He kill my
brother long time ago with this old knife. Kill heem! kill heem now!"
I did not avail myself of the opportunity thus afforded me for the
improvement of river society: nay, worse, I connived at the further
career of the redoubtable Rupert Falardeau, Junior; for, on leaving in
the morning, I roused him with repeated kicks, thus saving him for
that time, probably, from the Damoclesian blade of the _vengeresse_.
_L'ete de Saint Martin_!--how blue and yellow it is in the marshes in
those days! It is the name given by the French Canadians to the Indian
Summer,--the Summer of St. Martin, whose anniversary-day falls upon
the eleventh of November; though the brief latter-day tranquillity
called after him arrives, generally, some two or three weeks earlier.
Looking lakeward from the sedgy nook in which we are waiting for the
coming of the wood-ducks, the low line of water, blue and calm, is
broken at intervals by the rise of the distant _masquallonge_, as he
plays for a moment on the surface. But the channels that separate the
flat, alluvial islets are yellow, their sluggish waters being bedded
heavily down with the broad leaves of the wintering basswood-trees,
which, in some places, touch branch-tips across the narrow straits.
The muskrat's hut is thatched with the wet, dead leaves,--no thanks to
_him_; and there is a mat of them before his door,--a heavy, yellow
mat, on which are scattered the azure shells of the fresh-water clams
to be found so often upon the premises of this builder.
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