returned half-naked to the Settlement the following spring.
Then, coming upon us in armed bands and superior numbers, they drove us
out of the Settlement altogether at last, and we came here to Jack River
to spend the winter as we best could. After that we went back and
struggled on for some time, but now, here have they a second time
banished us! What the end is to be, who can tell?"

"Truly, if such be the country I have come to, I will go back to my
native land and make watches," remarked the Swiss in a tone from which
the sanguine element had almost entirely disappeared.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

ROUND THE CAMP-FIRES.

Had any one been watching the camp-fires of the banished colonists that
night, the last idea that would have entered the observer's mind would
have been that of suffering or distress.

The night was brilliantly fine, and just cold enough to make the blazing
fires agreeable without being necessary--except, indeed, as a means of
cooking food. The light of these fires, shining through the green,
yellow, and golden foliage, and illuminating the sunburnt faces of men,
women, and children, gave to the scene a strain of the free, the wild,
and the romantic, which harmonised well with the gypsy-like appearance
of the people, and formed a ruddy contrast to the pure cold light of the
innumerable stars overhead, which, with their blue-black setting, were
reflected in the neighbouring lake.

Over every fire pots and kettles were suspended from tripods, or rested
on the half-burned logs, while impaled wild-fowl roasted in front of it.
Food being in great abundance, hearts were light in spite of other
adverse circumstances, and men and women, forgetting to some extent the
sufferings of the past and the dark prospects of the future, appeared to
abandon themselves to the enjoyment of the present.

The children, of course, were full of glee, and not altogether empty of
mischief; and there were fortunately no infants of age so tender as to
induce a squalling protest against the discomforts of a situation which
could be neither understood nor appreciated.

"It iss a pleesant night, whatever," remarked old McKay, lighting his
pipe with a brand plucked from the fire which his family and the
Davidsons shared in common; "an' if it wass always like this, it iss
myself that would not object to be a rud savitch."

"I don't know that a rud savitch is much worse than a white wan,"
growled Duncan junior, in an under-tone