"It was the son of his brave colonel, who knew a great deal about the history of the Stuart kings, for our colonel had been with Prince Charles, the young chevalier, and fought by his side when he was in Scotland. He loved him dearly, and after the battle of Culloden, where the prince lost all, and was driven from place to place, and had not where to lay his head, he went abroad in hopes of better times. But those times did not come for the poor prince; and our colonel, after a while, through the friendship of General Wolfe, got a commission in the army that was embarking for Quebec, and at last commanded the regiment to which my father belonged. He was a kind man, and my father loved both him and his son, and grieved not a little when he parted from him."
"Well," said-Catharine, "as you have told me such a nice story, Mister
Hec, I shall forgive the affront about my curls."
"Well, then, to-morrow we are to try our luck at fishing, and if we fail, we will make us bows and arrows to kill deer or small game; I fancy we shall not be over-particular as to its quality. Why should not we be able to find subsistence as well as the wild Indians?"
"True," said Hector; "the wild men of the wilderness, and the animals and birds, all are fed by the things that He provideth; then wherefore should His white children fear?"
"I have often heard my father tell of the privations of the lumberers, when they have fallen short of provisions, and of the contrivances of himself and old Jacob Morelle when they were lost for several days, nay, weeks I believe it was. Like the Indians, they made themselves bows and arrows, using the sinews of the deer, or fresh thongs of leather, for bow-strings; and when they could not get game to eat, they boiled the inner bark of the slippery elm to jelly, or birch bark, and drank the sap of the sugar maple when they could get no water but melted snow only, which is unwholesome: at last they even boiled their own moccasins."
"Indeed, Louis, that must have been a very unsavoury dish," said
Catharine.
"That old buck-skin vest would have made a famous pot of soup of itself," added Hector, "or the deer-skin hunting shirt."
"They might have been reduced even to that," said Louis, laughing, "but for the good fortune that befell them in the way of a half-roasted bear."
"Nonsense, Cousin Louis; bears do not run about ready roasted in the forest, like the lambs in the old nursery tale."
"Kate, this was a fact; at least it was told as one by old Jacob, and my father did not deny it. Shall I tell you about it? After passing several hungry days, with no better food to keep them alive than the scrapings of the inner bark of the poplars and elms, which was not very substantial for hearty men, they encamped one night in a thick dark swamp,—not the sort of place they would have chosen, but they could not help themselves, having been enticed into it by the tracks of a deer or a moose,—and night came upon them unawares, so they set to work to kindle a fire with spunk, and a flint and knife; rifle they had none, or maybe they would have had game to eat.