not so very cold after all, though the thermometer was at five degrees above zero (it was at six degrees below, this morning), until we reached the hospitable portal of Madame Liquidambar, which Mademoiselle quickly opened to us.

And there we found a fire of logs blazing upon the hearth, around which we all gathered, and the Troubadour discovered a guitar, which he strung, and upon which he played while he sang the song of Suzette, and then another and another and another, until it was quite time for us to start if we were to get home with the girls before the morning.

And Phollis asked why it was that the Scribe always seemed so happy, and the Scribe could not tell for the life of him, unless it was because he enjoyed so many things, and enjoyed them so much.

FEBRUARY 24, 1894.

XI.

EUREKA! Shall I say it ? Nothing less would seem appropriate after the mile upon mile that I have rambled and scrambled and tangled this afternoon in search of the trailing arbutus. I have been in the most probable places, and I think that I may frankly say in the most uncomfortable. The climax was capped when I found myself upon a hillside in the midst of a wood of shrubs and saplings, over which fire had evidently passed within a few years, so weakening the young trees that they had subsequently fallen under the stress of storms, and lay crossed in all directions, with frequent briars among them, as always happens after a fire in the wood. Once caught in such a tangle, progress seems almost hopeless, and no inducement is offered to return. In that direction you know it is bad; there is always something to be hoped for in the unknown. And so I struggled onward, tripping and slipping, the twigs springing back and striking my glasses, the thorns clinging to me

closer than a brother. But even such uncomfortable places as these have a boundary, and that boundary I reached at last, and I breathed freely and would have felt wholly repaid had I but found what I sought.

But courage! Just over there, upon that southward facing wooded slope, is the spot of spots for the vine that I seek. And again a climb and a scramble, and while clinging to the rocky and precipitous hillside I find a bit of saxifrage with its whorl of green leaves, crowned with a little button of white flowers, just coming into bloom, and nestling snugly close to the ground, not proudly standing erect upon a six-inch stem, as it would have been a little later, if I had not plucked it out of the crevice in the rock and carried it off home. And here is our sole cactus, the prickly pear, not in bloom, but almost looking as if it were, some of the fleshy lobes having a bright pink tinge. I pulled up two or three specimens to bring with me, to the decided detriment of my fingers, and had to spend most of the remainder of the afternoon in pulling out the prickles, which engaging occupation I transferred to Cara mea when I intrusted one of the Tartars to her at the tea table.

But this was not the mayflower, and there below me wound the river, and yonder was the bridge which should bear me over the first limb of the horseshoe (if horseshoes have limbs. What is it that horseshoes have, arms or limbs ?). I took my way homeward, mourning, for I had not found it, and the day was overcast, and the sun was shrouded in gloomy clouds, and generally speaking my cake was dough.

Up in my own wood this morning I gathered a little cluster of hepaticas, squirrel cups, I like to call them, blue and white, and as dainty as you could possibly think. They made their appearance a fortnight ago, while the snow still lingered in shady places on the northern slopes, so early that Phollis said they could not venture out without their furs on, the dear little things. The columbines are showing their leaves, and the dogstooth violets and a few others, but excepting the symplocarpus (the euphemistic name of the skunk-cabbage) and the chickweed, I have seen no other wild herbs in blossom. Of trees and shrubs there are a number, the maples, the elms, etc., but most of the vegetable family are biding their time well. They were not beguiled by the lovely days of early March,

and here, at least, the bitter winds of a week ago found few victims.

As I tramped across the fields this afternoon and looked at the evidences of the patient toil that had been spent in preparing them for the production of the scanty crops which can now be wrung from them, I wished that some of our closet philanthropists who are very wise upon the subject of taxes - in books and speeches - and who talk glibly on the relation of land and improvements and the unearned increment, would just once in a while take to the country and look at the thing itself. (I am sure that I am talking quite correctly, and in the true orthodox philosophical fashion, when I say "das ding an sich.") Here is land which, with the buildings upon it, might bring in the market perhaps fifteen dollars per acre. To say that labour to the extent of fifty dollars per acre had been expended upon it to fit it for the pasturage or other service that is now obtained from it, in clearing it of trees and shrubs, in removing and piling up the stones in long walls and heaps, or in digging great holes and trenches in which to bury them - which is, I find, a favourite way here of getting rid of them-would be to make a very modest statement.