Part 53 (1/2)

”Me too, me too,” shrieked two wee girls in bare legs and sandals, clutching Jane about the legs.

”All right, Isabel; all right, Helen. I'll take you with me,” said Jane.

”But you must let me go, you know.”

They all raced around the house and began to climb the sheer, rocky hill that rose straight up from the rear.

”Here, Jim, help me with these kiddies,” said Jane to a lank lad of fifteen, whom she ran into at the corner of the house just where the climb began.

Jim swung the younger, little Helen, upon his shoulder and together they raced to the top, scrambling, slipping, falling, but finally arriving there, breathless and triumphant. Before them lay a bit of Canada's loveliest lake, the Lake of the Woods, so-called from its myriad, heavily wooded islands, that make of its vast expanse a maze of channels, rivers and waterways. Calm, without a ripple, lay the gla.s.sy, sunlit surface, each island, rock and tree meeting its reflected image at the water line, the sky above flecked with floating clouds, making with the mirrored sky below one perfect whole.

”Oh, Ethel, I had forgotten just how beautiful this is,” breathed Jane, while the rest stood silent looking down upon the mirrored rocks and islands, trees and sky.

Even the two little girls stood perfectly still, for they had been taught to take the first views from the top in silence.

”Look at the Big Rock,” said Helen. ”They are two rocks kissing each other.”

”Oh, you little sweetheart,” said Jane, kissing her. ”That is just what they are doing. It is not often that you get it so perfectly still as this, is it, Jim?”

”Not so very often. Sometimes just at sunrise you get it this way.”

”At sunrise! Do you very often see it then?”

”Yes, he gets up to catch fishes,” said wee Helen.

”Do you?”

Jim nodded. ”Are you game to come along to-morrow morning?”

”At what hour?”

”Five o'clock.”

”Don't do it, Jane,” said Ethel. ”It tires you for the day.”

”I will come, Jim; I would love to come,” said Jane.

For some time they stood gazing down upon the scene below them. Then turning to the children abruptly, Ethel said, ”Now, then, children, you run down and get ready; that is, if you are going to church. Take them down, Jim.”

”All right, Ethel,” said Jim. ”See there, Jane,” he continued, ”that neck of land across the traverse--that's where the old Hudson Bay trail used to run that goes from the Big Lakes to Winnipeg. It's the old war trail of the Crees too. Wouldn't you like to have seen them in the old days?”

”I would run and hide,” said Isabel, ”so they could not see me.”

”I would not be afraid,” said Helen, straightening up to her full height of six years. ”I would shoot them dead.”

”Poor things,” said Jane, in a pitiful voice. ”And then their little babies at home would cry and cry.”

Helen looked distressed. ”I would not shoot the ones that had babies.”

”But then,” said Jane, ”the poor wives would sit on the ground and wail and wail, like the Indians we heard the other night. Oh, it sounded very sad.”

”I would not shoot the ones with wives or babies or anything,” said Helen, determined to escape from her painful dilemma.