I "drew a bead" upon the fox; but my hands were numbed from keeping still so long, so that, instead of hitting him in a vital spot, as I had intended, I only broke one of his forelegs, and away he went into the woods on three paws with amazing speed, while the ducks rose into the air at the report of the rifle, and flew up the course of the river in search of lonelier water. I followed the track of the fox for a mile or more, but had to give up the chase at last. The snow was flecked with spots of blood where he ran; and although the fox is not usually an object of sympathy around Canadian borders, yet I regretted much that I had not missed this one altogether, instead of maiming him, after all the amusement he had just afforded me by his curious pranks. This little incident of fox and ducks might offer a good subject for the pencil of an animal painter, and I hereby present it either to Mr. W. H. Beard or to Mr. Hays,--whichever of them may first happen to glance over these pages. In some of the districts where game is yet plentiful, and where the maskinonge--prince of the pike tribe--reigns supreme in the woodland lakes, and the speckled trout haunts the eddies of the clear streams, men who cannot be called settlers, in the proper sense of the word, are often to be met with. They have been attracted thither by the free, wild romance of the forester's life, the Bohemianism of which is a kind by itself, although based, like other phases of that philosophy, upon impatience of the formalities by which society is cramped. On one of these lakes, in a picturesque and not very remote part of Upper Canada, there was generally a little knot of such men to be found,--men who had forsworn the gay world, and come from beyond the sea to live among Indians and make havoc of the wild beasts and birds that still abounded in the region. Sometimes they would come to the cities, and return for a brief time to the usages of civilized life. After their arrival, their affectation was to despise such luxuries as chairs and beds. Of an evening they spread blankets on the floor, and sat there with their pipes and "fire-water," like gentle savages as they were. I have met with several who, for the first few nights, declined to avail themselves of either house or bed, resorting in preference to some open shed or garden, where they wrapped themselves in their inevitable blankets, and slept the sleep of wild men upon the hard ground, with their knives and rifles at hand, ready to resist any attack that might be made upon them by hostile tribes during the night. Once in the streets of a city I remarked a couple of Indian stragglers, such as are common in Canadian towns. They were dressed in blanket coats, handsomely ornamented, and bound at the waist with sashes of gay colors, in which long knives and tobacco-pouches of marten fur were stuck, and they smoked black pipes as they strolled leisurely along. One of them was a Chippewa of the