'And is all that verdure an appearance or a reality?'

'Something of both. I don't say but you will occasionally find it treacherous footing, needing drainage to be comfortable. See! there's the pond at last.'

They had been climbing out of the denser woods, among a younger growth on the face of the slope; and when they turned, the sheet of water was partially visible over the sunken cedar swamp.

'A pond!' exclaimed Arthur; 'why, it must be three miles across to those limestone cliffs. What pretty islets! Such endless varieties of wood and water!'

'I think we Americans are rather given to the diminutive style of parlance,' quoth Mr. Holt. 'We have some justification in the colossal proportion of all the features of nature around us. What is this pretty lake but a mere pool, compared with our Erie and Superior?'

PREPARING FOR THE FIRST NIGHT IN THE BUSH.
Click to [ENLARGE]

'It is one of a chain,' remarked Robert, taking from his breast pocket a map of the district, which had his own farm heavily scored in red ink. Often had he contemplated that outline of the terra incognita on which he now trod, and longed for the knowledge he now possessed, which, after its manner, had brought him both good and evil. Like balls threaded on a cord, a succession of lakes, connected by cascades and portages, or by reaches of river, stretched away to the north-west, sorely marring the uniformity of the chess-board townships.

As they picked their way back along the lot line northward, Mr. Holt stopped suddenly. 'I hear a very singular noise,' he said, 'for which I am wholly at a loss to account, unless there be Indians about in the neighbourhood. Even then it is totally unlike their cries. Listen!'

His sharper senses had detected before theirs a distant wail, proceeding from some distance in front, apparently—weird and wild as it could be, dying away or surging upon the ear as the wind swept it hither or thither. Arthur shrugged his shoulders. 'You have no ghosts in these forests, Holt, I suppose?'

'The country's too new for anything of the sort,' replied he gravely.