t penetrated the ground for a depth of four feet. Yet here we were
in a very tropic of growth run riot and the frost, which still lay
beneath the upper soil, was thawing and moistening the succulent roots
of a wilderness of green. The meadow grass, swaying off to the forest
margin in billowy ripples, was already knee-high. The woods were an
impenetrable mass of foliage from the forest of ferns about the broad
trunks to the high tree-tops, nodding and fanning in the night breeze
like coquettish dames in an eastern ball-room. Everywhere--at the river
bank, where our tents stood, above the long grass, and in the
forest--clear, faint and delicate, like the bloom of a fair woman's
cheek, or the pensive theme of some dream fugue, or the sweet notes of
some far-off, floating harmonies, was an odor of hidden flowers. A
trader's nature is, of necessity, rough in the grain, but it is not
corrupt with the fevered joys of the gilded cities. Even we could feel
the call of the wilds to come and seek. It was not surprising,
therefore, that after supper father and daughter should stroll away from
the encampment, arm in arm, as usual. As their figures passed into the
woods, the girl broke away from her father's arm and stooped to the
ground.

"Pickin' flowers," was the laconic remark of the trader, who had helped
me with Louis Laplante on the beach; and the man lay back full length
against a rising knoll to drink in the delicious freshness of the night.
Every man of us watched the vanishing forms.

"Smell violets?" asked a heterogeneous combination of sun-brown and
buckskin.

"This ground's a perfect wheat-field of violets," exclaimed the
whiskered youngster.

"Lots o' Mayflowers and night-shades in the bush," declared a ragged
man, who was one of the worst gamblers in camp, and was now aimlessly
shuffling a greasy, bethumbed pack of cards.

"Oh!" came simultaneously from half a dozen. Personally, it struck me
one might pick flowers for a certain purpose in the bush without being
observed.

"Mayflowers in June!" scoffed the boy.

"Aye, babe! Mayflowers in June! May is June in these here regions,"
asserted the man. "Ladies-and-gentlemen, too, many's you could pick in
the bush!"

"Ladies-and-gentlemen! Sounds funny in this desert, don't it?" asked the
lad. "What _are_ ladies-and-gentlemen?"

"Don't you know?" continued the gambler, unfolding a curious lore of
flowers. "Those little potty, white things, split up the middle with