November is the month of mosses.

November is the month of mosses.  Every fallen tree, every rotting stump, every rock, the trodden paths, and even the hard face of the cliff, are padded deep with velvet.  The color ranges from clear emerald, out through the tints to silvery, sage green, and back through the shades to an olive brown, almost as dark as the earth itself.  Round the shores the driftwood is piled high on the beach.  It looks like bleached bones of monsters long dead, huge vertebrae, leg bones, skulls and branching antlers.  The trees are bare, the brakes dry and crumbling, but the north point of the island, its one naked ugly spot of the summer, is now covered with a blood-red carpet.  A close-growing, grassy weed has turned brilliant crimson and clothed it with beauty.  Far away on the lake I am guided home by that flare of color on the point.

The birds are gone, all but the crows, that perch on the tallest trees and lift their hoarse voices in a mournful chorus.  But now is the time to go bird’s-nesting, to find the homes of all the vireos, warblers, creepers, and sparrows that made the island their breeding ground.  The nests of the vireos, woven of birch bark, bits of hornet’s nests, grass and scraps of paper, are easy to find, for the pretty, hanging baskets are fastened in the crotches of the bushes and low saplings.  The others are not so readily discovered, and it was by merest accident that I came across the home of the brown thrasher, who made the summer vocal with his beautiful song.  It was on the ground and so near the house that I wonder that we did not walk into it.  It is a mere bunch of twigs, so loosely twisted together that it fell apart when it was moved.

Every afternoon I go faggotting, bringing in armloads of dry sumac and fallen branches.  They are not especially good for kindling, but now that the deer season is on, no man will work; so until after November fifteenth, the reign of the Hunter’s Moon, the brush pile must serve.  It takes constant gathering to collect enough to start the hardwood fires, and a wet day sets me back sadly.  I pile up as much as I can in the empty sleeping shacks, to keep it dry, and I can only hope that the snow will not come before someone has been induced to lay aside his gun and cut a cord or two of driftwood kindling.

Butterflies are always coming in on the twigs.  With their wings folded flat together, showing only their dry undersides, they look so like old withered leaves that it is only when the warmth of the room wakes them, and they flutter off to the windows, that they can be recognized as butterflies at all.  One flew to the south window yesterday and crawled there, beating his delicate wings against the glass all morning.  He was brown, tan and yellow on the upper side but underneath so like a dry, woolly old leaf as to be an amazing bit of nature’s mimicry.  As I looked at his poor, torn wings and feebly waving antennæ he seemed suddenly the very oldest thing, the lone survivor of a forgotten summer, a piteous little Tithonus, to whom had been granted the terrible gift of immortality, without the boon of an immortal youth.

At first I thought that he was being given a respite from the common fate of butterflies, for I did not then know that the angle wings can last over the winter, lying dormant in protected places, and that the last brood of a summer can live until another spring.  I even planned to outwit nature by feeding this one and keeping him alive in the artificial summer of the warm house.  I made a sirup of sugar and water and offered it but the butterfly would none of it, only crawling and beating his wings in a vain effort to escape through the glass into the bleak November sunshine.  At length I carried him to the door, and he fluttered off to a bush and clung there.  After turning away for a moment I went back to find him; he was gone; he had become a dead leaf again.

Peter, the rabbit, spends most of his time at the door, waiting for a chance crust.  He fsits on his haunches, rocking gently back and forth, making a soft, little knocking noise on the porch floor.  If I am late in coming out at mealtimes, he looks at me with so dignified an air of patient reproof that I feel quite apologetic for having kept him waiting.  His meal finished, he washes his face and paws carefully, like a cat, then sits in the sun, eyes closed, forepaws tucked away under his breast and ears laid back along his shoulders.  He is turning white very rapidly.  At first, only his tail, feet, breast and the ends of his ears were lightly powdered, but now he looks as if he had hopped into a pan of flour by mistake.

Other hares, now lean and wild, come out of the woods at dusk and try to share Peter’s bread.  But he turns on them fiercely, driving them back over the hill, with an angry noise, something between a squeal and a grunt.  If anyone thinks a rabbit a meek, poor-spirited creature, he should see Peter, when threatened with the loss of his dinner.  Evidently, he believes that he has pre-empted this territory and all that goes here in the way of food, and he means to defend his claim.

Rufus, the red squirrel, torments Peter unmercifully, dashing across the ground under his nose and snatching the bread from between the rabbit’s very teeth.  He is there and away before the rabbit knows what has happened.  Poor, slow little Peter stood these attacks in bewildered patience for a time, but now he has worked out a plan for getting even with the squirrel that serves him fairly well.  He sits on his crust, drawing it out inch by inch from under him as he nibbles, but even at that Rufus gets about half.  I am training the rabbit to take his food from my hand, for nothing thrown on the ground is safe for an instant from the little red-brown robber.  It took some very patient sitting to overcome Peter’s timidity, but after the first bit was taken the rest was easy.  Now he comes fearlessly to me as soon as I appear.

The squirrel is growing very tame too, but he will never be as tranquil a companion as the rabbit.  He lacks Bunny’s repose of manner.  He is sitting on the windowsill now, eating a bit of cold potato.  He turns it round and round, nibbling at it daintily.  Now and again he stops to lay a tiny paw on his heart—or is it his stomach?  The area of his organs is very minute and it may be either.

There is something very flattering in the confidence of these little creatures of the island.  How do they know that they may safely trust my kindness?  How can they be sure that I will not betray them suddenly with trap or gun?

The rabbit came into the house yesterday, padding about noiselessly on his cushioned toes.  He stopped at each chair and stood on his hind feet, resting his forepaws on the seat.  He examined everything, ears wriggling, nose quivering, tail thumping on the carpet.  Suddenly he discovered that the door had blown shut and then he went quite wild with fear.  He was in a trap, he thought, and tore round and round the room, jumping against the window panes, dashing his head against the walls until I feared that he would injure himself before I could reach the door to open it.  Poor little Peter, he is not valiant after all.  He comes in still, but always keeps close to the door, and the way of escape must always be open.

The men on the mainland hunt over the islands, putting on the dogs to drive off the game.  When the ice holds, the hounds will come over of their own accord to course the rabbits.  I should like to feel that for the term of my stay this one island could be a place of safety for the animals that take refuge here, and so I have paid visits of ceremony to the neighboring farms to explain that I shall spend the winter and to ask that the dogs be kept off my preserve, as far as possible for the sake of my pets.  I may say that my wish has been respected in the kindest way, and my neighbors have done their best to make the island a sanctuary for the birds and beasts.  The first assurance of each visitor has been, “I tied up my dogs afore I started over.”  It was the opening remark of an early caller who strode into the room this morning as I was eating a late breakfast.  A reassuring salutation, for without it I might have feared that the speaker had dropped in to do me a mischief, his appearance was so very intimidating.  He was tall and very lean, a sort of cross between an Indian and a crane.  His greasy, black hair hung in rattails on the turned-up collar of a dingy red sweater.  He wore a ragged squirrel-skin cap, tail hanging down behind—which headgear he did not remove, and he carried a murderous looking ax.  Following came a boy of about sixteen, whose smile was so friendly and ingratiating that I felt comforted when I saw it.  The two drew up to the stove, lit pipes, conversed, and in the round-about course of their remarks I gathered that they had heard of my need of kindling wood and had come to cut me a cord.  Presently they retired to a secluded spot on the shore and chopped away, emerging every half hour or so to bring a load up to the house.

In this country men eat where they work, so toward noon I bestirred myself to prepare what I considered a particularly good dinner for my “hands.”  I had a theory that my chances of getting future kindling cut depended on the good impression made on these first workmen.  I had corned beef, potatoes, peas, and tinned beans.  I made hot biscuit, cake, stewed apples, and prepared the inevitable pot of strong tea.  The man drew his chair to the table with perfect self-possession, speared a potato from the pot with his knife and remarked: “You ain’t much of a cook, are you?”—adding, kindly, “I think I’ll just try yer tea.”

He assured me subsequently that he had no particular fault to find with my dinner.  He only meant to put me at my ease and to make conversation.

When he departed in the evening, after having cut and stacked an incredible amount of wood, he assured me that he would be ready to work for me at any time.  I had only to “holler” and he would drop a day’s hunting to come to my aid.  So the dinner could not have been so unsatisfactory after all.

News of the Great War has come to Many Islands.  William Foret returned from Glen Avon the other day with great tales of armed men guarding the railroad bridges against the Germans.  He also brought the information that I am a German spy.  He heard that at the station.

“That woman on the island is there for no good,” the loafers were saying.  “She’s a spy.  She’s got a writing machine there an’ she’s sending off letters every day.”

One inventive soul was even asserting that I am not a woman at all, but a man in woman’s clothes and that there is a wireless station here.

But William stood up for me bravely.

“Spy, nawthin,” he scoffed.  “What could she be a spyin’ on there on that island?  There’s nawthin’ there but rabbits.  No, as I understand it, she’s some sort of a book-writer off fer health.  She’s got no wireless, that I know, fer I’ve been over the ground there time and again.”

But the crowd was not convinced.

“She’d ought to be investigated,” they declared.

Then William rose to the occasion nobly.  “She’s no German spy,” he said.  “She’s an all-right woman, and ef any man feels like makin’ any trouble fer her, me an’ Black Jack and Yankee Jim stands ready to make it very onhealthy fer him.”

“I told them,” added William, with a delighted grin, “that you’d a little gun here an’ you’d use it on the first man that come on the island without you knowed him fer a friend.  But I didn’t say that you only stood five feet five in yer boots and didn’t weigh over a hundred pounds.”

Under the shield of William’s favor and the wholly undeserved reputation of being a good shot, I continue to sleep o’ nights, but I have no fancy for being investigated.

Last night a boat stopped at the shore, long after dark, and I was startled for a moment until I heard a chant that rose at the dock and continued up the trail to the house.  Uncle Dan Cassidy had brought over the mail and a Thanksgiving box from home, but he was taking no chances.

“Friends, friends, don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” he sang until he stepped on the porch.

But while war and its rumors excite us, all topics pale in interest before the fact that the herring have begun to run.  Whether battles are lost or won we still have to eat, a pig or a sheep does not last very long and the fish are a great part of the winter food.

“They save the meat,” says Harry Spriggins.

So when the first silver herring came up in the net there was great rejoicing.  Then the little skiffs and punts started out, dancing and curtseying on the waves.  The nets were stretched across the narrows between the islands, and, during the herring run, no other work was done.  The season is short; there is no time to waste.  The run began this year on the twelfth, the greatest catch was on the eighteenth, the fishing was over on the twenty-eighth.  The fish do not come up except at a temperature of about thirty-four.

These are the bright, frosty days—days when the blood runs quick and the air tastes like wine; when the water is deep-blue, the waves run high and the whitecaps race in to the shores.

The little boats bob up and down, the long nets come up spangled with the gleaming fish, and the tubs and boxes are piled high with the silver catch.  As the fishermen pass they stop at the island and throw me off a herring or two.  Every house on the mainland reeks; barrels and kegs stand in every dooryard, and everywhere the women and children are busy cleaning the fish.

CHAPTER VI

The time of great winds has come, the heavy November gales that roar down the lakes, lashing the water into white-capped waves, dashing the driftwood against the rocks and decking the beaches with long wreaths of yellow foam.  The swell is so strong and the waves so high that even the men do not care to venture out.  When I must get over to Blake’s farm I hug the shore of the island to the point, then dash across the channel between this land and his, and the wind turns my light skiff round and round before I can catch the lee again.

All night the house rocks and shivers and the trees creak, groan and crash down in the woods.  I am afraid to walk the trails because of falling branches, for if I were struck down I should lie in the path for days and no one would know that I had been hurt.

These winds give the strangest effect of distant music.  I am always thinking that I can almost hear the sound of trumpets, blowing far away.

Inside the house is warm and comfortable, with its creamy yellow walls of unpainted wood, its many windows, its pictures, its books; but I am lonely; I cannot settle to any occupation.  The constant roaring of the wind unnerves me, the gray, scudding clouds depress me.  A hound on the shore bays and howls day and night.  I have heard no human voice for more than a week.

The storm died away in a smothering fog that settled down on the very surface of the lake, blotting out everything.  I could not see one inch beyond the shore.  The mainland was hidden, the opposite island was invisible—everything was gone except the land on which I stood.  I could hear voices at the farms, the sound of oars, and people talking in the boats as they passed.  Men were hunting on the mainland, almost a mile away.  I could hear their shots and the cries of the hounds, but I might as well have been stricken blind, for all that I could distinguish.  All sorts of fears assailed me.  Suppose men should land on the island in the fog, how could I see to escape them?  Suppose the fog should last and last, how would I dare to go out in a boat for any provisions?  Suppose I should be ill, or hurt, how could I signal to the farm for help?

By evening the fog had thoroughly frightened me; it was time to pull myself together.  So I cooked a particularly good dinner, read a new book for awhile, then went to bed praying that the sun would be shining in the morning.

After being asleep for what seemed hours, I was aware of a loud shouting, followed by heavy steps on the porch and a voice calling as someone knocked and pounded on the door.  I stumbled out of bed, half asleep, and groped my way to the lamp, fortunately forgetting all about the pistol laid by my side for just such an emergency.  When the door was finally opened, the shapeless bulk of a woman confronted me—the very largest woman I have ever seen.  She loomed like a giant against a solid bank of fog that rolled in behind her.

“I don’t know where I am,” she announced.  “I’m all turned round.  I’ve been rowing hours and hours in the fog, and I’ve a boy, a pail of eggs, a mess of catfish and a little wee baby in the boat.”

“For mercy’s sake,” I ejaculated, “what are you doing out in a boat with a baby on a night like this?  Who are you anyway?”

“I’m from Spriggins’ farm,” she answered, “the place where you gits yer chickens at.  I’ve been over at Drapeau’s spending the evening and I started to row home two hours ago.  But the fog got me all turned round, and when I struck this shore I says: ‘This must be the island where the woman’s at.  Ef she’s to the house I’ll wake her and git me a light.’”

I gave her a lantern and she went off to the shore, while I threw fresh logs on the smoldering fire and tried to wake myself.

Presently a dismal procession returned: a boy, laden with shawls and wraps, the woman carrying a baby.  When that infant was unwrapped, it needed not its proud mother’s introduction to tell me whose child it was.  Harry Spriggins is a small, wiry man, with sharp, black eyes and a face like a weasel.  The baby was exactly like him.  They were a forlorn trio, and, oh, so dirty!  My heart sank as I surveyed them, realizing that they were on my hands for the night.  Then I felt properly ashamed of myself, for if the poor soul had not found the island she might have been on the lake in an open boat until daylight; and by this time a rain was falling, quite heavily enough to have swamped so unseaworthy a craft as her small, flat-bottomed punt.

For some time we sat gazing at one another, while I tried to determine what should be done with my guests.  Finally I sent the boy to the storehouse for extra mattresses, and prepared them beds on the floor.  Clean sheets were spread over everything.  Probably the woman had never slept on clean sheets before, but I reasoned that sheets could be washed more easily than blankets, and just then washing seemed to me very essential.

About one o’clock we all settled down for the night, but not to sleep—oh, no!  The woman was far too excited for that.  Thanks to the fire that I had made, in my stupidity, and to the air in the cabin, I could not sleep either, so I heard a great deal of the inside history of the neighborhood, before morning.

I learned that minks are a menace to the poultry industry here about.  In Spriggins’ own barnyard, a flock of thirty-six young turkeys were found all lying dead in a row, with their necks chewed off—a plain case of mink, and a dire blow to the finances of the family.

At three o’clock I had the life history of a Plymouth Rock rooster, of superlative intelligence, that always crowed at that precise hour.  At four I was roused from an uneasy doze by the query: “Do you know anything about Dr. So-and-So’s cure for ‘obsidy’?”

After puzzling over the word for some minutes I gathered that “obesity” was what was meant, for my guest went on, pathetically enough, to tell me how hard her work was and how she suffered in doing it, burdened with that mountain of flesh.

“There’s another cure,” she went on.  “It’s Mrs. So-and-So’s, but it calls for a Turkish bath, and where could I get that?  Beside, I could never do all that rolling and kicking.”

Peering through the gloom at what looked like the outline of an elephant on the floor, I did not see how she could, but I felt that if there were any known way of getting that woman into a Turkish bath I would cheerfully bear the expense.

At six I gave up the struggle and rose for the day, stumbling about from cabin to kitchen to cook breakfast in the semi-darkness, for the fog was still thick.  At nine, the day being a little lighter, I made the mistake of suggesting that the boy row over to Blake’s for some bread and the mail.  He departed, and stayed for hours.  Soon his mother began to fidget and finally set off for the shore to search for him, leaving that changeling of a baby in my care.

There it lay on my bed, staring at me with its black beads of eyes, and looking as old as the Pharaoh of the Exodus and as crafty.  The mother stayed and stayed away.  I had visions of being left with that child on my hands all winter.  I saw myself walking it up and down the cabin through the long nights.  I saw myself sharing with it my last spoonful of condensed milk, but, as I surveyed it, I knew what I would do first.  I would give it the best bath it had ever had in its short life and I would burn its filthy little clothes.

But while I was harboring these designs against that innocent child its mother came back, her hands full of green leaves.  She had not found the boy, but she had gathered what she called “Princess Fern.”

“This is awful good fer the blood,” she announced.  “Ef yer blood is bad, this will make it as pure as spring water; if it’s pure, this will keep it so.  It’s good fer you either way.”

The mention of blood led naturally to the recital of the various accidents she had seen, and I learned that there are several blood healers in the neighborhood—persons who can stop the flow by the recitation of a certain verse of Scripture.  A man can perform this miracle for a woman and a woman for a man, but a man cannot cure another man, nor a woman another woman.  This charm must never be revealed.  It can only be transmitted at death.  It is a sure cure for blood flow and quite authentic, according to Mrs. Spriggins, who has seen the blood stopped.

While we were discussing this mystery the boy came back, smilingly, from quite a different direction from the one in which he had been sent.  He had never found the farm, but had been all this time wandering in the fog.  It was all too like a nightmare.  I did not tempt fate by offering any more suggestions.  Instead, I bundled the party into their various wrappings, led them to their boat, and turned their faces firmly in the direction of home.  Then I sat on the porch, tracing their progress down the lake by the wailing of that wretched baby.  When the sounds had finally died away, I went in and scrubbed the cabin from end to end with strong, yellow soap.

And the sequel to all this?  She was not Spriggins’ wife at all, but “Spriggins’ woman,” and she was not lost.

When I mentioned her visit the neighbors shook their heads.

“You couldn’t lose old Jane on Many Islands,” they scoffed.  “She wanted to see you, that was all; and she knowed you wouldn’t let her land if she come by day.”

But two men were lost on the lake that night, and I believe that Jane was lost too.

With the rural love of scandal and the usual disregard of all laws of probability, the people accuse this woman of all sorts of outrageous crimes.  It is said that she murdered her daughter for the girl’s bit of life insurance, that she has strangled her own babies, that she bound her aged aunt face downward on a board, and pushed her out on the lake to drown.  And here was I, all ignorant of the character of my guest, gravely discussing with this alleged criminal the proper feeding of infants and the rival merits of toilet soaps.

I stopped at her house the other day to inquire my way.  She greeted me with much cordiality.

“You was certainly fine to me that night,” she said.  “I donno what we would a-done, ef you hadn’t took us in.  The baby would a-been drownded, I guess.”

Now I am glad that I was “fine” to her, for poor Jane is gone, and she died as she had lived—without help and without hope.

Her children’s father was away at a dance in Sark when she fell in their desolate house.  Seeing that she did not rise, one frightened child crept out of bed and covered her nakedness with an old quilt.  In the morning two little boys, crying and shivering, made their way along the shore to the place where the man was sleeping off his debauch.

“Come home, Pop,” they cried.  “Mom’s dead.”

But he would not heed them.

“It’s only one of them spells she gits,” he grunted.  “She’ll be all right.”

“No, it ain’t no spell, Pop,” they cried.  “She’s dead, I tell you.  She’s cold.”

Then the neighbors, who had never gone to that house when Jane was alive, went now and comforted the children.  They followed the poor body along the ice to its grave, and Mrs. Spellman, who has six little ones of her own, went over and took the baby home.

There are a great many of these irregular unions here, for Canada is no land of easy divorce.  If you are a poor man, and have any predilection for being legally married, you must stay with the wife with whom you started.  Divorce and remarriage are not for you.

In a little book of instructions for immigrants and settlers, published by one of the newspapers, the matter is made very plain:

“In Manitoba, Ontario, Alberta, and Saskatchewan there is no divorce court.  Application must be made to the Dominion Parliament, by means of a private bill, praying for relief by reason of adultery, or adultery and cruelty, if it is the wife who is seeking a divorce from her husband.  The charges made are investigated by a special committee of the Senate, and, if a favorable report is presented to the House, the bill usually passes.”  But the little book goes on to state, very simply, that “The expense of obtaining the bill is very great, exceeding in any event five hundred dollars.”

So for men like Harry Spriggins, whose wife deserted him, or for Black Jack’s woman, whose husband beat her, there is no way out.  They simply take another mate, and stand by the arrangement as faithfully as may be.