attracted by its flickering light.'"

The children exclaimed at this queer way of fishing, but Malcolm was
very much taken with the idea of doing it by night with blazing torches,
and he thought that he would like to be a Norwegian fisherman even
better than a hermit or an Indian.

"The old tree goes on to say," continued Miss Harson, "that 'Finland
mothers form of the dried leaves soft, elastic beds for their children,
and from me is prepared the _mona_, their sole medicine in all diseases.
My buds in spring exhale a delicious fragrance after showers, and the
bark, when burnt, seems to purify the air in confined dwellings.'

"In Lapland the twigs of the birch, covered with reindeer-skins, are
used for beds, but they cannot be so comfortable, I should think, as the
leaves. The fragrant wood of the tree makes the fires which have to be
kept up inside the huts even in summer to drive away the mosquitoes, and
the people of those Northern regions would find it hard to get along
without the useful birch."

"I like to hear about it," said Clara. "Can you tell us something more
that is done with it, Miss Harson?"

"There is just one thing more," replied her governess, with a smile,
"which I will read out of an old book; and I desire you all to pay
particular attention to it."

Little Edith was wide awake again by this time, and her great blue eyes
looked as if she were ready to devour every word.

"Birch rods," continued Miss Harson, "are quite different from birch
_twigs_, and the uses to which they were put were not altogether
agreeable to the boys who ran away from school or did not get their
lessons. 'My branches,' says the birch, 'gently waving in the wind,
awakened in those days no feelings of dread with truant urchins--for
_all_ might be truants then, if so it pleased them--but at length a
scribe arose who thus wrote concerning my ductile twigs: "The civil uses
whereunto the birch serveth are many, as for the punishment of children
both at home and abroad; for it hath an admirable influence upon them to
quiet them when they wax unruly, and therefore some call the tree
_make-peace_"'" Malcolm and Clara both laughed, and asked their young
governess when the birch rods were coming; but Edith did not feel quite
so easy, and, with her bruised foot and all, it took a great deal of
petting that night to get her comfortably to bed.

CHAPTER VIII.

_THE POPLARS_.

The bruised foot was not comfortable to walk on