate. There were a few patches of corn, a
few squalid-looking log or frame houses, a tract of horrible dreary
blackness; and still more horrible, beyond it was a region of
spectres--trees white and stripped bare, lifting their dead arms like
things blasted. Averil cried out in indignant horror, 'Who has done
this?'

'We have,' answered Mordaunt. 'This is Maclellan Square, Miss Warden,
and there's River Street,' pointing down an avenue of skeletons. 'If
you could go to sleep for a couple of years, you would wake up to find
yourself in a city such as I would not fear to compare with any in
Europe. Your exhausted civilization is not as energetic as ours, I
calculate.'

The energetic young colonist turned his horse's head up a slight rising
ground, where something rather more like habitation appeared; a great
brick-built hotel, and some log houses, with windows displaying the
wares needed for daily consumption, and a few farm buildings. It was
backed by corn-fields; and this was the great Maclellan Street, the
chief ornament of Massissauga. Not one house had the semblance of a
garden; the wilderness came up to the very door, except where cattle
rendered some sort of enclosure necessary.

Cora exclaimed, 'Oh, Mordaunt, I thought you would have had a garden
for me!'

'I can fix it any time you like,' said he; 'but you'll be the
laughing-stock of the place, and never keep a flower.'

The Mullers' abode was a sound substantial log house, neatly whitened,
and wi