ons, you
tell me no lies nor anything else. If you think I'm going to see a girl
cheated, just because she is a girl, you don't know your friend. But
you do, you honest old Wilks, don't you now?"

"Very well, only remember I breathed no hint of this in your ear."

"All right, old man," answered Miss Du Plessis' self-constituted
advocate, as he shovelled the earth in over the tin box. "Muggins, you
rascal, if you dig that up again, I'll starve you to death."

The pedestrians deserted the archaeological find, and trudged away into
the north west.

"Wilks, my dear, I feel like the black crow," said Coristine, as they
journeyed along the pleasant highway.

"Like what?" asked the dominie, adjusting his eye-glass.

"Like the crow, don't you know?

Said one black crow unto his mate,
What shall we do for grub to ate?

Faith, it'll be an awful thing if we're going to die of starvation in
the wilderness."

"I thought you were a botanist, Corry?"

"So I am, in a small way."

"Then, what bushes are those in that beaver meadow?"

In another minute, the lawyer, closely followed by Muggins, was in the
meadow, exclaiming "Vaccinium Canadense! Come on, Wilks, and have a
feast." Muggins was eating the berries with great satisfaction, and
Coristine kept him company. The dominie also partook of them, remarking:
"This is the whortleberry, or berry of the hart, vulgarly called the
huckleberry, although huckle means a hump, which is most inappropriate."

"That reminds me of a man with a hump, though there wasn't much heart to
him," said Coristine, his mouth full of fruit. "He undertook to write on
Canada after spending a month here. He said the Canadians have no fruit
but a very inferior raspberry, and that they actually sell bilberries in
the shops. As a further proof of their destitution, he was told that
haws and acorns are exposed for sale in the Montreal markets. Such a
country, he said, is no place for a refined Englishman. I don't wonder
my countrymen rise up against the English."

"You forget, Corry, that I am English, and proud of my descent from the
Saxon Count Witikind."

"Beg your pardon, Wilks, but you're a good Englishman, and I never
dreamt your progenitor was that awful heathen:--

Save us, St. Mary, from flood and from fire,
From famine and pest, and Count Witikind's ire.

As the Englishmen said, there is no need to hask 'ow the hell got into
your name."

"Corry, this is most unseem