ked in the deep water and rubbed his nose against the
rocks. He did his best to treat that treacherous grasshopper as the
whale served Jonah. But Greygown, through all her little screams and
shouts of excitement, was steady and sage. She never gave the fish an
inch of slack line; and at last he lay glittering on the rocks, with the
black St. Andrew's crosses clearly marked on his plump sides, and the
iridescent spots gleaming on his small, shapely head. "Une belle!" cried
Ferdinand, as he held up the fish in triumph, "and it is madame who has
the good fortune. She understands well to take the large fish--is
it not?" Greygown stepped demurely down from her pinnacle, and as we
drifted down the pool in the canoe, under the mellow evening sky,
her conversation betrayed not a trace of the pride that a victorious
fisherman would have shown. On the contrary, she insisted that angling
was an affair of chance--which was consoling, though I knew it was not
altogether true--and that the smaller fish were just as pleasant to
catch and better to eat, after all. For a generous rival, commend me to
a woman. And if I must compete, let it be with one who has the grace
to dissolve the bitter of defeat in the honey of a mutual
self-congratulation.

We had a garden, and our favourite path through it was the portage
leading around the falls. We travelled it very frequently, making
an excuse of idle errands to the steamboat-landing on the lake, and
sauntering along the trail as if school were out and would never keep
again. It was the season of fruits rather than of flowers. Nature was
reducing the decorations of her table to make room for the banquet. She
offered us berries instead of blossoms.

There were the light coral clusters of the dwarf cornel set in whorls of
pointed leaves; and the deep blue bells of the Clintonia borealis (which
the White Mountain people call the bear-berry, and I hope the name will
stick, for it smacks of the woods, and it is a shame to leave so free
and wild a plant under the burden of a Latin name); and the gray,
crimson-veined berries for which the Canada Mayflower had exchanged its
feathery white bloom; and the ruby drops of the twisted stalk hanging
like jewels along its bending stem. On the three-leaved table which once
carried the gay flower of the wake-robin, there was a scarlet lump like
a red pepper escaped to the forest and run wild. The partridge-vine
was full of rosy provision for the birds. The dar