Hector and Louis were unwearied in supplying her with them.
Louis, ever fertile in expedients, crushed the cooling fruit and applied
them to the sprained foot; rendering the application still more grateful by
spreading them upon the large smooth leaves of the sapling oak; these he
bound on with strips of the leathery bark of the moose-wood, [Footnote:
"_Dirca palustris_,"--Moose-wood. American mezereon, leather-wood. From the
Greek, _dirka_, a fountain or wet place, its usual place of growth.] which
he had found growing in great abundance near the entrance of the ravine.
Hector, in the meantime, was not idle. After having collected a good supply
of ripe strawberries, he climbed the hills in search of birds' eggs and
small game. About noon he returned with the good news of having discovered
a spring of fine water in an adjoining ravine, beneath a clump of bass-wood
and black cherry-trees; he had also been so fortunate as to kill a
woodchuck, having met with many of their burrows in the gravelly sides of
the hills. The woodchuck seems to be a link between the rabbit and badger;
its colour is that of a leveret; it climbs like the racoon and burrows like
the rabbit; its eyes are large, full, and dark, the lip cleft, the soles of
the feet naked, claws sharp, ears short; it feeds on grasses, grain, fruit,
and berries.
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