THE SECRET TRAILS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

He struggled frantically to drag himself up again upon the ledge.

THE

SECRET TRAILS

BY

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

Author of "The Feet of the Furtive," "Kings in Exile," etc.

ILLUSTRATED

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1914,
By the Associated Sunday Magazines.

Copyright, 1915,
By the National Sunday Magazine,
By the Red Book Corporation, and
By the Illustrated Sunday Magazine.

Copyright, 1916,
By the International Magazine Company.


Copyright, 1916,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1916.

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Black Boar of Lonesome Water 1

The Dog That Saved the Bridge 33

The Calling of the Lop-horned Bull 53

The Aigrette 77

The Cabin in the Flood 90

The Brothers of the Yoke 115

The Trailers 136

Cock-crow 154

The Ledge on Bald Face 179

The Morning of the Silver Frost 201

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

He struggled frantically to drag himself up again upon the ledge Frontispiece

FACING PAGE
The black boar had wandered so far into the wilderness that he was safe from pursuit 10

He only knew his lines were close ahead, and he must reach them 50

Black and huge against the pallid radiance towered a moose bull 56

The mother egret flapped blindly upon the top of the water 84

"This ain't no menagerie we've got here, Tom. It's a Noah's Ark, that's what it be!" 102

He launched himself into the battle 132

Leaping upwards and striking downwards with his destroying heels 160

THE SECRET TRAILS

The Black Boar of Lonesome Water

I

The population of Lonesome Water—some fourscore families in all—acknowledged one sole fly in the ointment of its self-satisfaction. Slowly, reluctantly, it had been brought to confess that the breed of its pigs was not the best on earth. They were small, wiry pigs, over-leisurely of growth, great feeders, yet hard to fatten; and in the end they brought but an inferior price in the far-off market town by the sea, to which their frozen, stiff-legged carcases were hauled on sleds over the winter's snow. It was decided by the village council that the breed must be severely improved.

They were a peculiar people, the dwellers about the remote and lovely shores of Lonesome Water. They were the descendants of a company of Welsh sectarians who, having invented a little creed of their own which was the sole repository of truth and righteousness, had emigrated to escape the contamination of their neighbours. They had come to Canada because Canada was not crowded; and they had chosen the lovely valley of Lonesome Water, not for its loveliness, but for its lonesomeness and its fertility, and for the fact that it was surrounded by tracts of barren land which might keep off the defilements of the world. Here they devoted themselves to farming and to the contemplation of their own superiority; and having a national appreciation of the value of a half-penny, they prospered.

As