THE HERO RELATES HIS ACHIEVEMENT. 295 



coming in courses, or piled up helter-skelter on great plat- 

 ters of birch bark, some on tin plates, and now and then 

 a choice bit on a chip ! We had coffee, and tea, and the 

 purest of spring water, by way of beverage, and truth 

 compels me to admit, that under the advice of the Doctor, 

 a drop or two of Old Cognac may have been added by 

 way of relish, or to temper the effect of a hearty meal 

 upon the delicate stomachs of some of the guests. We 

 were exceedingly fashionable in our time for breakfasting 

 this morning, and it was eleven o'clock before we rose from 

 table. The sun was travelling through a cloudless sky, 

 and his brightness lay like a mantle of glory upon the 

 water, while his heat gave to the deep shadows of the 

 old trees, whose long arms with their clustering foliage 

 were interlocked above us, a peculiar charm. The descrip- 

 tion which we gave of the beautiful lake we had left the 

 day before, the story of the moose and the bear we had 

 killed, together with our quit-claim of the shanty we had 

 inhabited, brought our friends to the conclusion to drift 

 that way for a week or so. 



It was amusing to hear Smith relate the manner of cap- 

 turing the bear, the glory of which achievement he had won 

 by the tossing up of a dollar; how he had started out alone 

 in one of the boats with his rifle to look into a little bay 

 half a mile below the shanty, where he left the rest of 

 us sleeping after dinner ; and how, as he was floating along 

 under the shadow of the hills, at the base of a wall of rocks 

 some forty feet high, rising straight up from the water, 



