yed a peep at the
distant waters of the lake which terminated the vista, while they were
quite removed from its unwholesome vapours.

The temperature of the air for some days had been hot and sultry,
scarcely modified by the cool delicious breeze that usually sets in
about nine o'clock, and blows most refreshingly till four or five in
the afternoon. Hector and Louis had gone down to fish for supper, while
Catharine busied herself in collecting leaves and dried deer-grass, moss
and fern, of which there was abundance near the spring. The boys had
promised to cut some fresh cedar boughs near the lake shore, and
bring them up to form a foundation for their bed, and also to strew
Indian-fashion over the floor of the hut by way of a carpet. This sort
of carpeting reminds one of, the times when the palaces of our English
kings were strewed with rushes, and brings to mind the old song:--

"Oh! the golden days of good Queen Bess,
When the floors were strew'd with rushes,
And the doors went on the latch----"

Despise not then, you, my refined young readers, the rude expedients
adopted by these simple children of the forest, who knew nothing of the
luxuries that were to be met with in the houses of the great and the
rich. The fragrant carpet of cedar or hemlock-spruce sprigs strewn
lightly over the earthen floor, was to them a luxury as great as if
it had been taken from the looms of Persia or Turkey, so happy and
contented were they in their ignorance. Their bed of freshly gathered
grass and leaves, raised from the earth by a heap of branches carefully
arranged, was to them as pleasant as beds of down, and the rude hut of
bark and poles, as curtains of silk or damask.

Having collected as much of these materials as she deemed sufficient
for the purpose, Catharine next gathered up dry oak branches, plenty of
which lay scattered here and there, to make a watch-fire for the night,
and this done, weary and warm, she sat down on a little hillock, beneath
the cooling shade of a grove of young aspens, that grew near the hut;
pleased with the dancing of the leaves, which fluttered above her head,
and fanned her warm cheek with their incessant motion, she thought, like
her cousin Louise, that the aspen was the merriest tree in the forest,
for it was always dancing, dancing, dancing, even when all the rest were
still.

She watched the gathering of the distant thunder-clouds, which cast a
deeper, more sombre shade upon the pines