IX 



AT HOME BY THE LAKE SHORE— 

 OF CANADIAN DIVERSION 



My first day at the Clyst was the " day of rest." 

 At luncheon I found the two girls had returned 

 from their convent to spend Sunday, and in the 

 afternoon they took me out on the lake in their 

 canoe. It was November i8, the sun was glorious, 

 and even the water of the lake not really cold ; but 

 although in 1905 snow did not fall until mid- 

 December, the night frost must have been strong, 

 because on December 5 I walked across the ice- 

 capped lake to my first glimpse of a charming but 

 deserted bungalow in a curve of the shore. After- 

 wards I heard that it was built for his bride by an 

 Englishman who endeavoured to raise horses on a 

 section of prairie surrounded by grain-fields, and in 

 time the intelligence of the horses drove their 

 owners from their lovely, but not entirely water- 

 proof, home on the lake shore to seek consolation 

 in a house fitted with all manner of modern con- 

 venience in the wheat town of Indian Head. 



Nearly every afternoon between four o'clock tea 

 and seven o'clock supper I made my way across the 

 sparkling ice-path towards the land of the setting 

 sun and the veranda of that forsaken home among 



the shriven maples. Approached from the lake, it 



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