THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE By CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS ILLUSTRATED WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED LONDON AND MELBOURNE 1918 Copyright in the United States of America by Charles G. D. Roberts Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London POPULAR NATURE STORIES BY CHAS. G. D. ROBERTS PUBLISHED BY WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED THE HOUSE IN THE WATER KINGS IN EXILE THE SECRET TRAILS THE LEDGE ON BALD FACE CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS...

That one stark naked side of the mountain which gave it its name of Old Bald Face fronted full south. Scorched by sun and scourged by storm throughout the centuries, it was bleached to an ashen pallor that gleamed startlingly across the leagues of sombre, green-purple wilderness outspread below. From the base of the tremendous bald steep stretched off the interminable leagues of cedar swamp, only to be traversed in dry weather or in frost. All the region behind the mountain face was an impenetra

He sat upon the very topmost perch under the open-work dome of his spacious and lofty cage. This perch was one of three or four lopped limbs jutting from a dead tree-trunk erected in the centre of the cage—a perch far other than that great branch of thunder-blasted pine, out-thrust from the seaward-facing cliff, whereon he had been wont to sit in his own land across the ocean. He sat with his snowy, gleaming, flat-crowned head drawn back between the dark shoulders of his slightly uplifted wings.

He was a splendid bird, a thoroughbred "Black-breasted Red" game-cock, his gorgeous plumage hard as mail, silken with perfect condition, and glowing like a flame against the darkness of the spruce forest. His snaky head—the comb and wattles had been trimmed close, after the mode laid down for his aristocratic kind—was sharp and keen, like a living spearpoint. His eyes were fierce and piercing, ready ever to meet the gaze of bird, or beast, or man himself with the unwinking challenge of their ful

All night the big buck rabbit—he was really a hare, but the backwoodsmen called him a rabbit—had been squatting on his form under the dense branches of a young fir tree. The branches grew so low that their tips touched the snow all round him, giving him almost perfect shelter from the drift of the storm. The storm was one of icy rain, which everywhere froze instantly as it fell. All night it had been busy encasing the whole wilderness—every tree and bush and stump, and the snow in every open mea

Jim's mother was a big cross-bred bitch, half Newfoundland and half bloodhound, belonging to Black Saunders, one of the hands at the Brine's Rip Mills. As the mills were always busy, Saunders was always busy, and it was no place for a dog to be around, among the screeching saws, the thumping, wet logs, and the spurting sawdust. So the big bitch, with fiery energy thrilling her veins and sinews and the restraint of a master's hand seldom exercised upon her, practically ran wild. Hunting on her ow

A big-framed, jaunty man with black side-whiskers, a long black frock coat, and a square, flat case of shiny black leather strapped upon his back, stepped into the Corner Store at Brine's Rip Mills. He said: "Hullo, boys! Hot day!" in a big voice that was intentionally hearty, ran his bulging eyes appraisingly over every one present, then took off his wide-brimmed felt hat and mopped his glistening forehead with a big red and white handkerchief. Receiving a more or less hospitable chorus of grun

It was Woolly Billy who discovered the pile—notes and silver, with a few stray gold pieces—so snugly hidden under the fishhawk's nest. The fish-hawk's nest was in the crotch of the old, half-dead rock-maple on the shore of the desolate little lake which lay basking in the flat-lands about a mile back, behind Brine's Rip Mills. As the fish-hawk is one of the most estimable of all the wilderness folk, both brave and inoffensive, troubling no one except the fat and lazy fish that swarmed in the lak

The Deputy-Sheriff of Nipsiwaska County had spent half an hour at the telephone. In the backwoods the telephone wires go everywhere. In that half-hour every settlement, every river-crossing, every lumber-camp, and most of the wide-scattered pioneer cabins had been warned of the flight of the thief, Dan Black, nicknamed Black Dan, and how, in the effort to secure his escape, he had shot and wounded the Deputy-Sheriff's big black dog whose cleverness on the trail he had such cause to dread. As Tug

When pretty Mary Farrell came to Brine's Rip and set up a modest dressmaker's shop quite close to the Mills (she said she loved the sound of the saws), all the unattached males of the village, to say nothing of too many of the attached ones, fell instant victims to her charms. They were her slaves from the first lifting of her long lashes in their direction. Tug Blackstock, the Deputy-Sheriff, to be sure, did not capitulate quite so promptly as the rest. Mary had to flash her dark blue eyes upon

One day there arrived at Brine's Rip Mills, driving in a smart trap which looked peculiarly unsuited to the rough backwoods roads, an imposing gentleman who wore a dark green Homburg hat, heavy, tan, gauntletted gloves, immaculate linen, shining boots, and a well-fitting morning suit of dark pepper-and-salt, protected from the contaminations of travel by a long, fawn-coloured dust-coat. He also wore a monocle so securely screwed into his left eye that it looked as if it had been born there. His