"The great branch torn from a neighbouring maple told all the tale."—p. 20

DICK'S DESERTION

A Boy's Adventures
in Canadian Forests

A TALE OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT OF ONTARIO

By

MARJORIE L. C. PICKTHALL

WITH SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS

Toronto:
The Musson Book Company, Limited.
1905

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS

"The great branch torn from a neighbouring maple told all the tale." . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece

"'If I had fifty rivers and fifty canoes, I could not leave Stephanie.'"

"They began to sing the old carols their mother had taught them long before."

"He flung out his arm, circled with savage ornaments—flung it out with a wild gesture, and began to speak."

"He held out a tiny package, wrapped in birch-bark, with an inquiring glance towards her."

"'For pity's sake, let me alone!' Dick pleaded. 'Go on and leave me.'"

"'Dick! Dick! Where are you?'"

DICK'S DESERTION:

A Boy's Adventures in Canadian Forests.

CHAPTER I.

In the Heart of the Woods.

It was early fall, and all the world was golden. Golden seemed the hazy warmth of the sky; golden were the willow leaves and the delicate foliage of the birches; even the grass, pale from the long heat of the summer, had taken on a tinge of the all-pervading colour. Far as the eye could reach, the woods and uplands were bright with gold, relieved only by the deep sombre green of pines and hemlocks. Save for these, it seemed a country that some gracious Midas had touched, turning everything to ethereal, elfin gold.

The Midas-touch had even included the little log-cabin and its untidy clearing, for broad-disced sunflowers were scattered over the neglected garden, and between them bloomed late goldenrod, which had crept in from the wilds outside; and a small patch of ground was covered with shocks of Indian corn, roughly bound together, yellowing also beneath the influence of sun and frost.

The land was beautiful to look upon—Ontario scenery, marred little by the works of man in that autumn of 1820, when His Most Gracious Majesty George IV. was king. And the log-cabin and its clearing were picturesque enough to the eye of an artist, though speaking of all lack of skill and thrift and industry to the eye of a farmer. Even the garden in front of the cabin was being slowly and surely swallowed up into the wilderness again. The sunflowers flourished and bloomed and seeded, forming food-stores for