“Is Lily not Uncle Stephen’s daughter, then?” I asked.
The question was put to my uncle, Mark Tregellis, whom I found seated in front of our hut as I returned one evening from a hunting excursion it having been my duty that day to go out in search of game for our larder.
Uncle Mark had just come in from his day’s work, which had been that of felling the tall trees surrounding our habitation. He and I together had cleared an acre and a half since we came to our new location.
It was a wild region in which we had fixed ourselves. Dark forests were on every side of us. To the north and the east was the great chain of lakes which extend a third of the way across North America.
Numberless mountain-ranges rose in the distance, with intervening heights, some rugged and precipitous, others clothed to their summits with vegetation. Numerous rivers and streams ran through the country; one of which, on whose banks we purposed building our future abode, passed close to our hut.
Besides the features I have described, there were waterfalls and rapids, deep valleys and narrow gorges penetrating amid the hills; while to the south-west could be seen, from the higher ground near us, the wide prairie, extending away far beyond human ken.
Wild indeed it was, for not a single habitation of white men was to be found to the westward; and on the other side, beyond the newly-formed settlement in which Uncle Stephen resided, but few cottages or huts of the hardy pioneers of civilisation, and these scattered only here and there, existed for a hundred miles or more.
Uncle Mark, having lighted the fire and put the pot on to boil, had thrown himself down on the ground in front of the hut, with his back to the wall, and was busy contemplating the dark pines which towered up before him, and calculating how long it would take, with his sharp axe, to fell them.
I had brought home a haunch of venison as my share of the spoils of the chase (in which I had joined Uncle Stephen); and it was in consequence of a remark made by him while we were out hunting, that I had somewhat eagerly asked at Uncle Mark the question with which this story opens.
“No; Lily is not Stephen’s daughter,—nor even related to him,” he answered. “But we will cut some steaks off that haunch and broil them; and while we are discussing our supper, I will tell you all about the matter.”
