t to the
farms and orchards, and contained only five homes in all its length.

But where man had been neglectful, nature had lavished wealth,
performing great feats in the way of landscape gardening. On all
sides, the vale was held in by encircling hills. The eastern boundary
was steep and straight and was known as Arrow Hill. On its summit
stood a gaunt old pine stump, scarred and weather-beaten. Here, an old
Indian legend said, the Hurons were wont to tie a captive while they
showered their arrows into his quivering body. The children of the
valley could point out the very holes in the old trunk where certain
arrows, missing their victim, had lodged. Away opposite, forming the
western wall, rose the Long Hill, with a moss-fringed road winding
lingeringly up its face. Down through the cedars and balsams that
hedged its side tumbled a clear little brook, singing its way through
the marigolds and musk that lovingly strove to hold it back. Reaching
the valley, it was joined by the waters that oozed from a great dark
swamp to the south, and swelling into a good-sized stream, it wound its
way past The Dale, held in by steep banks, all trilliums and pinks and
purple violets and golden touch-me-not, and hedged by a double-line of
feathery white-stemmed birches.

From east to west of the valley stretched a straight road, hard and
white. Old Indian tales hung about it also. It was an early Huron
trail, they said, and the one followed by Champlain when he marched
over from the Ottawa valley and found Lake Simcoe hanging like a
sapphire pendant from the jewel-chain of the Great Lakes. It was still
called Champlain's Road, and had in it something of the ancient Indian
character. For it cut straight across country over hill and stream,
all unmindful of Government surveys or civilized lines.

Just a few miles beyond Arrow Hill it ran into the little town of
Cheemaun, and on market-days its hard, white surface rang with the beat
of hoofs and the rattle of wheels. In the early morning the procession
rolled forward, strong and eager for the day's bargaining, and at night
it swept back bearing some weary ones, some gleeful over their
money-getting, some jealous and dissatisfied because of the wealth and
ease they had seen, and some glad to return to the quiet and peace of
their farm homes. And there were always the few who lurched along,
caring not whether they reached home or fell by the wayside, having
sold their manh