CANADIAN NIGHTS 



WILLIE WHISPER 



YEARS ago, it matters not when, it was my 

 not unpleasant fate to spend an idle week 

 in the woods, and the memory of it is still 

 fresh in my mind. 



It was late in the autumn. The glorious 

 foliage of the hardwood trees lay like a many- 

 tinted carpet on the earth, soon to be wrapped 

 in its winter covering of virgin snow. The air 

 was very still. Not a breath stirred the withered 

 leaves of the alders fringing the river bank when I 

 and a half-breed pushed off in a " dug-out " to 

 force our way up stream towards the winter camp 

 which my other two Indians were constructing in 

 the heart of the big woods. It was bitterly cold 

 under the morning star. Ice was forming rapidly 

 on the reeds and sedges margining the stream. 

 The water dripping from our poles froze, making 

 the footing in that most rickety of vessels, a 



