XXVIII. 



TH BTOBT OT OLD PETB MEIQS. THB MASSACRE, AND THE 

 BUTION THAT FOLLOWED. 



" I SAID the other day," said Tucker, " I'd tell you 

 afore we got home, the story of old Pete Meigs' early 

 life, and I'll do it now. It wasn't a thing he liked to 

 talk about, and he never spoke of it to me but once. 

 I said the other day, he was a strange and solitary 

 man, and a gloomy one sometimes. He had places in 

 the woods he always seemed to like better than any- 

 where else, and the St. Eegis Lake was one of 'em. 

 He would stay round there for days and weeks, and 

 he seemed to look on it as his home in the summer 

 months. It was one day, while we were paddlin' 

 along the shore, round the base of the steep hill, that 

 he told me the story of his young days, and the things 

 that hung like a dark shadow and a desolation over 



