96 In the Canadian Forests v 



us from the strange, mysterious beauty of one's 

 surroundings.' (Then he goes on, apparently, to 

 describe how they lay in the shadow of the bushes, 

 listening intently between the wild ' calls ' from the 

 Indian's birch-bark horn for the answering grunt of 

 the deceived moose bull.) 



* Before us stretches the forest barren, with here 

 and there a low gray rock with glints of light on it, 

 and here and there a clump of stunted spruces. 

 All is bathed in the brightest moonlight, nowhere is 

 the moonlight so silvery bright as here. . . . The 

 occasional hootings of the owls seem only to 

 harmonise with the solemn loveliness of the scene, 

 only to make the silence more profound, the repose 

 more perfect. . . . Hist ! scrackle-crack. A moose ! 

 No, only the urson, the porcupine. . . . Then again 

 the silence is broken by that weird, plaintive, yearn- 

 ing love-call from Noel's birch-bark horn. . . . Silence, 

 the world is asleep in the moonlight. No ! Is that, 

 can that be some one chopping wood at this hour, 

 right away there in the forest ? Nearer, nearer ! 

 Wouk ! Wouk ! . . . I did what I could to prevent 

 it. I made a hole in the ground, the soft, spongy, 

 moss ground, a hole which filled with water which 

 tastes like water and porter, more porter than water, 

 and buried my face therein. I did what I could to 

 prevent it. I held my breath till my brain swelled 

 as big as the universe, and the universe became an 

 infinite maze of scintillating atoms whirling wildly in 

 a maroon mist. I did what I could to prevent it. 



