Picked from tbe Prairie Province 237 



swiftly shifted for the second barrel. Then the 

 canoe suddenly springs forward, for there are 

 stunned and crippled ducks which may presently 

 revive, and a clout from a paddle is much cheaper 

 while quite as effective as another shot. If a goodly 

 bunch of fowl be secured, the Breed may or may not 

 repeat his deadly work a bit farther on after things 

 have quieted down. He may paddle lazily homeward, 

 but it is very pleasant in the canoe, and to hurry 

 is a sin. The sun will not sink to the sky-rim for 

 long hours yet, there is a rough lunch aboard, also 

 pipe and tobacco, and the man who goes home 

 too soon may find trouble in wading a trifle of 

 poplar chopping, which is not for one moment to 

 be compared with sun-basking in a grass-padded 

 canoe as comfortable as a hammock. Besides, the 

 swart-skinned wife really is putting on a shocking 

 amount of flesh of late, and there is nothing better 

 than some soulful swinging of an axe to reduce the 

 female form divine. If the breeze be right, he may 

 hear a whisper of remote chopping, and smile and 

 snuggle down ; for next to the roar of a gun and 

 the wail of a fiddle, he most loves to hear the sound 

 of sufficiently far-away honest labor. And this is the 

 daily story of the Indian summer while the hosts of 

 fowl, bred yet farther north, rest and fatten in the 

 bounteous bay, while awaiting nature's final order 

 for that marvellous flight to the lazy locked lagoons 

 of a clime that knows not frost. 



But occasionally there is another story. Near the 

 rim of the bay stands the tiny log-shanty, its one wee 

 window peering across desolation. On its outer 

 wall are long rows of stout nails which no Breed 



