Feb. 22, 1908.1 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
289 
,vho have died in the faith, but without the rites 
}f the church, and a warning conveyed to the 
iving by the souls of the dead. The reader can 
find out the details of the loup garrou by turn- 
ng up the article Lycanthropy in any first-class 
ncyclopedia. The chasse-gallerie is a mirage 
>ure and simple, and the terrible feu-follet is 
lothing more terrible than the spontaneous 
ombustion of a little marsh hydrogen. The 
act that this combustion usually occurs over 
vater which covers an abyss of black, treach- 
rous mud deep enough to engulf any one who 
•entures into it, has invested a simple phe¬ 
nomenon with a halo of terror and supersti- 
ion. 
“Jock-o’-lantern! It was nae Jock-o’-lantern 
saw that night. I ken thae things well eneugh, 
he’re no but a little flicker-wicker o’ light, like 
. big lightenin’ bug, or a sma’ candle. It wad 
ak mair nor a jock-o’-lantern to make Louis 
Terrio quit selling rum, an’ he saw the same 
did, an’ so did Pius O’Learey, the godless 
rishman from the South Shore. They camped 
n Jerome’s shanty one wet Sawbath and played 
ards and drank rum all day long. They left 
he camp an’ their cards an’ twa bottles o’ rum, 
n’ I fun’ them lying there just as they left 
hem.” 
“That was quite a find for a wet night,” I 
emarked. “I wish some good fairy would 
end me similar luck now and then.” 
“I carried the twa bottles outside an’ clappit 
hem taegither, an’ I gathered the de’il’s buiks 
p an’ pit them i’ the fire. For a’ that I saw 
.'hat I did see, an’ i’ the mornin’ I set fire to 
he cursed place so it might never shelter man 
gain.” 
I purchased a pound of butter and a couple 
f pounds of cornmeal, as I had no intention 
f feeding Tom Crib on chipped beef, sardines and 
heese, which would constitute most of my diet 
ntil I got out of the woods. The tote road 
an straight into the woods for six miles, until 
reached Mr. McKeen’s camp. I halted for 
inner there, boiled my kettle and enjoyed a 
noke after I had finished my meal. Tom Crib 
)und and slew a woodchuck, and brought the 
;mains to me for my admiration. I thanked 
’rovidence that it wasn’t a porcupine or a 
•cunk, and girded up my loins for the four-mile 
amp across the barrens, bogs and burnt land 
) the camp I intended to sleep at. The camp 
ands less than a gunshot from Lake Harris 
ad the first thing I saw was a small canoe, 
irefully covered with brush to keep off the 
in. A sheet of birchbark was pinned to the 
imp table with a request scrawled in Paddy 
yan’s handwriting, that I would take the little 
inoe down to the next camp and leave it there, 
e had taken his party upstream in my large 
inoe. 
I found plenty of provisions in the camp 
che—the camp was too close to Mr. McKeen 
■r us to tempt his reformed apostolic mind 
’ leaving loose stores lying round—and when I 
id selected what I required and packed it in 
y basket, I went over to a little rush-grown 
ud lake to try for a shot at the black ducks, 
ortune favored me, and I got one before I 
’id been there five minutes. Tom Crib covered 
• mself with glory and black malodorous mud 
i retrieving the bird, and having no use for 
lore than one, as birds would taint in thirty- 
k hours in the September heat, I lay down on 
the moss under the hemlocks and fell asleep. 
I have the happy faculty of going to sleep at any 
time and under almost any conditions. When I 
awoke it was almost dark, and growing much 
colder. The ducks had returned to the lake 
and were feeding on the water-grass seeds. I 
could hear them splashing and quacking in every 
direction. As there was abundance of firewood 
ready cut, and the trail back to camp was a 
plain one, I waited a little while. I am very 
fond of the woods noises in the night, and there 
is a very good calling bog at the head of the 
pond. It was not my good fortune to hear a 
cow moose call, however. 
Presently I concluded that I would go back 
to camp and turn in. Tom Crib also thought it 
was bed time. He had cleaned himself on the 
moss, and every now and then he poked his blunt 
cold nose into my hand. Suddenly I saw not 
one, but half a dozen “little wicker-flickers of 
light” as Mr. McKeen phrased it. They moved 
over the stagnant water like fireflies, only they 
were slower in their motion, and the flame was 
larger and less brilliant. I have often seen 
the ignis fatuus, but never before had I seen 
such a display. There was something distinctly 
uncanny about the way in which they winked 
and twinkled. I wished that Pius O’Learey 
and Louis Terrio had been there. I would have 
given a five dollar bill to have listened to their 
remarks “unbeknownst” to them. 
I went back to camp and fastened the door 
securely, not with the intention of excluding 
the feux-follets, but with intent to keep Tom 
Crib indoors. It was well I did so, for during 
the night a couple of porcupines chose the roof 
of the shanty for a gymnasium, and when I 
punched the bark roof with a pole, they de¬ 
scended and made the night hideous with their 
yells from the neighboring fir trees. 
With the exception of this trifling interrup¬ 
tion I slept peacefully. My first move in the 
morning was to go over to the cache and pro¬ 
cure a couple of stout wildcat snares. I- at¬ 
tached them to Tom Crib’s collar and moored 
him to the table leg, for I knew that if he once 
got out of doors there would be no rest for 
him until he had discovered one or both of our 
nocturnal visitors. I then prepared breakfast. 
Tea, sardines and bread and butter for myself, 
cornmeal porridge and condensed milk for Tom 
Crib, with sardine oil and sardine tails as a 
bonne bouche. 
I had some four miles to paddle down the 
lake, then a short portage and another two-mile 
paddle, a second portage, and a four-mile paddle 
further down a chain of little lakes and dead- 
waters, before I reached the lower camp on St. 
Croix Lake. It was on the shore of one of these 
small lakes that Jerome Saulnier had built his 
camp. I had never been there, as the camp 
was at the head of a creek, out of sight of the 
main sheet of water, but I knew the landmark, 
a little island with two stunted spruce trees 
growing on it. I had practically no dunnage. 
My basket contained ten pounds of food, I had 
my ax, gun, pot of rosin, a small roll of tar 
paper, and a square of stout cotton hardly 
bigger than a quilt. I took the latter with me 
in case I should decide to sleep out. It was 
well that I did so. The day was a great an ! un¬ 
pleasant contrast to the previous one. It was 
dark and lowering, and there was enough wind 
to make paddling hard work. It took me an 
hour longer than I expected to reach the other 
end of the lake, and I found the wind quite 
a hindrance in making the first portage. 
It was all I could do to get across the sec¬ 
ond lake. Tom Crib behaved well and kept his 
place in the bow of the canoe in spite of the 
water which dashed over on him now and then. 
Had I not ballasted the bow well, I should have 
been turned round a dozen times. The second 
portage was rather a long one, and the walking 
was very bad, so I made two trips, carrying the 
canoe at first, then returning for my small 
amount of dunnage. Just as I returned from 
my second trip, it commenced to pour with 
rain. By my reckoning I was only a mile from 
Jerome Saulnier’s camping ground, and I 
cursed Angus McKeen most heartily for burning 
the shanty. 
By the time I reached the little island with the 
two spruces, I was wet to the skin. The wind 
was increasing, and I saw that it was hopeless 
for me to attempt to paddle further. I accord¬ 
ingly turned into the creek and paddled up it 
with the wind at my back instead of on my 
beam. The creek went in much further than I 
expected, furthermore, it was as crooked as a 
corkscrew when I had gone a couple of hun¬ 
dred yards from the lake. The banks were very 
steep, covered with scrubby second growth fir— 
the meanest wood in the world, bar poplar and 
balm of Gilead, with which to make a fire. At 
last I came to the inlet of the creek and found 
to my great satisfaction that it terminated in a 
little wild meadow ringed round with second 
growth white birch and small rock maple. 
The creek was very shallow all 'the way up, 
in several places my canoe touched bottom, and 
I could see and feel that the bed of the stream 
was composed of coarse sand or fine gravel 
formed by the disintegration of the granite 
rocks. The narrow channel widened into a pool 
some forty yards wide and a hundred yards 
long at its head. A brook of considerable size 
ran into it. As far as I could ascertain, the 
bed of this pool was also of sand or gravel. I 
ran the canoe ashore, tethered Tom Crib to a 
stake and went to work to gather dry wood. I 
cut a few birch saplings and in a very short 
time I had improvised a very fair shelter from 
the square of cotton and started my fire. 
It was considerably past noon when I com¬ 
pleted these arrangements. I boiled my kettle 
and had dinner, and waited patiently for the 
storm to abate. Instead of abating, it increased, 
and by four o’clock I saw that I stood no chance 
of reaching the camp on St. Croix Lake that 
night. I therefore went to work to cut my 
night’s wood, and while gathering birchbark 
from the dead windfalls, I came on the ashes 
of Jerome Saulnier’s camp. It had evidently 
been a three-sided leanto with a big stone fire¬ 
place in front of it. There was not a scrap of 
wood left, but the fire-place was still standing 
and in good order. I realized that the fire¬ 
place would save a lot of wood, so I carried up 
the canoe and canvas square and with them and 
some brush made a fairly watertight place to 
sleep in. My shelter faced the pool at the head 
of the creek. I cut a gad and attached a bit of 
line and a hook to it, then with a piece of raw 
black duck for bait, I tried for a trout for sup¬ 
per. The pool was full of fish; most probably 
they were waiting to go up the stream to their 
spawning grounds, and in five minutes I caught 
