and two inches apart.  Then he set one skin on the ground, the drum-log on that and the other skin on the top, and bound them together with the long lace, running it from hole No. 1 on the top to No. 2 on the bottom, then to No. 3 on the top, and No. 4 on the bottom, and so on twice around, till every hole had a lace through it and the crossing laces made a diamond pattern all around.  At first this was done loosely, but tightened up when once around, and finally both the drum-heads were drawn tense.  To the surprise of all, Guy promptly took possession of the finished drum.  “Them’s my Calfskins,” which, of course, was true.

And Caleb said, with a twinkle in his eye, “The wood seems to go with the skins.”

A drumstick of wood, with a piece of sacking lashed on to soften it, was made, and Guy was disgusted to find how little sound the drum gave out.

“’Bout like pounding a fur cap with a lamb’s tail,” Sam thought.

“You hang that up in the shade to dry and you’ll find a change,” said the Trapper.

It was quite curious to note the effect of the drying as the hours went by.  The drum seemed to be wracking and straining itself in the agony of effort, and slight noises came from it at times.  When perfectly dry the semi-transparency of the rawhide came back, and the sound now was one to thrill the Red-man’s heart.

Caleb taught them a little Indian war chant, and they danced round to it as he drummed and sang, till their savage instincts seemed to revive.  But above all it worked on Yan.  As he pranced around in step his whole nature seemed to respond; he felt himself a part of that dance.  It was in himself; it thrilled him through and through and sent his blood exulting.  He would gladly have given up all the White-man’s “glorious gains” to live with the feeling called up by that Indian drum.

IX

The Cat And The Skunk

Sam was away on a “massacree” to get some bread.  Guy had been trapped by his natural enemy and was serving a term of hard labour in the garden; so Yan was alone in camp.  He went around the various mud albums, but discovered nothing new, except the fact that tracks were getting more numerous.  There were small Skunk and Mink tracks with the large ones now.  As he came by the brush fence at the end of the blazed trail he saw a dainty little Yellow Warbler feeding a great lubberly young Cow-bird that, evidently, it had brought up.  He had often heard that the Cow-bird habitually “plays Cuckoo” and leaves its egg in the nest of another bird, but this was the first time he had actually seen anything of it with his own eyes.  As he watched the awkward mud-coloured Cow-bird flutter its ungrown wings and beg help from the brilliant little Warbler, less than half its size, he wondered whether the fond mother really was fooled into thinking it her own young, or whether she did it simply out of compassion for the foundling.  He now turned down creek to the lower mud album, and was puzzled by a new track like this.