The boys
employed themselves in this work, while Catharine cooked the fish they
had caught the night before, with a share of which old Wolfe seemed to be
mightily well pleased. After they had breakfasted, they all went up towards
the high table-land above the ravine, with Wolfe, to look round in hope of
getting sight of their friends from Cold Springs, but though they kept an
anxious look out in every direction, they returned, towards evening,
tired and hopeless. Hector had killed a red squirrel, and a partridge which
Wolfe "treed,"--that is, stood barking at the foot of the tree in which it
had perched,--and the supply of meat was a seasonable change. They also
noticed, and marked, with the axe, several trees where there were bees,
intending to come in the cold weather, and cut them down. Louis's father
was a great and successful bee-hunter; and Louis rather prided himself on
having learned something of his father's skill in that line. Here, where
flowers were so abundant and water plentiful, the wild bees seemed to be
abundant also; besides, the open space between the trees, admitting the
warm sunbeam freely, was favourable both for the bees and the flowers on
which they fed, and Louis talked joyfully of the fine stores of honey they
should collect in the fell.
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