et, new-fallen leaves, so deftly shaping that
little canoe of birch bark; and he wished, with a half smile at
himself, that it might turn out to be a fairy canoe, suddenly growing
to full size, and bearing him away on some new risen fairy river, into
the land of his dreams. "But if I had fifty rivers and fifty canoes,"
he said to himself with a sigh, "I could not leave Stephanie."

[Illustration: "'IF I HAD FIFTY RIVERS AND FIFTY CANOES, I COULD NOT
LEAVE STEPHANIE.'"]

It was the old struggle, though he did not know it--the voice of the
wilderness striving against the voice of the home ties. This time the
voice of the home ties sang in triumph at thought of Stephanie; but
there comes a time occasionally in a man's life when his mother the
woman may mean less to him for a space than his mother the earth.

But with Dick the crisis had not yet come; and he scrambled to his feet
very contentedly, and proceeded to a little marsh close at hand, where
all sorts of fair swamp plants grew--feathery green things, and
jewelled touch-me-not, and jacks-in-the-pulpit, and long-stemmed
violets in season. For the tiny canoe was to be filled with little
ferns and soft mosses as a gift for Stephanie, and that thought of the
fairy river was forgotten.

This important business attended to, he turned slowly and reluctantly
towards home. But the woods were full of sights and sounds that
appealed to every half-awakened instinct in the boy's soul.

A small, brown, hawk-faced owl lay stupidly at the mouth of a sort of
tunnel it had made for itself in the long, bleached grasses. So
perfectly did it resemble a piece of decayed and mottled wood that even
Dick's keen eye almost passed it over, until it sprang up from this
cosy day-time retreat, and blundered away among the trees.
Dragon-flies, unlike their brethren of the earlier year, in that they
were clad in crimson and russet plush, and not in green and pink and
sapphire mail, took their flashing flights among the faded undergrowth.
The air was warm and golden still, but a keen nose might detect in it a
threatening of frost; and the fallen leaves yielded a delicate
fragrance as of damp earth and new mown hay.

A chipmunk ran down a tree trunk and scolded him viciously, and then
fled before him to another tree, where it awaited him angrily,
evidently under the impression that he was following it with evil
designs upon its winter stores. In this way it preceded him to the
edge of th