H 



NOTES OF THE HUNT. 



made an additional table for our soon-to-be-increased 

 company. Ned made a pine boot-jack, Archie fash- 

 ioned a match-safe out of birch bark, Matthews showed 

 his handiwork in a toilet-shelf, and Billy, the cook, 

 who had gone to Mrs. Gouldie's, came back between 

 five and vsix with a mirror, which he hurg up near the 

 front door. The universally-handy Ned contrived a 

 rude but convenient gun rack, by driving stakes into 

 the logs in the alcove near the chimney^ and upon this 

 our rifles: were soon placed. 



By dint of steady work at odd times, chopping, 

 digging, scraping with a peculiar and ancient-Briton 

 looking sort of home-made mattock, Tom got a marked 

 deal of cleaning-up done around camp. Of course, his 

 good example set others of us to helping him, so that 

 by burning brush, chips, rubbish, and filling up the 

 unsightly holes or hollows of our domain v/ith moss or 

 sand, there was soon no unsightly hollow to be seen. 

 Nor was it true of Tom, as of Lord Byron's typical 

 Man, that " his control stopped with the shore," for he 

 presently organized a corps of boatmen who, so to 

 speak, *' moved Birnam Wood to Dunsinane " by form- 

 ing a procession of canoes and towing the bushes, 

 stumps and felled trees which dotted the shallows sur- 

 rounding the point, to where they no longer hindered 

 our view or blocked the landing. Alvin did good work 

 in finishing the wharf of logs, and likewise chopped 

 down a hemlock tree 16 inches in diameter in order to 

 get out of it, by means of his unaided axe, a slab ten 

 feet long, of which to make a bench for our wash- 

 basins. Archie and Ed. added to our supply of fire- 

 wood, gave us deer-tallow to smear our boots, sharp- 

 ened our knives, even mended our pipes when broken, 

 using a copper cartridge-cover instead of a silver plate. 



