THE FOREST SPELL When the adventurers returned the rifle and ax were laid aside at Wareville, for the moment, because the supreme test was coming.

The soil was now to respond to its trial, or to fail.

This was the vital question to Wareville.

The game, in the years to come, must disappear, the forest would be cut down, but the qualities of the earth would remain; if it produced well, it would form the basis of a nation, if not, it would be better to let all the work of the last year go and seek another home elsewhere.
But the settlers had little doubt.

All their lives had been spent close to the soil, and they were not to be deceived, when they came over the mountains in search of a land richer than any that they had tilled before.