of dark eyes grew brighter as a voyageur swept past his home, and
recognised his little ones screaming farewell, and seeking to attract
their _sire's_ attention by tossing their chubby arms or flourishing
round their heads the bright vermilion blades of canoe paddles. It was
interesting, too, to hear the men shout as they ran a small rapid which
occurs about the lower part of the settlement, and dashed in full career
up to the Lower Fort--which stands about twenty miles down the river
from Fort Garry--and then sped onward again with unabated energy, until
they passed the Indian settlement, with its scattered wooden buildings
and its small church; passed the last cottage on the bank; passed the
low swampy land at the river's mouth; and emerged at last, as evening
closed, upon the wide, calm, sea-like bosom of Lake Winnipeg.

Charley saw and heard all this during the whole of that long, exciting
afternoon, and as he heard and saw it his heart swelled as if it would
burst its prison-bars, his voice rang out wildly in the choruses,
regardless alike of tune and time, and his spirit boiled within him as
he quaffed the first sweet draught of a rover's life--a life in the
woods, the wild, free, enchanting woods, where all appeared in _his_
eyes bright, and sunny, and green, and beautiful!

As the sun's last rays sank in the west, and the clouds, losing their
crimson hue, began gradually to fade into grey, the boats' heads were
turned landward. In a few seconds they grounded on a low point covered
with small trees and bushes which stretched out into the lake. Here
Louis Peltier had resolved to bivouac for the night. "Now then, mes
garcons," he exclaimed, leaping ashore, and helping to drag the boat a
little way on to the beach, "vite, vite! a terre, a terre!--Take the
kettle, Pierre, and let's have supper."

Pierre needed no second bidding. He grasped a large tin kettle and an
axe, with which he hurried into a clump of trees. Laying down the
kettle, which he had previously filled with water from the lake, he
singled out a dead tree, and with three powerful blows of his axe
brought it to the ground. A few additional strokes cut it up into logs,
varying from three to five feet in length, which he piled together,
first placing a small bundle of dry grass and twigs beneath them, and a
few splinters of wood which he cut from off one of the logs. Having
accomplished this, Pierre took a flint and steel out of a gaily
ornament