TO QUEBEC.

By this time the boat was moving down the river, and every one was alive
to the scenery. The procession of the pine-clad, rounded heights on
either shore began shortly after Ha-Ha Bay had disappeared behind a
curve, and it hardly ceased, save at one point, before the boat
re-entered the St. Lawrence. The shores of the stream are almost
uninhabited. The hills rise from the water's edge, and if ever a narrow
vale divides them, it is but to open drearier solitudes to the eye. In
such a valley would stand a saw-mill, and huddled about it a few poor
huts, while a friendless road, scarce discernible from the boat, wound
up from the river through the valley, and led to wildernesses all the
forlorner for the devastation of their forests. Now and then an island,
rugged as the shores, broke the long reaches of the grim river with its
massive rock and dark evergreen, and seemed in the distance to forbid
escape from those dreary waters, over which no bird flew, and in which
it was incredible any fish swam.

Mrs. Ellison, with her foot comfortably and not ungracefully supported
on a stool, was in so little pain as to be looking from time to time at
one of the guide-books which the colonel had lavished upon his party,
and which she was disposed to hold to very strict account for any
excesses of description.

"It says here that the water of the Saguenay is as black as ink. Do
_you_ think it is, Richard?"

"It looks so."

"Well, but if you took some up in your hand?"

"Perhaps it wouldn't be as black as the best Maynard and Noyes, but it
would be black enough for all practical purposes."

"Maybe," suggested Kitty, "the guide-book means the kind that is light
blue at first, but 'becomes a deep black on exposure to the air,' as the
label says."

"What do you think, Mr. Arbuton?" asked Mrs. Ellison with unabated
anxiety.

"Well, really, I don't know," said Mr. Arbuton, who thought it a very
trivial kind of talk, "I can't say, indeed. I haven't taken any of it up
in my hand."

"That's true," said Mrs. Ellison gravely, with an accent of reproval for
the others who had not thought of so simple a solution of the problem,
"very true."

The colonel looked into her face with an air of well-feigned alarm. "You
don't think the sprain has gone to your head, Fanny?" he asked, and
walked away, leaving Mr. Arbuton to the ladies. Mrs. Ellison did not
care for this or any other gibe, if she but served her own purposes; and