Dutch type of character. Her husband was a
sturdy broad-set man, with lithe limbs, and quick senses looking out
from his clear-featured countenance: he had a roving unsubdued eye,
befitting the hunter more than the farmer.

'I wouldn't desire,' said the latter, seating himself on the end of
the table, while his wife superintended a pan of frizzling pork on the
coals--'I wouldn't desire, for a feller that wanted to settle down for
good, a more promising location than yourn at the Cedars. The high
ground grows the very best sorts of hard wood--oak, sugar maple, elm,
basswood. Not too many beech, or I'd expect sand; with here and there a
big pine and a handful of balsams. The underbrushing ain't much, except
in the swamp.'

'I'm glad to hear that,' said Mr. Holt, 'for the fall is going fast, and
we'll have to work pretty hard before snow comes.'

'So I'm thinkin'. But _you_ ain't going to settle: you haven't the cut
of it: you're settled already.'

'How do you know?'

'Oh, you didn't listen as they did,' pointing his thumb towards the
Wynns, 'when I fell to talkin' of the ground. I know'd my men at once.
Nor you didn't stare about as they did, as if the house and fixins was a
show at a copper ahead.'

'You must excuse our curiosity,' said Robert politely.

'Surely; every man that has eyes is welcome to use 'em,' replied the
backwoodsman bluntly. 'We ain't got no manners in the bush, nor don't
want 'em, as I tell Mary here, when she talks any palaver. Now, wife,
them pritters must be done;' and he left his seat on the table to pry
over her pan.

'Then take the cakes out of the bake-kettle, will you?' said Mary; 'and
if them ducks be raw, 'tain't my fault, remember.' She was evidently a
woman of few words, but trenchant.

Thus warned, her husband did not press the point, but took the stewing
fowl under his own care, displaying a practical experience of cookery
won in many a day of bush life.

'These duck was shot on your pond, stranger; if you be a good hand
with the gun, you'll never want for fresh meat while that water holds
together. The finest maskelonge and pickerel I ever see was hooked out
of it.'

Arthur's face brightened; for the sportsman instinct was strong in him,
and he had been disappointed hitherto by finding the woods along their
track empty of game.

''Cos the critters have more sense than to wait by the road to be
shot,' explained the backwoodsman, as he dished up his stew--a sort of
hodgep