" "Be not
cast down, Catharine," said her brother, cheeringly: "we may not be so far
from home as you think. As soon as you are rested we will set out again,
and we may find something to eat; there must be strawberries on these sunny
banks."
Catharine soon yielded to the voice of her brother, and drying her eyes,
proceeded to descend the sides of the steep valley that lay to one side of
the high ground where they had been sitting.
Suddenly darting down the bank, she exclaimed, "Come, Hector; come, Louis:
here indeed is provision to keep us from starving:"--for her eye had caught
the bright red strawberries among the flowers and herbage on the slope;
large ripe strawberries, the very finest she had ever seen.
"There is indeed, ma belle," said Louis, stooping as he spoke to gather up,
not the fruit, but a dozen fresh partridge eggs from the inner shade of a
thick tuft of grass and herbs that grew beside a fallen tree. Catharine's
voice and sudden movements had startled the partridge [Footnote: The
Canadian partridge is a species of grouse, larger than the English or
French partridge.
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