THE SILENT PLACES

THE SILENT PLACES




CHAPTER ONE


At about eight o'clock one evening of the early summer a group of men
were seated on a grass-plot overlooking a broad river. The sun was just
setting through the forest fringe directly behind them.

Of this group some reclined in the short grass, others lay flat on the
bank's slope, while still others leaned against the carriages of two
highly ornamented field-guns, whose embossed muzzles gaped silently at
an eastern shore nearly two miles distant.

The men were busy with soft-voiced talk, punctuating their remarks with
low laughter of a singularly infectious character. It was strange
speech, richly embroidered with the musical names of places, with
unfamiliar names of beasts, and with unintelligible names of things.
Kenógami, Mamátawan, Wenebógan, Kapúskasíng, the silver-fox, the
sea-otter, the sable, the wolverine, the musk-ox, parka, babiche,
tump-line, giddés,--these and others sang like arrows cleaving the
atmosphere of commoner words. In the distant woods the white-throats and
olive thrushes called in a language hardly less intelligible