The other boys by this time had joined the group, and so crestfallen were they all when they discovered how insignificant was their nocturnal visitor, that Ethan quickly said,—
“A hedgehog will make a big scratching sometimes. I’ve known ’em when I’ve been logging to git up on the shanty in the night, and from the noise they made, I’d been willing to declare a bear was after us. It was perfectly natural, boys, for ye to be skeered.”
Breakfast provided a speedy diversion, and after securing some of the quills of their victim they cast the body into the river, and turned to their repast. It was decided, in view of the visit they were to make that day at “The Rocks,” that they would not venture far from camp; but about an hour later Jock called the attention of his companions to a spectacle on the river.
About a half-mile in front of the camp they beheld a tug moving down the stream, dragging behind it several huge loads, which, although they were not boats, still somehow resembled them. They rested low upon the water, and men could be seen moving about over them.
“What’s that, Ethan?” demanded Bert, as he beheld the strange procession.
“That?” replied the boatman, pausing in his task and looking in the direction indicated by the lad. “Them’s logs.”
“Logs? I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“I mean what I say. They’re rafts made out o’ logs. They come from up Ottawa way. Ye see, the lumbermen cut the logs in the winter and float ’em down the stream, and a good many on ’em is sawed up over there, but not all. They make rafts out of a part, and haul ’em down the river to Montreal, or some other town.”
“But what are those houses or huts I can see on the rafts?” persisted Bert. “And there are people there too. Yes, I can see women and children,” he added, as he lowered the glasses he had been using.