"
"Indeed, Louis, that must have been a very unsavoury dish," said Catharine.
"That old buckskin vest would have made a famous pot of soup of itself,"
added Hector, "or the deer-skin hunting shirt." "Well, they might have been
reduced even to that," said Louis, laughing, "but for the good fortune that
befel them in the way of a half-roasted bear."
"Nonsense, cousin Louis, bears do not run about ready roasted in the
forest, like the lambs in the old nursery tale."
"Well now, Kate, this was a fact; at least, it was told as one by old
Jacob, and my father did not deny it; shall I tell you about it? After
passing several hungry days with no better food to keep them alive than the
scrapings of the inner bark of the poplars and elms, which was not very
substantial for hearty men, they encamped one night in a thick dark
swamp,--not the sort of place they would have chosen, but that they could
not help themselves, having been enticed into it by the tracks of a deer or
a moose,--and night came upon them unawares, so they set to work to kindle
up a fire with spunk, and a flint and knife; rifle they had none, or maybe
they would have had game to eat.
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