Andrew, month in and month out, with tales of the "indications" of minerals he had found beneath the ferns and mosses of his Muskoka woods. But Andrew was content with them as they were, with the trees growing solemnly upward, aspiring to the blue: the wandering streams, a network of silver tracery, starred here and there by broad discs where one widened to a little placid lake or where two or more streams, meeting, gushed together. The sound of their soft confluence and the soughing of the wind, that without moving the leaves seemed ever to sigh between the tree trunks, blent into a soft sensation, half sound, half stir, something perceived nowhere but in the woods, seeming indeed as if there we were very close to Nature's sweet and beautiful breast, hearing in this mysterious pulsation the beating of her kindly heart. 

 Andrew had grown to be in very close touch with Nature during many solitary weeks spent in hunting: in long tramps through the Muskoka woods, shooting the fawn-coloured deers, and the wild fowl that nested in the tiny lakes; and in many a long night when he lay perdu watching for lynx, forgetting his quest in the marvel of the stars, or in wakeful watches, seeing the resinous camp-fire die down to embers and hearing the shrill laughing of the loon, the weird wail of the lynx, the cry of the great owl or the call of the coon. Andrew was past-master of all woodland lore. He had hunted Muskoka through and through. Many a wild duck's breast and fox's mask, and many a pair of antlers proved his prowess. 

 Besides, he had spent many a winter in northern Quebec, snow-shoeing over its silent white wastes upon the traces of moose; the intense cold parching his throat, his half-breed guide padding* along at his side; sometimes faring royally upon juicy steaks and birds, broiled as only hunters can broil—not scorched, yet savoured with fire; sometimes upon a long trail with a bit of frozen bacon in one pocket and a lump of frozen bread in the other, gnawing a morsel off each with care, so that he might not break off his moustache which was frozen in a solid mass with the moisture of his breath. 

 * "Padding" is a term applied by hunters to the silent flat-footed gait of Indian guides. 

 Andrew often heard people say that one did not feel the intense cold in these northern regions; he always longed to have them there and let them try it. He had felt pretty cold up there, only he never remembered the time when he couldn't hold his gun with naked hands. That, though, as every one knows, is the mark of a mighty Nimrod. So soon as his half-breed 

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