heavily packed with the hard-won proceeds of trap and gun. Foremost among
these were displayed the broad antlers of the moose of my affections,
whose skin served as a tarpaulin for the remainder of the baggage, round
which it was snugly tucked in with thongs of kindred material.

We halted on a broad ledge of rock by the western verge of the bay of the
Falls, glad of an opportunity of enjoying my independence to the last,
unfettered by the conventionalities for which I was beginning to be imbued
with a savage contempt. Here we set up a primitive kitchen-range, and,
having feasted upon cutlets of the caribou, scientifically treated by a
skewer process with which Zach was familiar, we lounged like "lazy
shepherds" in the sun, and the eye of the Indian flashed as I produced
from the folds of my sash a leather-covered flask which did not look as if
it was meant to contain water. During the weeks of the chase I had been
very careful to conceal this treasure from Zach, knowing how helpless an
Indian becomes under the influence of the "fire-water"; and as I had had a
pull at it myself only two or three times, under circumstances of unusual
adversity and hardship, there still remained in it a very respectable
allowance for two, from which I subtracted a liberal measure, handing over
the balance to Zach, who gulped down the _skiltiwauboh_ with a fiendish
grin and a subsequent inhuman grunt. As I lit my pipe after this
satisfactory arrangement, the roar of the mighty Montmorency, whirling
down its turbulent perpendicular flood behind a half-drawn curtain of
green and azure ice, sounded like exquisite music to my ears, and I looked
towards Quebec and blinked at its fire-flashing tin spires and house-tops
burning through the coppery morning fog, until my mind's eye became
telescopic, and my thoughts, unsentimental though I be, reverted to
civilized society and its _agréments_, and particularly to a certain
steep-roofed cottage situated on a suburban road, in the boudoirs of which
I liked to imagine one pined for my return. If memory has its pleasures,