Dick's Desertion A Boy's Adventures in Canadian Forests   By: Marjorie L. C. Pickthall (1883-1922)

[Frontispiece: "The great branch torn from a neighbouring maple told all the tale." p. 20]

DICK'S DESERTION

A Boy's Adventures in Canadian Forests

A TALE OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT OF ONTARIO

By

MARJORIE L. C. PICKTHALL

WITH SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS

Toronto:

The Musson Book Company, Limited.

1905

CONTENTS.

CHAP.

I. IN THE HEART OF THE WOODS II. THE FALL OF THE TREE III. FRIENDS INDEED IV. A DAY IN THE WOODS V. A BACKWOODS CHRISTMAS VI. THE CALL OF THE FOREST VII. A MESSAGE FROM THE WANDERER VIII. A WOOD'S ADVENTURE IX. ON THE PRAIRIE X. IN THE GRIP OF THE STORM XI. BACK TO STEPHANIE XII. TO A GOODLY HERITAGE

ILLUSTRATIONS

"The great branch torn from a neighbouring maple told all the tale." . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece

"'If I had fifty rivers and fifty canoes, I could not leave Stephanie.'"

"They began to sing the old carols their mother had taught them long before."

"He flung out his arm, circled with savage ornaments flung it out with a wild gesture, and began to speak."

"He held out a tiny package, wrapped in birch bark, with an inquiring glance towards her."

"'For pity's sake, let me alone!' Dick pleaded. 'Go on and leave me.'"

"'Dick! Dick! Where are you?'"

DICK'S DESERTION:

A Boy's Adventures in Canadian Forests.

CHAPTER I.

In the Heart of the Woods.

It was early fall, and all the world was golden. Golden seemed the hazy warmth of the sky; golden were the willow leaves and the delicate foliage of the birches; even the grass, pale from the long heat of the summer, had taken on a tinge of the all pervading colour. Far as the eye could reach, the woods and uplands were bright with gold, relieved only by the deep sombre green of pines and hemlocks. Save for these, it seemed a country that some gracious Midas had touched, turning everything to ethereal, elfin gold.

The Midas touch had even included the little log cabin and its untidy clearing, for broad disced sunflowers were scattered over the neglected garden, and between them bloomed late goldenrod, which had crept in from the wilds outside; and a small patch of ground was covered with shocks of Indian corn, roughly bound together, yellowing also beneath the influence of sun and frost.

The land was beautiful to look upon Ontario scenery, marred little by the works of man in that autumn of 1820, when His Most Gracious Majesty George IV. was king. And the log cabin and its clearing were picturesque enough to the eye of an artist, though speaking of all lack of skill and thrift and industry to the eye of a farmer. Even the garden in front of the cabin was being slowly and surely swallowed up into the wilderness again. The sunflowers flourished and bloomed and seeded, forming food stores for multitudes of birds; and the squirrels would flicker down the tree trunks and feast upon the seeds which the birds dropped, spitting the hard shells deftly to right and left through their whiskers. But the wild asters and the long convolvulus vines were choking the blossomless pinks and the sweet williams and the few shy English flowers that were left. There were only very few of these fading alien plants for the healthy native growth to smother and kill, most of them having been taken away to set upon the grave of the woman who had cherished them.