'There is no royal road to felling, any more than to learning. And when may I hope to get rid of the stumps?'

'I don't think the pine stumps ever decay; but the hardwood, or those of deciduous trees, may be hitched up by oxen and a crowbar after six or seven years; or you might burn them down.'

'Hulloa! what's that?'

The exclamation was from Robert, following a much louder exclamation from Andy in advance. 'He has met with some wild animal,' concluded Mr. Holt. He was certainly cutting the strangest capers, and flourishing his hand as if the fingers were burned, howling the while between rage and terror.

'You disgustin' little varmint! you dirty vagabone, to stick all thim things in me hand, an' me only goin' to lay a hold on ye gentle-like, to see what sort of an outlandish baste ye was! Look, Masther Robert, what he did to me with a slap of his tail!'

Callaghan's fingers radiated handsomely with porcupine's quills, some inches long, stuck in pretty strongly and deeply; and the animal himself, quite ready for further offensive warfare, crouched in the fork of a small maple, just out of reach.

'Ah, then, come down here, you unnatural baste, an' may be I won't strip off your purty feathers,' exclaimed Andy with unction.

'Cut down the tree,' suggested Arthur. But the porcupine, being more au fait with the ways of the woods than these new-comers, got away among the branches into a thicket too dense for pursuit.

'They're as sharp as soords,' soliloquized the sufferer, as he picked out the quills from his hand and wrist in rather gingerly fashion, and stanched the blood that followed. 'Masther Robert, avourneen, is he a four-footed baste or a fowl? for he has some of the signs of both on him. Wisha, good luck to the poor ould counthry, where all our animals is dacent and respectable, since St. Patrick gev the huntin' to all the varmint.'

'A thrashing from a porcupine's tail would be no joke,' observed Arthur.

'I've known dogs killed by it,' said Mr. Holt. 'The quills work into all parts of their bodies, and the barbed points make extraction very difficult.'

'I believe the Indians use these in some sort of embroidery.' Robert held in his hand a bunch of the quills such as had wounded Andy's fingers. 'I've seen penholders of them, when I little thought I should handle the unsophisticated originals out here.'

Before this time he had learned how enervating were reminiscences of home; he resolutely put away the remembrance from him now, and walked on to chop the blaze on the next tree. Breast-high the mark was cut, and at one blaze another could always be discerned ahead.

'I've a regard for the beeches and elms,' quoth he, as he hacked at a hickory stem. 'They are home trees; but the shrubs have chiefly foreign faces, so I can chop them down without compunction.'

'All such sentimental distinctions will evaporate when you get into the spirit of your work,' said his friend Sam. 'Your underbrushing rule does not spare anything less than six inches in diameter; all must be cut close to the ground, and piled in heaps for the burning.'

'A tolerable job to clear such a thicket as this! What a network of roots must interlace every foot of soil!'

'Rather, I should say. But the first crop will amply repay your pains, even though your wheat and Indian corn struggle into existence through stumps and interlacing roots. Then there's the potash—thirty dollars a barrel for second quality: less than two and a half acres of hardwood timber will produce a barrel.'

'I don't quite understand.'

'Next summer, after your logging bee, you'll know what I mean. This creek is as if 'twas made on purpose for an ashery.'

'By the way, here's my site for a town plot;' as they came to a fine natural cascade over a granite barrier, after which plunge the stream hurried down the slope towards the beaver meadow. 'Water power for half a dozen mills going to waste there, Holt.'

'Let's give it a name!' sang out Arthur—'this our city of magnificent intentions.'

'I hope you won't call it Dublin on the Liffey,' said Mr. Holt. 'How I hate those imported names—sinking our nationality in a ludicrous parody on English topography—such as London on the Thames, Windsor, Whitby, Woodstock; while the language that furnished "Toronto," "Quebec," "Ottawa," lies still unexplored as a mine of musical nomenclature.'

'In default of an Indian name,' said Robert, 'let us call our future settlement after the existing fact—CEDAR CREEK.'

'And posterity can alter it, if it chooses,' rejoined Arthur. 'All right. Now I'll cut down this birch where the post-office is to stand hereafter;' and a few sturdy blows of his axe prostrated the young tree. 'When I'm writing to Linda, I shall date from Cedar Creek, which will give her an exalted idea of our location: at the same time she will be convinced it is situated on the seashore, if I forget to say that in Canada every stream is a "creek."'

'Our people have an absurd partiality for what they imagine "handsome names,"' said Mr. Holt. 'Not satisfied with giving their children the most far-fetched they can discover,—for instance, we have a maid Armenia, at Maple Grove, and I could not resist designating her brother as Ararat, by way of localizing their relationship,—but also the young settlements of the country have often the most bombastic names. In the backwoods, one time, I found a party of honest settlers in a tavern over an old romance, searching for some sufficiently high-sounding title to confer on their cluster of cabins.'

'I was amused to find that Zack Bunting's eldest son is called Nimrod, familiarized to "Nim,"' said Robert. 'I never saw a more remarkable likeness to a parent, in body and mind, than that youth exhibits; every tuft of ragged beard and every twinkle of the knowing little eyes are to match.'

Nearing the shanty they heard a sound as of one making merry, and espied in the window the glow of a glorious fire. Within, Peter Logan was making himself at home, cooking his dinner, while he trilled a Yankee ditty at the top of his powerful voice.

No manner of apology for having opened their cellar, and made free with their barrel of pork, did he seem to think necessary; but when his meal was finished, he inquired abruptly why they hadn't built their chimney of 'cats'? 'For I reckon this stick chimney will blaze up some night,' added he.

Robert hearkened at that startling intimation.

'Mine is of cats,' said Mr. Logan. 'Cats is clay,' he continued sententiously, 'kinder like straw an' clay mixed up. I guess I'll stay an' help you to fix one to-morrow, if you've a mind to.'

With rugged but real kindness, he took a day from his hunting excursion for the purpose. The framework of the new chimney was of four upright poles, set in one corner of the shanty, and laced across by rungs of wood, round which the clay was well kneaded, and plastered inside. An opening three feet high was left for the fireplace in front. Peter promised that by and by the clay would burn hard and red, like tilework.

'I wonder you have not built yourself a handsome house, before now,' said Mr. Wynn, 'instead of that handsome barn. Why you live in a shanty, while your corn is in a frame building, puzzles me.'

'Ay,' assented the settler, 'but the frame barn is paving the way for the frame house, I calculate: Benny'll have both; and for the present I'd sooner have my crops comfortable than myself;' a persuasion which Robert afterwards found to be rooted in common sense, for the Canadian climate permits not of stacks or ricks wintering in the open air.

After his usual unmannerly fashion, Mr. Logan bade no farewell, but shouldered his gun at some hour prior to daybreak, and knapsack on back, left the sleeping camp by the light of a young moon.



CHAPTER XVI.

LOST IN THE WOODS.

One day it happened that about noon, while Arthur was 'brushing' at a short distance from the shanty, he noticed a pack of grouse among the underwood within shot. Dropping his axe, he ran home for the gun, which stood loaded in one corner.

It was not altogether the sportsman's organ of destructiveness (for he had never forgotten little Jay's lesson on that head), but probably a growing dislike to the constant diet of pork, that urged him to an unrelenting pursuit. Cautiously he crept through the thickets, having wafted an unavailing sigh for the pointer he had left at Dunore, his companion over many a fallow and stubble field, who would greatly have simplified this business. Unconsciously he crossed the blazed side-line of the lot into the dense cover beyond, tantalized by glimpses of game, which never came near enough for good aim. 'I must regularly stalk them,' thought Arthur.

Noiselessly creeping on, he was suddenly brought to by an unexpected sight. The head and horns of a noble buck were for a moment visible through the thicket. Arthur's heart throbbed in his ears as he stood perfectly motionless. Grouse were utterly forgotten in the vision of venison. With every sense concentrated in his eyes, he watched the brush which screened the browsing deer. By a slight crackling of twigs presently, he was made aware that the animal was moving forward; he crept in the same direction. The leaves had been damped by a shower two hours before, and the cloudy day permitted them to retain moisture, or their crispness might have betrayed his tread.

Ha! a dried stick on which he inadvertently set his foot snapped across. The splendid shy eyes of the deer looked round in alarm as he bounded away. A shot rang through the forest after him, waking such a clamour of jays and crows and woodpeckers, that Arthur was quite provoked with them, they seemed exulting over his failure. Pushing aside the dried timber which had caused this mischance, he pressed on the track of the deer impetuously. He could not believe that his shot had missed altogether, though the white tail had been erected so defiantly; which 'showing of the white feather,' as the Canadian sportsman calls it, is a sign that the animal is unwounded.

But four feet had much the advantage of two in the chase. One other glimpse of the flying deer, as he came out on the brow of a ridge, was all that Arthur was favoured with. Some partridge got up, and this time he was more successful; he picked up a bird, and turned homewards.

Homewards! After walking a hundred yards or so he paused. Had he indeed gone back on his own track? for he had never seen this clump of pines before. He could not have passed it previously without notice of its sombre shade and massive boles. He would return a little distance, and look for the path his passage must have made in brushing through the thickets.

Brought to a stand again. This time by a small creek gurgling deeply beneath matted shrubs. He had gone wrong—must have diverged from his old course. More carefully than before, he retraced his way to the pine-clump, guided by the unmistakeable black plumage of the tree-tops. There he stood to think what he should do.

The sky was quite obscured: it had been so all the morning. No guidance was to be hoped for from the position of the sun. He had heard something of the moss on the trees growing chiefly at the north side; but on examination these pines seemed equally mossed everywhere. What nonsense! surely he must be close to his own path. He would walk in every direction till he crossed the track.

Boldly striking out again, and looking closely for footmarks on the soft ground, he went along some distance; here and there turned out of his straight course by a thicket too dense for penetration, till before him rose pine-tops again. Could it be? The same pines he had left!

He covered his eyes in bewilderment. Having stood on the spot for several minutes previously, he could not be mistaken. Yet he thought he could have been sure that he was proceeding in a direction diametrically opposite for the last quarter of an hour, while he must have been going round in a circle. Now, indeed, he felt that he was lost in the woods.

Poor Arthur's mind was a sort of blank for some minutes. All the trees seemed alike—his memory seemed obliterated. What horrid bewilderment had possession of his faculties? Shutting him in, as by the walls of a living tomb, the great frowning forest stood on all sides. A mariner on a plank in mid-ocean could not have felt more hopeless and helpless.

Rousing himself with a shake from the numb, chill sensation which had begun to paralyze exertion, he thought that, if he could reach the little creek before mentioned, he might pursue his course, as it probably fell into their own lake at the foot of the Cedars. Keeping the pine-tops in a right line behind him, he succeeded in striking the creek, and discovering which way it flowed. After pushing his way some hours along a path of innumerable difficulties, he found himself, in the waning light, at the edge of a cypress swamp.

Almost man though he was, he could have sat down and cried. Blackest night seemed to nestle under those matted boughs, and the sullen gleams of stagnant water—the plash of a frog jumping in—the wading birds that stalked about—told him what to expect if he went farther. At the same instant a gleam of copper sunset struck across the heavens on the tops of the evergreens, and the west was not in the direction that the wanderer had imagined; he now easily calculated that he had all this time been walking from home instead of towards it.

Strange to say, a ray of hope was brought upon that sunbeam, even coupled with the conviction that he had been hitherto so wofully astray. To-morrow might be bright (and to all the wanderers in this world the anchor is to-morrow); he would be able to guide his course by the sun, and would come all right. He resolved to spend the night in a tree near his fire for fear of wild beasts, and selected a fine branching cedar for his dormitory. Laying his gun securely in one of the forks, and coiling himself up as snugly as possible, where four boughs radiated from the trunk, about twenty feet from the ground, he settled himself to sleep as in an arm-chair, with the great hushing silence of the forest around him. Unusual as his circumstances were, he was soon wrapt in a dreamless slumber.

Dull and slow dawned the November morning among the trees; broad daylight on their tops, when but a twilight reached the earth, sixty or eighty feet below. Arthur found himself rather stiff and chill after his unwonted night's lodging; he tried to gather up the brands of the evening's fire, which had sunk hours before into grey ashes, that he might at least warm himself before proceeding farther. Simultaneously with its kindling appeared the sun—oh, welcome sight! and shot a golden arrow aslant a line of trees. Then was revealed to Arthur the mossy secret of wood-craft, that the north side bears a covering withheld from the south; for he perceived that, viewed in the aggregate, the partial greenery on the various barks was very distinct. Examining individual trunks would not show this; but looking at a mass, the fact was evident.

Now he knew the points of the compass; but of what practical avail was his knowledge? Whether he had wandered from the shanty to the north, south, east, or west, was only conjecture. How could that creek have led him astray? He must have crossed the rising ground separating two watersheds—that sloping towards his own lake and towards some other. There flowed the little stream noiselessly, sucked into the swampy cypress grove: of course it got out somewhere at the other side; but as to following it any farther into the dismal tangled recesses, with only a chance of emergence in a right direction, he felt disinclined to try.

No breakfast for him but a drink of water; though with carnivorous eyes he saw the pretty speckled trout glide through the brown pool where he dipped his hand; and he crossed the creek over a fallen tree, ascending to the eastward. He could not be insensible to the beauty of nature this morning—to the majesty of the mighty forest, standing in still solemnity over the face of the earth. Magnificent repose! The world seemed not yet wakened; the air was motionless as crystal; the infinitely coloured foliage clung to maples and aspens—tattered relics of the royal raiment of summer. The olden awe overshadowed Arthur's heart; his Creator's presence permeated these sublime works of Deity. Alone in the untrodden woods, his soul recognised its God; and a certain degree of freedom from anxiety was the result. Personal effort was not his sole dependence, since he had felt that God was present, and powerful.

Still he kept on to the south-east, hoping at last to strike some of the inhabited townships; and the unvarying solidity of forest was well-nigh disheartening him, when he saw, after several miles' walking, the distinctly defined imprint of a man's foot on some clayey soil near a clump of chestnut trees. Yes, there could be no mistake: some person had passed not long since; and though the tracks led away considerably from the south-easterly direction he had hitherto kept, he turned, without hesitation to follow them, and proceeded as rapidly as possible, in hope of overtaking the solitary pedestrian, whoever he might be. He shouted aloud, he sang some staves of various familiar old songs; but no response from other human voice came, anxiously as he listened for such echo. But the footmarks were before his eyes as tangible evidence; he had got very sharp by this time at detecting the pressure of a heel on the dead leaves, or the displacement of a plant by quick steps. The tracks must lead to something. Certainly; they led to a creek.

Impossible! It cannot be that he has followed his own footprints of yesterday! Planting his boot firmly on the bank beside the other mark, he compared the twain. A glance was enough; the impressions were identical.

The bewildered feeling of one in a labyrinth recurred. He saw nothing better for it than to return to the point whence he had diverged to follow the tracks. He now remembered having made this detour the previous day to avoid cutting his way through a dense underwood on the bank of the stream.

Nigh an hour had been lost by this delusive retracing of footmarks. He thought that if he climbed the highest tree he could find, he would be able to get a bird's-eye view of the country round. Oh that he might behold some islet of clearing amid the ocean of woods!

To reach the branches of any of the largest trees was the difficulty; for the smooth shaft of a massive marble pillar would be as easily climbed as the trunk of some arboreal giants here, rising fifty feet clear of boughs. However, by swinging from the smaller trees he accomplished his object, and saw beneath him on all sides the vast continuity of forest.

Desert could not be lonelier nor more monotonous. No glimmer even of distant lake on the horizon; no brown spots of clearing; no variety, save the autumn coat of many colours, contrasted with sombre patches of pine. Stay—was not that a faint haze of smoke yonder? a light bluish mist floating over a particular spot, hardly moving in the still air. Arthur carefully noted the direction, and came down from his observatory on the run. He was confident there must be a trapper's fire, or a camp, or some other traces of humanity where that thin haze hung. He could not be baulked this time. Hope, which is verily a beauteous hydra in the young breast, revived again in strength. If he only had somewhat to eat, he wouldn't mind the long tramp before him. Beech-mast rather increased than appeased his hunger; and nothing came in view that could be shot.

He had not walked far, when a sharp, wild cry, as of some small animal in pain, struck his ear. Pushing away the brush at the left, he saw the cause—a little dark furry creature hanging to a sapling, as it seemed; and at his appearance the struggles to escape were redoubled, and the weakly cries of fear became more piteous. Arthur perceived that to the top of the sapling was fastened a steel snaptrap, clasping a forepaw in its cruel teeth, and that each convulsive effort to get free only set the animal dangling in the air, as a trout is played from a rod. Hopelessly snared, indeed, was the poor marten; he had not even the resource of parting with his paw, which, had he had any 'purchase' to strive against, would probably have been his choice. By what blandishments of bait he had ever been seduced into his present melancholy position was out of Arthur's power to imagine.

But now at least it was beyond all doubt that men were near. Raising his eyes from inspection of the marten-trap, he saw on a tree close by a freshly-cut blaze. Some rods farther on he could see another. Now a question arose, which way should he follow the line?—one end was probably in pathless forest. He concluded to take that direction which suited the smoke he had seen.

He wondered what blazed lino this was—whether marking the side lots of a concession, or a hunter's private road through the woods. Presently, at a little distance, the sight of a man's figure stooping almost made his heart leap into his mouth. How lonely he had been, how almost desperate at times, he had not fully known till this his deliverance. Oh, that blessed human form! be he the rudest trapper or Indian, Arthur could have embraced him. Much more when, the face being lifted from examining the trap, and fixing its eyes with a very astonished stare on the approaching figure, Arthur recognised the shrewd features of Peter Logan.



CHAPTER XVII.

BACK TO CEDAR CREEK.

'I declar, if you hain't 'most skeered me!' was Peter's exclamation. 'For sartin I never seed a ghost, but it looked like enough this time. Now, do tell what brought you so far from hum? Thirteen mile, if it's a rod. You ain't lookin' partic'ler spry, anyhow. Now, Arthur, doen't, poor lad, doen't.'

For he could not speak during a minute or two; his arm pressed heavily on the backwoodsman's sturdy shoulder, in the effort to steady the strong trembling that shook him from head to foot like a spasm of ague.

'Lost in the bush, you war? Well, that ain't agreeable nohow exactly;' and Peter betook himself to a fumbling in his capacious pocket for a tin flask, containing some reviving fluid. 'Here, take a pull—this'll fix you all right. Warn't it wonderful that I went my road of traps when I did, instead of early this mornin'. There's a providence in that, for sartin.'

Deep in Arthur's heart he acknowledged the same truth gratefully.

'You've got a plaguy touch of ague, likely,' added Peter considerately, willing to shift the responsibility of that trembling from the mind to the body. 'Campin' out is chill enough these nights. I han't much furder to go to the end of my blaze, and then I'll be back with you. So will you wait or come along?'

Arthur had too lately found human company to be willing to relinquish it, even with certainty of its return; he dreaded nothing so much as the same solitude whence he had just emerged; therefore he followed Peter, who over his shoulder carried a bag containing various bodies of minks, fishers, and other furry animals, snared in his traps, and subsequently knocked on the head by his tough service-rod.

That night Arthur found comfortable shelter in Peter's hut, and was initiated into many mysteries of a trapper's life by him and his half-Indian assistant. Next morning they guided him as far as a surveyor's post, on which was legibly written the names of four townships, which was the signal for the separation of the party. Arthur turned his face towards civilisation, along a blazed boundary line. The others plunged deeper into the woods, walking in the unsociable Indian file.

The blazed line went on fairly enough for some miles, over hillocks of hardwood, and across marshes of dank evergreens, where logs had been laid lengthwise for dry footing. At last Arthur thought he must be drawing near to a clearing, for light appeared through the dense veil of trees before him, as if some extensive break to the vast continuity of forest occurred beyond. Soon he stood on its verge. Ay, surely a clearing; but no human hands had been at work.

Hundreds of huge trees lay strewn about, as if they had been wrenched off their stumps by some irresistible power seizing the branched heads and hurling them to the earth. Torn up by the massy roots, or twisted round as you would try to break an obstinately tough withe, for many score of acres the wildest confusion of prostrate maples and elms and pines, heaped upon one another, locked in death-embraces, quite obliterated any track, and blocked across the country. Arthur had come upon what French Canadians call a 'renverse' effected by some partial whirlwind during the preceding summer.

Such tornadoes often crash a road of destruction through the bush for miles; a path narrow in comparison with its length, and reminding the traveller of the explosive fury of some vast projectile. The track of one has been observable for more than forty miles right through the heart of uninhabited forest.

To cross the stupendous barrier seemed impossible to Arthur. There was a tangled chaos of interlaced and withering boughs and trunks; such a chevaux de frise might stop a regiment until some slow sap cut a path through, and he was without axe, or even a large knife. He must work his way round; and yet he was most unwilling to part company with the blaze.

While hesitating, and rather ruefully contemplating the obstacle, a sound at a considerable distance struck his ear. It was—oh, joy!—the blows of an axe. Instantly he went in the direction. When near enough to be heard, he shouted. An answering hail came from the other side of the windfall; but presently he saw that an attempt had been made to log up the fallen timber in heaps, and, making his way through the blackened stumps of extinct fires, he reached the spot where two rough-looking men were at work with handspikes and axes.

They had built a little hut, whence a faint smoke curled, the back wall of piled logs still wearing dead branches and foliage at the ends. A reddish cur, as lawless-looking as his masters, rushed from the doorway to snap at Arthur's heels. The suspicious glances of the foresters bore hardly more welcome, till they heard that the stranger belonged to the settlers on Cedar Pond, and had simply lost his way. They informed him in return, with exceeding frankness, that they were squatters, taking possession of this strip of bush without anybody's leave, and determined to hold their own against all comers. An apparently well-used rifle lying against a log close by gave this speech considerable emphasis.

Arthur wanted nothing more from them than to be put on the surveyor's line again; and, when directed to the blaze, speedily left the sound of their axes far behind. In half an hour he reached other traces of mankind—a regularly chopped road, where the trees had been felled for the proper width, and only here and there an obstinate trunk had come down wrongly, and lay right across, to be climbed over or crept under according to the wayfarer's taste. In marshy spots he was treated to strips of corduroy; for the settled parts of the country were near.

'Holloa! Uncle Zack, is that you?'

The person addressed stood in a snake-fenced field, superintending a couple of labourers. He turned round at the hail, and stared as if he did not believe his senses.

'Wal, I guess I warn't never skeered in my life before. They're all out lookin' for you—Nim, an' the whole "Corner" bodily. Your brother's distracted ravin' mad this two days huntin' the bush; but I told him you'd be sartin sure to turn up somehow. Now, whar are you runnin' so fast? There ain't nobody to hum, an' we 'greed to fire the rifles as a signal whoever fust got tidins of you. Three shots arter another,' as young Wynn fired in the air. 'Come, quick as wink, they'll be listenin'.'

'Robert will know the report,' observed Arthur, with a smile, to think of his pleasure in the recognition, 'if he's near enough.'

'We'll make tracks for the "Corner," I guess,' said Uncle Zack with alacrity; 'that war the meetin'-place, an' you must be powerful hungry. I'd ha' been to sarch for you to-day, only them Irish fellers at the clearin' wanted lookin' arter precious bad.' ('Lucky I got in them kegs o' whisky; he'll have to stand treat for the neighbours,' thought 'cute Uncle Zack in a sort of mental parenthesis.) 'But now do tell! you must ha' gone a terrible big round, I guess. They took the Indjin out to foller your trail; them savages has noses an' eyes like hounds. We'll fire my rifle from the store; it's bigger than yourn.'

His abstraction of mind during Arthur's narrative was owing to a judicious maturing of certain plans for exacting the greatest amount of profit from the occurrence; but he contrived to interlard his listening with such appropriate interjections as, 'Now do tell! How you talk! Wal, I kinder like to know!' mentally watering his whisky the while.

Mrs. Zack, also scenting the prey afar off, was polite as that lady could be to good customers only. Arthur's impatience for the arrival of the parties from the bush hardly permitted him to do more than taste the meal she provided. Within doors he could not stay, though weary enough to want rest. The few log-cabins of the 'Corner' looked more drowsily quiet than usual; the sawmill was silent. Zack was turning over some soiled and scribbled ledgers on his counter. Suddenly a shot in the woods quite near: a detachment of the searchers had arrived.

That the rejoicing would take its usual form, an emptying of his spirit-kegs, Zack Bunting had never doubted. But the second word to the bargain, Mr. Wynn's promise to stand treat, had not been given, though it was a mere matter of form, Zack thought. Robert spoke to the neighbours, and thanked them collectively for their exertions in a most cordial manner on behalf of himself and his brother, and was turning to go home, when the Yankee storekeeper touched his elbow.

''Tain't the usual doins to let 'em away dry,' suggested he, with a meaning smile. ''Spose you stand treat now; 'twill fix the business handsome.'

That keen snaky eye of his could easily read the momentary struggle in Robert's mind between the desire not to appear singular and unfriendly, and the dislike to encouraging that whisky drinking which is the bane of working men everywhere, but most especially in the colonies. Sam Holt watched for his decision. Perhaps the knowledge of what that calm strong nature by his side would do helped to confirm Robert's wavering into bold action.

'Certainly not,' he said loudly, that all might hear. 'I'll not give any whisky on any account. It ruins nine-tenths of the people. I'm quite willing to reward those who have kindly given time and trouble to help me, but it shall not be in that way.'

Zack's smoke-dried complexion became whitewashed with disappointment.

A day or two afterwards, Zack's son, Nimrod, made his appearance at the Wynns' shanty.

'I say, but you're a prime chap arter the rise you took out of the ole coon,' was his first remark. 'Uncle Zack was as sartin as I stand of five gallons gone, anyhow; and 'twar a rael balk to put him an' them off with an apology. I guess you won't mind their sayin' it's the truth of a shabby dodge, though.'

'Not a bit,' replied Robert; 'I expected something of the kind. I didn't imagine I'd please anybody but my own conscience.'

'"Conscience!"' reiterated Nim, with a sneer. 'That stock hain't a long life in the bush, I guess. A storekeeper hain't no business on it, nohow—'twould starve him out; so Uncle Zack don't keep it.' And his unpleasant little eyes twinkled again at the idea of such unwonted connection as his father and a conscience.

'That Indjin war hoppin' mad, I can tell you; for they be the greatest brutes at gettin' drunk in the univarsal world. They'll do 'most anythin' for whisky.'

'The greater the cruelty of giving it to them,' said Robert.

'What are you doin'?' asked Nimrod, after a moment's survey of the other's work.

'Shingling,' was the reply. 'Learning to make shingles.'

'An' you call them shingles?' kicking aside, with a gesture of contempt, the uneven slices of pinewood which had fallen from Robert's tool. 'You hain't dressed the sapwood off them blocks, and the grain eats into one another besides. True for Uncle Zack that gentry from the old country warn't never born to be handlin' axes an' frows. It don't come kinder nateral. They shouldn't be no thicker than four to an inch to be rael handsome shingles,' added he, 'such as sell for seven-an'-sixpence a thousand.'

Nimrod's pertinacious supervision could not be got rid of until dinner; not even though Mr. Wynn asked him his errand in no conciliatory tone.

'Thought I'd kinder like to see how ye were gettin' on,' was the answer. 'New settlers is so precious awk'ard. Thought I'd loaf about awhile, an' see. It's sorter amusin'.'

He was so ignorantly unconscious of doing anything offensive by such gratification of his curiosity, that Robert hardly knew whether to laugh or be angry. Nimrod's thick-skinned sensibilities would have cared little for either. He lounged about, whittling sticks, chewing tobacco, and asking questions, until Andy's stentorian call resounded through the woods near.

'I guessed I'd dine with you to-day,' said Nim, marching on before his host. With equal coolness, as soon as the dish of trout appeared, he transfixed the largest with his case-knife.

'Not so fast, my friend,' interrupted Mr. Holt, bringing back the captive. 'We divide fair here, though it's not Yankee law, I'm aware.'

'Ah, you warn't born yesterday,' rejoined Nim, showing his yellow teeth, which seemed individually made and set after the pattern of his father's. 'You're a smart man, I guess—raised in Amerikay, an' no mistake.'

'But come, Andy,' said Arthur, 'tell us where you caught these fine trout? You've altogether made a brilliant effort to-day in the purveying line: the cakes are particularly good.'

'They're what them French fellers call "galettes,"' observed Nimrod, biting one. 'Flour an' water, baked in the ashes. Turnpike bread is better—what the ole gall makes to hum.'

Be it remarked that this periphrasis indicated his mother; and that the bread he alluded to is made with a species of leaven.

'So ye ate turnpikes too,' remarked Andy, obliquely glancing at the speaker. 'The English language isn't much help to a man in this counthry, where everythin' manes somethin' else. Well, Misther Arthur, about the trout; you remimber I went down to the "Corner" this mornin'. Now it's been on my mind some days back, that ye'd want a few shirts washed.'

'But what has that to do with the trout'—interrupted Arthur, laughing.

'Whisht awhile, an' you'll hear. I didn't know how to set about it, no more than the child of a month old; for there's an art in it, of coorse, like in everythin' else; an' one time I thried to whiten a shirt of my own—beggin' yer honours' pardon for mintionin' the article—it kem out of the pot blacker than it wint in. So sez I to meself, "I'll look out for the clanest house, an' I'll ax the good woman to tache me how to wash a thing;" an' I walks along from the store to a nate little cabin back from the river, that had flowers growin' in the front; an' sure enough, the floor was as clane as a dhrawin' room, an' a dacent tidy little woman kneadin' a cake on the table. "Ma'am," sez I, "I'm obliged to turn washerwoman, an' I don't know how;" but she only curtseyed, and said somethin' in a furrin tongue.'

'A French Canadian, I suppose,' said Mr. Wynn.

'Jackey Dubois lives in the log-hut with the flowers,' observed Nim, who was whittling again by way of desert.

'May be so; but at all events she was as like as two peas to the girl whose weddin' I was at since I came ashore. "Ma'am," sez I, "I want to larn to be a washerwoman:" and wid that I took off my neckerchief an' rubbed it, to show what I meant, by the rule of thumb. "Ah, to vash," sez she, smilin' like a leathercoat potato. So, afther that, she took my handkercher and washed it fornent me out; an' I'd watched before how she med the cakes, an' cleared a little space by the fire to bake 'em, an' covered them up wid hot ashes.'

'Not a word about the trout,' said Arthur.

'How can I tell everything intirely all at wanst?' replied the Irishman, with an injured tone. 'Sure I was comin' to that. I observed her lookin' partikler admirin' at the handkercher, which was a handsome yellow spot, so I up an' axed her to take a present of it, an' I settled it like an apron in front, to show how iligant 'twould look; an' she was mighty plased, an' curtseyed ever so often, an' Jackey himself gev me the trout out of a big basket he brought in. The river's fairly alive wid 'em, I'm tould: an' they risin' to a brown-bodied fly, Misther Arthur.'

'We'll have a look at them some spare day, Andy.'

'But what tuk my fancy intirely, was the iligant plan of bilin' 'em she had. There war round stones warmin' in the fire, and she dropped 'em into a pot of water till it was scalding hot; then in wid the fish, addin' more stones to keep it singin'. It's an Indjin fashion, Jackey told me; for they haven't nothin' to cook in but wooden pails; but I thried it wid them trout yer atin', an' it answered beautiful.'

Andy bid fair to be no mean chef-de-cuisine, if his experiments always resulted so favourably as in the present instance.

'An' the whole of it is, Misther Robert, that this Canada is a counthry where the very best of atin' and dhrinkin' is to be had for the throuble of pickin' it up. Don't I see the poorest cabins wid plenty of bacon hangin' to the rafthers, an' the trees is full of birds that nobody can summons you for catchin', and the sthrames is walkin' wid fish; I'm tould there's sugar to be had by bilin' the juice of a bush; an' if you scratch the ground, it'll give you bushels of praties an' whate for the axin'. I wish I had all the neighbours out here, that's a fact; for it's a grand poor man's counthry, an' there's too many of us at home, Misther Robert; an' (as if this were the climax of wonders) I never see a beggar since I left the Cove o' Cork!'

'All true, Andy, quite true,' said his master, with a little sigh. 'Hard work will get a man anything here.'

'I must be goin',' said Nimrod, raising his lank figure on its big feet. 'But I guess that be for you;' and he tossed to Robert a soiled piece of newspaper, wrapped round some square slight packet.

'Letters from home! Why, you unconscionable'—burst forth Arthur; 'loafing about here for these three hours, and never to produce them!' But Nim had made off among the trees, grinning in every long tooth.

Ah! those letters from home! How sweet, yet how saddening! Mr. Holt went off to chop alone. But first he found time to intercept Nimrod on the road, and rather lower his triumphant flush at successfully 'riling the Britishers,' by the information that he (Mr. Holt) would write to the post-office authorities, to ask whether their agent at the 'Corner' was justified in detaining letters for some hours after they might have been delivered.



CHAPTER XVIII.

GIANT TWO-SHOES.

The calendar of the settler is apt to get rather confused, owing to the uniformity of his life and the absence of the landmarks of civilisation. Where 'the sound of the church-going bell' has never been heard, and there is nothing to distinguish one day from another, but the monotonous tide of time lapses on without a break, it will easily be imagined that the observance of a Sabbath is much neglected, either through forgetfulness or press of labour. The ministrations of religion by no means keep pace with the necessities of society in the Canadian wilds. Here is a wide field for the spiritual toil of earnest men, among a people speaking the English language and owning English allegiance; and unless the roots of this great growing nation be grounded in piety, we cannot hope for its orderly and healthful expansion in that 'righteousness which exalteth a people.'

Once a year or so, an itinerant Methodist preacher visited the 'Corner,' and held his meeting in Zack Bunting's large room. But regular means of grace the neighbourhood had none. A result was, that few of the settlers about Cedar Creek acknowledged the Sabbath rest in practice; and those who were busiest and most isolated sometimes lost the count of their week-days altogether. Robert Wynn thought it right to mark off Sunday very distinctly for himself and his household by a total cessation of labour, and the establishment of regular worship. Andy made no sort of objection, now that he was out of the priest's reach.

Other days were laborious enough. In the underbrushing was included the cutting up all fallen timber, and piling it in heaps for the spring burnings. Gradually the dense thickets of hemlock, hickory, and balsam were being laid in windrows, and the long darkened soil saw daylight. The fine old trees, hitherto swathed deeply in masses of summer foliage, stood with bared bases before the axe, awaiting their stroke likewise.

Then the latest days in November brought the snow. Steadily and silently the grey heavens covered the shivering earth with its smooth woolly coating of purest flakes. While wet Atlantic breezes moaned sorrowfully round Dunore, as if wailing over shattered fortunes, the little log-shanty in the Canadian bush was deep in snow. Not so large as the butler's pantry in that old house at home, nor so well furnished as the meanest servant's apartment had been during the prosperous times, with hardly one of the accessories considered indispensable to comfort in the most ordinary British sitting-room, yet the rough shanty had a pleasantness of its own, a brightness of indoor weather, such as is often wanting where the fittings of domestic life are superb. Hope was in the Pandora's box to qualify all evils.

By the firelight the settlers were this evening carrying on various occupations. Mr. Holt's seemed the most curious, and was the centre of attraction, though Robert was cutting shingles, and Arthur manufacturing a walnut-wood stool in primitive tripod style.

'I tell you what,' said he, leaning on the end of his plane, whence a shaving had just slowly curled away, 'I never shall be able to assist at or countenance a logging-bee, for I consider it the grossest waste of valuable merchandise. The idea of voluntarily turning into smoke and ashes the most exquisitely grained bird's-eye maple, black walnut, heart-of-oak, cherry, and birch—it's a shame for you, Holt, not to raise your voice against such wilful waste, which will be sure to make woful want some day. Why, the cabinetmakers at home would give you almost any money for a cargo of such walnut as this under my hand.'

'I regret it as much as you do; but till the country has more railroads it is unavoidable, and only vexatious to think of. We certainly do burn away hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of the most expensive wood, while people in England pay enormous prices for furniture which our refuse timber could supply.'

'And don't you export any ornamental wood?' asked Robert. 'I saw plenty of deals swimming down the St. Lawrence.'

'Yes, pine timber meets with the readiest market, and is easiest procurable. But even in that there is the most unjustifiable wastefulness practised. I was among the lumberers once, and saw the way they square the white pine. You know that every tree is of course tapering in the trunk, narrower at the top than at the base; now, to square the log, the best timber of the lower part must be hewn away, to make it of equal dimensions with the upper part. I am not above the mark when I say that millions of excellent boards are left to rot in the forest by this piece of mismanagement, and the white-pine woods are disappearing rapidly.'

But Arthur's sympathies could not be roused for such ordinary stuff as deal, to the degree of resentment he felt for the wholesale destruction of cabinetmakers' woods.

'If I may make so bould, sir,' said Andy, edging forward, 'might I ax what yer honour is makin'? Only there aren't any giants in the counthry, I'd think it was a pair of shoes, may be.'

'You've guessed rightly,' replied Mr. Holt, holding up his two colossal frames, so that they rested on edge. 'Yes, Andy, a pair of shoes near six feet long! What do you think of that new Canadian wonder?'

'I dunno where you'll get feet to fit 'em,' said Andy dubiously. 'They're mostly as big as boats, an' much the same shape. May be they're for crossin' the wather in?'

'I intend to wear them myself, Andy,' said the manufacturer, 'but on dry land. You must be looking out for a pair too, if the snow continues, as is pretty certain, and you want to go down to the "Corner" before it is frozen over.'

'Why have you cut that hole in the middle of the board?' asked Robert, inspecting the gigantic wooden sole.

'To give the toes play,' was the answer. 'All parts of the foot must have the freest action in snow-shoes.'

'I remember a pair at Maple Grove,' said Arthur, 'made of leathern network, fastened to frames and crossbars, with the most complicated apparatus for the foot in the middle.'

'It is said by scientific men,' said Mr. Holt, 'that if the theory of walking over soft snow were propounded, not all the mechanical knowledge of the present day could contrive a more perfect means of meeting the difficulty, than that snow-shoe of the Ojibbeway Indians. It spreads the weight equally over the wide surface: see, I've been trying, with these cords and thongs, to imitate their mechanism in this hollow of my plank. Here's the walking thong, and the open mesh through which the toes pass, and which is pressed against by the ball of the foot, so as to draw the shoe after it. Then here's the heel-cord, a sort of sling passing round so as partially to imprison and yet leave free. The centre of the foot is held fast enough, you perceive.'

Robert shook his head. 'One thing is pretty clear,' said he, 'I shall never be able to walk in snow-shoes.'

'Did you think you would ever be expert at felling pines?' was Mr. Holt's unanswerable answer.



CHAPTER XIX.

A MEDLEY.

'We may soon expect winter,' said Sam Holt, as he drew forth his gigantic snow-shoes, which had been standing up against the interior wall of the shanty, and now emerged into the brilliant sunshine.

'Soon expect it!' ejaculated Robert; 'why, I should say it had very decidedly arrived already. I am sure twelve inches of snow must have fallen last afternoon and night.'

'It is late this year; I've seen it deep enough for sleighing the second week in November; and from this till March the ground will be hidden, generally under a blanket four feet thick. You are only on the outskirts of winter as yet.'

'Four months! I wonder it doesn't kill all vegetation.'

'On the contrary, it is the best thing possible for vegetation. Only for the warm close covering of snow, the intense and long-continued frost would penetrate the soil too deeply to be altogether thawed by the summer sun.'

'I was very much struck,' said Robert, 'by seeing, in a cemetery near Quebec, a vault fitted with stone shelves, for the reception of the bodies of people who die during winter, as they cannot be properly interred till the next spring.'

'Yes; Lower Canada is much colder than our section of the Province. Learned men say something about the regular northward tendency of the isothermal lines from east to west; certain it is that, the farther west you go, the higher is the mean annual temperature, back to the Pacific, I believe. So the French Canadians have much the worst of the cold. You might have noticed flights of steps to the doors of the habitans? That was a provision against snowing time; and another proof of the severity of the frost is that any mason work not bedded at least three feet deep into the earth is dislodged by the April thaws.

'Now what would you say to freezing up your winter stores of meat and fowls? They're obliged to do it in Lower Canada. Fresh mutton, pork, turkeys, geese, fowls, and even fish, all stiff and hard as stone, are packed in boxes and stowed away in a shed till wanted. The only precaution needful is to bring out the meat into the kitchen a few days before use, that it may have time to thaw. Yet I can tell you that winter is our merriest time; for snow, the great leveller, has made all the roads, even the most rickety corduroy, smooth as a bowling-green; consequently sleighing and toboggin parties without end are carried on.'

'That's a terribly hard word,' remarked Arthur.

'It represents great fun, then, which isn't generally the case with hard words. A toboggin is an Indian traineau of birch-bark, turned up at one end, and perfectly level with the snow. A lady takes her seat on this, and about a foot and a half of a projection behind her is occupied by a gentleman, who is the propelling instrument for the vehicle. He tucks one leg under him, and leaves the other trailing on the snow behind, as a rudder. I should have told you that, first of all, the adventurous pair must be on the top of a slope; and when all is ready, the gentleman sets the affair in motion by a vigorous kick from his rudder leg. Of course the velocity increases as they rush down the slope; and unless he is a skilful steersman, they may have a grand upset or be embosomed in a drift; however, the toboggin and its freight generally glides like an arrow from the summit, and has received impetus enough to carry it a long distance over the smooth surface of the valley at foot.'

'How first-rate it must be!' exclaimed Arthur. 'But we shall never see a human being in these backwoods;' and over his handsome face came an expression of ennui and weariness which Robert disliked and dreaded. 'Come, Holt, I'm longing to have a try at the snow-shoes:' and his white volatile nature brightened again immediately at the novelty.

'I'm afraid they're too long for this clearing, among all the stumps,' said the manufacturer; 'you may wear them eighteen inches shorter in the forest than on the roads or plains. At all events, I'll have to beat the path for you first;' and having fixed his mocassined feet in the walking thong and heel-cord, with his toes just over the 'eye,' he began to glide along, first slowly and then swiftly. Now was the advantage of the immense sole visible; for whereas Robert and Arthur sank far above their ankles at every step in the loose dry snow, Mr. Holt, though much the heaviest of the three, was borne on the top buoyantly.

'You see the great necessity is,' said he, returning by a circuit, 'that the shoe should never press into the snow; so you must learn to drag it lightly over the surface, which requires some little practice. To render that easier, I've beaten the track slightly.'

'Holt, are those genuine Indian mocassins?' asked Robert, as he ungirded his feet from the straps of the snow-shoes.

'Well, they're such as I've worn over many a mile of Indian country,' was the answer; 'and I can recommend them as the most agreeable chaussure ever invented. Chiropodists might shut shop, were mocassins to supersede the ugly and ponderous European boot, in which your foot lies as dead as if it had neither muscles nor joints. Try to cross a swamp in boots, and see how they'll make holes and stick in them, and only come up with a slush, leaving a pool behind; but mocassined feet trip lightly over: the tanned deer-hide is elastic as a second skin, yet thick enough to ward off a cut from thorns or pebbles, while giving free play to all the muscles of the foot.'

'You haven't convinced me: it's but one remove from bare-footedness. Like a good fellow, show me how I'm to manage these monstrous snow-shoes: I feel as queer as in my first pair of skates.'

Mr. Holt did as required. But the best theoretical teaching about anything cannot secure a beginner from failures, and Arthur was presently brought up by several inches of snow gathered round the edges of his boards, and adding no small weight.

'It will work up on them,' said he (as, when a smaller boy, he had been used to blame everything but himself), 'in spite of all I can do.'

'Practice makes perfect,' was Sam Holt's consolatory remark. 'Get the axes, Robert, and we'll go chop a bit.'

'I'll stay awhile by the snow-shoes,' said Arthur.

The others walked away to the edge of the clearing, Mr. Holt having first drawn on a pair of the despised European boots.

Never had Robert seen such transparent calm of heaven and earth as on this glorious winter day. It was as if the common atmosphere had been purified of all grosser particles—as if its component gases had been mixed afresh, for Canadian use only. The cold was hardly felt, though Mr. Holt was sure the thermometer must be close upon zero; but a bracing exhilarating sensation strung every nerve with gladness and power.

'You'll soon comprehend how delightful our winter is,' said Sam Holt, noticing his companion's gradually glowing face. 'It has phases of the most bewitching beauty. Just look at this white spruce, at all times one of our loveliest trees, with branches feathering down to the ground, and every one of its innumerable sea-green leaves tipped with a spikelet which might be a diamond!'

They did stand before that splendid tree—magnificent sight!

'I wonder it escaped the lumberers when they were here; they have generally pretty well weeded the forests along this chain of lakes of such fine timber as this spruce. I suppose it's at least a hundred feet high: I've seen some a hundred and forty.'

'And you think lumberers have been chopping in these woods? I saw no signs of them,' said Robert.

'I met with planks here and there, hewed off in squaring the timber: but even without that, you know, they're always the pioneers of the settler along every stream through Canada. This lake of yours communicates with the Ottawa, through the river at the "Corner," which is called "Clyde" farther on, and is far too tempting a channel for the lumberers to leave unused.'

The speaker stopped at the foot of a Balm-of-Gilead fir, on the edge of the swamp, and partially cleared away the snow, revealing a tuft of cranberries, much larger and finer than they are ever seen in England.

'I noticed a bed of them here the other day. Now if you want a proof of the genial influence of the long-continued snow on vegetation, I can tell you that these cranberries—ottakas, the French Canadians call them—go on ripening through the winter under three or four feet of snow, and are much better and juicier than in October, when they are generally harvested. That cedar swamp ought to be full of them.'

'I wonder can they be preserved in any way,' said Robert, crushing in his lips the pleasant bitter-sweet berry. 'Linda is a wonderful hand at preserves, and when she comes'—

The thought seemed to energize him to the needful preparation for that coming: he immediately made a chop at a middle-aged Weymouth pine alongside, and began to cut it down.

'Well, as to preserving the cranberries,' said Mr. Holt, laughing in his slight silent way, 'there's none required; they stay as fresh as when plucked for a long time. But your sister may exercise her abilities on the pailfuls of strawberries, and raspberries, and sand cherries, and wild plums, that fill the woods in summer. As to the cranberry patches, it is a curious fact that various Indian families consider themselves to have a property therein, and migrate to gather them every autumn, squaws and children and all.'

'It appears that my swamp is unclaimed, then,' said Robert, pausing in his blows.

'Not so with your maples,' rejoined the other; 'there's been a sugar camp here last spring, or I'm much mistaken.'

He was looking at some old scars in the trunks of a group of maples, at the back of the Weymouth pine on which Robert was operating.

'Yes, they've been tapped, sure enough; but I don't see the loupes—the vats in which they leave the sap to crystallize: if it were a regular Indian "sucrerie," we'd find those. However, I suspect you may be on the look-out for a visit from them in spring—au temps des sucres, as the habitans say.'

'And I'm not to assert my superior rights at all?'

'Well, there's certainly sugar enough for both parties during your natural lives, and the Indians will sheer off when they find the ground occupied; so I'd advise you to say nothing about it. Now, Wynn, let your pine fall on that heap of brushwood; 'twill save a lot of trouble afterwards; if not, you'll have to drag the head thither and chop and pile the branches, which is extra work you'd as soon avoid, I dare say.'

After some judicious blows from the more experienced axe, the pine was good enough to fall just as required.

'Now the trunk must be chopped into lengths of twelve or fourteen feet;' and Mr. Holt gashed a mark with his axe at such distances, as well as he could guess. When it was done—

'What's the rate of speed of this work?' asked Robert. 'It seems so slow as to be almost hopeless; the only consideration is, that one is doing it all for one's self, and—for those as dear as self,' he could have added, but refrained.

'About an acre in eight or nine days, according to your expertness,' was the reply. Robert did a little ciphering in his mind immediately. Three axes, plus twenty-seven days (minus Sundays), equal to about the chopping of ten acres and a fraction during the month of December. The calculation was somewhat reassuring.

'What curious curves there are in this Canadian axe!' he remarked, as he stood leaning on the handle and looking down. 'It differs essentially from the common woodman's axe at home.'

'And which the English manufacturers persisted in sending us, and could not be induced to make on precisely the model required, until we dispensed with their aid by establishing an edge-tool factory of our own in Galt, on the Grand River.'

'That was a declaration of independence which must have been very sensibly felt in Sheffield,' remarked Robert.

They worked hard till dinner, at which period they found Arthur limping about the shanty.

'I practised those villainous snow-shoes for several hours, till I walked beautifully; but see what I've got by it,' he said: 'a pain across the instep as if the bones would split.'

'Oh, just a touch of mal de raquette,' observed Sam Holt, rather unsympathizingly. 'I ought to have warned you not to walk too much in them at first.'

'And is there no cure?' asked Arthur, somewhat sharply.

'Peter Logan would scarify your foot with a gun-flint, that is, if the pain were bad enough. Do you feel as if the bones were broken, and grinding together across the instep?'

But Arthur could not confess to his experiences being so bad as this. Only a touch of the mal de raquette, that was all. Just a-paying for his footing in snow-shoes.



CHAPTER XX.

THE ICE-SLEDGE.

Sam Holt had long fixed the first snow as the limit of his stay. He had built his colossal shoes in order to travel as far as Greenock on them, and there take the stage, which came once a week to that boundary of civilisation and the post.

Two or three days of the intensest frost intervened between the first snow and the Thursday on which the stage left Greenock. Cedar Pond was stricken dead—a solid gleaming sheet of stone from shore to shore. A hollow smothered gurgle far below was all that remained of the life of the streams; and nightly they shrank deeper, as the tremendous winter in the air forced upon them more ice, and yet more.

Notwithstanding the roaring fires kept up in the shanty chimney, the stinging cold of the night made itself felt through the unfinished walls. For want of boards, the necessary interior wainscoting had never been put up. The sight of the frozen pond suggested to Mr. Holt a plan for easily obtaining them. It was to construct an ice-boat, such as he had seen used by the Indians: to go down to the 'Corner' on skates, lade the ice-boat with planks, and drive it before them back again.

Arthur, who hailed with delight any variety from the continual chopping, entered into the scheme with ardour. Robert would have liked it well enough, but he knew that two persons were quite sufficient for the business; he rather connived at the younger brother's holidays; he must abide by the axe.

One board, about nine feet long, remained from Arthur's attempts at 'slabbing.' This Mr. Holt split again with wedges, so as to reduce it considerably in thickness, and cut away from the breadth till it was only about twenty inches wide. The stoutest rope in the shanty stores was fastened to it fore and aft, and drawn tightly to produce a curve into boat shape, and a couple of cross pieces of timber were nailed to the sides as a sort of balustrade and reinforcement to the rope. The ice-sledge was complete; the voyagers tied down their fur caps over their ears, strapped the dreadnought boots tightly, and launched forth.

'Throth, I donno how they do it at all, at all,' said Andy, who had lent his strength to the curving of the sledge, and now shook his head as he viewed them from the shore. 'I'd as soon go to walk on the edges of knives as on them things they call skates; throth, betune the shoes as long as yerself for the snow, an' the shoes wid soles as sharp as a soord for the ice, our own ould brogues aren't much use to us. An' as for calling that boord a boat, I hope they won't thry it on the wather, that's all.'

As if he had discharged his conscience by this protesting soliloquy, Mr. Callaghan turned on his heel, and tramped after Robert up to the shanty.

Meanwhile, the voyagers had struck out from the natural cove formed by the junction of the creek with the pond, where were clumps of stately reeds, stiffened like steel by the frost. The cedar boughs in the swamp at the edge drooped lower than ever under their burden of snow; the stems looked inky black, from contrast. The ice-boat pushed on beautifully, with hardly any exertion, over the greyish glistening surface of the lake.

'I fancy there's a bit of breeze getting up against us,' said Mr. Holt, in a momentary pause from their rapid progression.

''Twill be in our backs coming home,' suggested Arthur, as an obvious deduction.

'And if we can fix up a sail anyhow, we might press it into our service to propel the sledge,' said Mr. Holt.

'Well, I never did hear of sails on dry land before,' said Arthur, thereby proving his Irish antecedents; of which his quick-witted companion was not slow to remind him.

'But I don't much admire that greyish look off there,' he added, becoming grave, and pointing to a hazy discolouration in the eastern skies. 'I shouldn't be surprised if we had a blow to-night; and our easterly winds in winter always bring snow.'

Uncle Zack was lost in admiration of the spirit which projected and executed this ice-boat voyage. 'Wal, you are a knowin' shave,' was his complimentary observation to Mr. Holt. ''Twar a smart idee, and no mistake. You'll only want to fix runners in front of the ice-sled goin' back, an' 'twill carry any load as easy as drinkin'. 'Spose you han't got an old pair of skates handy? I've most remarkable good 'uns at the store, that'll cut right slick up to the Cedars in no time if tacked on to the sled. You ain't disposed to buy 'em, are you? Wal, as you be hard fixed, I don't care if I lend 'em for a trifle. Quarter dollar, say. That's dog-cheap—it's a rael ruination. Take it out in potash or maple sugar next spring—eh? Is it five cents cash you named, Mister Holt? Easy to see you never kep a backwoods store. Did anybody ever hear of anythin' so onreasonable?'

To which offer he nevertheless acceded after some grumbling; and the runners of the borrowed skates were fastened underneath the sled by Mr. Holt's own hands and hammer. Next, that gentleman fixed a pole upright in the midst, piling the planks from the sawmill close to it, edgeways on both sides, and bracing it with a stay-rope to stem and stern. At the top ran a horizontal stick to act as yard, and upon this he girt an old blanket lent by Jackey Dubois, the corners of which were caught by cords drawn taut and fastened to the balustrade afore-mentioned.

Sam Holt had in his own brain a strong dash of the daring and love of adventure which tingles in the blood of youthful strength. He thoroughly enjoyed this rigging of the ice-boat, because it was strange, and paradoxical, and quite out of everyday ship-building. The breeze, become stronger, was moaning in the tops of the forest as he finished; the greyish haze had thickened into well-defined clouds creeping up the sky, yet hardly near enough to account for one or two flakes that came wandering down.

'Ye'll have a lively run to the Cedars, I guess,' prophesied Zack, as he helped to pack in the last plank. 'An' the quicker the better, for the weather looks kinder dirty. See if them runners ain't vallyable now; and only five cents cash for the loan.' The queer little craft began to push ahead slowly, her sail filling out somewhat, as the wind caught in it at a curve of the shore.

Certainly the runners materially lessened the friction of the load of timber on the ice. The skaters hardly felt the weight more than in propelling the empty sledge. When they got upon the open surface of the pond, they might expect aid from the steady swelling of the sail, now fitful, as gusts swept down, snow-laden, from the tree-covered banks of the stream. They hardly noticed the gradually increasing power of the wind behind them; but the flakes in the air perceptibly thickened, even before they had reached the pond.

'Now make a straight course across for the pine point yonder,' said Sam Holt, as they passed in lee shelter for an instant. 'I suspect we might almost embark ourselves, Arthur, for the breeze is right upon it.'

A few minutes of great velocity bore them down on the headland. They stopped for breath, the turned-up prow of their ice-boat resting even in the brush on shore. Then they coasted awhile, until another wide curve of the pond spread in front.

By this time the falling snow was sufficiently dense to blur distant outlines, and an indistinct foggy whiteness took the place of the remaining daylight. Mr. Holt hesitated whether to adopt the safer and more laborious plan of following the windings of the shore, or to strike across boldly, and save a mile of meandering by one rapid push ahead. The latter was Arthur's decided choice.

'Well, here goes!' and by the guiding rope in his hand Mr. Holt turned the head of the ice-boat before the wind. They grasped the balustrades at each side firmly, and careered along with the former delightful speed; until suddenly, Arthur was astonished to see his companion cast himself flat on the ice, bringing round the sledge with a herculean effort broadside to the breeze. A few feet in front lay a dark patch on the white plain—a breathing-hole.



CHAPTER XXI.

THE FOREST MAN.

During the momentary pause that followed the bringing up of the ice-boat broadside to the breeze, they could hear the fluctuating surge of deep waters, sucking, plunging—in that large dark patch on the ice. An instant more of such rapid progression would have sunk them in it, beyond all hope.

'Live and learn, they say,' remarked Sam Holt, rising from his prostrate position beside the cargo; 'and I certainly had yet to learn that breathing-holes could form at such an early period in the winter as this. We had better retrace our steps a bit, Wynn; for the ice is probably unsound for some distance about that split.'

'A merciful escape,' said Arthur, after they had worked their way backwards a few yards.

'Ay, and even if we could have pulled up ourselves on the brink, the sledge must have been soused to a dead certainty. Had the snow-flakes been a trifle thicker, we wouldn't have seen the hole till we were swimming, I guess. And it's well this cord of Uncle Zack's was rotten, or the sail would have been too much for my pull.' One of the ropes stretching the lower side of the blanket had snapped under the sudden pressure of Sam Holt's vigorous jerk round, and thereby lessened the forward force.

They made a long circuit of the deadly breathing-hole, and then ran for the nearest shore on the farthest side. The deepening layer of soft snow on the surface of the ice impeded the smooth action of the runners considerably, and made travelling laborious.

Under the lee of a promontory covered with pines they drew up to rest for a few minutes, and shake away loose snow.

'You know everything, Holt, so you can tell me why those treacherous breaks in the ice are called breathing-holes.'

'I believe there's no reason to be given beyond a popular Canadian superstition that a lake needs air as well as a human being, and must have it by bursting these openings through its prison of ice. The freezing is generally uniform all over the surface at first, and after a month or so it cracks in certain spots, perhaps where there exists some eddy or cross current in the water. But evidently the hole we saw a while ago was never frozen at all. Uncle Zack would tell you it is over some dismal cavern whence issue whirlwinds and foul air.'

'I think we should get on almost better without skates,' said Arthur, when they had struggled a furlong farther.

'We are in a drift just now,' answered Mr. Holt; 'the wind has heaped the snow up along here. Certainly the skates would be of more use to us farther out on the pond; but I think we had better be cautious, and continue to coast;' and so they did, having the fear of other possible breathing-holes before their eyes.

How grandly roared the wind through the forest of pines with a steady persistent swelling sound, as of breakers upon an iron shore, sweeping off masses of snow wherewith to drown all landmarks in undistinguishable drifts of whiteness, and driving aslant the descending millions of flakes, till the outlines of the lake landscape were confused to the eyes which tried to trace familiar copse or headland.

Sam Holt was secretly somewhat disquieted, and watched narrowly for the cedars which denoted the Wynns' land. He would have abandoned the ice-boat but for unwillingness to risk the fruit of their day's journey. They must be near the swamp and the creek now; it was scarcely possible they could have passed without recognising the cove whence they had issued in the morning; and yet there was a chance. For the weather was extremely thick, and daylight was fading quickly: the disguise of drifts is bewildering, even to the most practised eye.

'Ha! there are our cedars at last!' exclaimed Arthur. 'How the snow has buried them; they look stunted. I suppose up here's the creek;' and he laid his hand beside his mouth to shout a signal to the shanty, which was smothered immediately in the greater tumult of the storm.

Mr. Holt left the grounded ice-boat, and proceeded farther inland to examine the locality, returning in a few minutes, when Arthur had his skates off, with the information that this was merely a cove running in among trees, and by no means the estuary of a stream.

'Now you know, Holt, if this isn't our creek it must be our swamp, and I'm blinded and petrified on that lake. Do let us get overland to the shanty. I'm certain we would travel faster; and we can haul up the planks to-morrow or next day. You see it's getting quite dark.'

'And do you think the pathless forest will be more lightsome than the open ice? No; we'd better kindle a fire, and camp out to-night. I'm pretty sure we must have passed Cedar Creek without knowing.'

Arthur was already so drowsy from the excessive cold that he was only glad of the pretext for remaining still, and yielding to the uncontrollable propensity. But Mr. Holt pulled him on his feet and commanded him to gather brushwood and sticks, while he went about himself picking birch-bark off the dead and living trees. This he spread under the brush and ignited with his tinder-box. The sight of the flame seemed to wake up Arthur with a shock from the lethargy that was stealing over his faculties. Mr. Holt had chosen a good site for his fire in the lee of a great body of pines, whose massive stems broke the wind; so the blaze quickened and prospered, till a great bed of scarlet coals and ends of fagots remained of the first relay of fuel, and another was heaped on. Now Arthur was glowing to his fingers' ends, thoroughly wide awake, and almost relishing the novelty of his lodgings for the night; with snow all around, curtaining overhead, carpeting under foot.

'Curious way they camp out in the Far West,' said Holt, with his arms round his knees, as he sat on their hemlock mattress and gazed into the fire, wherein all old memories seem ever to have a trysting-place with fancy. And so scenes of his roving years came back to him.

'You must know that out in the Hudson's Bay territory the snow is often ten or fourteen feet deep, not only in drifts, but in smooth even layers, obliterating the country inequalities wonderfully. That's the native land of snow-shoes and of furs, where your clothes must be mainly of both for half the year. But I was going to tell you how the voyageurs build a fire when they have to camp out on a winter's night, and there's twelve feet of snow between them and the solid ground.'

'Sheer impossibility,' said Arthur presumptuously; 'the fire would work a hole down.'

'You shall hear. First, they cut down a lot of trees—green timber—about twenty feet or more in length. These are laid closely parallel on the snow, which has previously been beaten to a little consistency by snow-shoes; on the platform thus made the fire is lit, and it burns away merrily.'

'Don't the trees ever burn through?' asked Arthur.

'Seldom; but the heat generally works a cavity in the snow underneath, sometimes quite a chasm, seven or eight feet deep—fire above, water below. Ha! I'm glad to see my old friend the Great Bear looking through over the pines yonder. Our storm has done its worst.'

'Holt, though I'm rather hungry and sleepy, I'm heartily glad of this night's outing, for one reason: you won't be able to leave us to-morrow, and so are booked for another week, old fellow.'

It seemed irrevocably the case; and under this conviction Arthur rolled himself in the blanket (cut from the spar of the ice-boat), and went into dreamland straight from his brushwood bed, Mr. Holt continuing to sit by the fire gazing into it as before; which sort of gazing, experienced people say, is very bad for the eyes. Perhaps it was that which caused a certain moisture to swell into most visible bright drops, filling the calm grey orbs with unspeakable sadness for a little while. The Great Bear climbed higher round the icy pole; the sky had ceased to snow before the absorbed thinker by the fire noticed the change of weather. Then he rose gently, laid further wood on the blazing pile, threw brush about Arthur's feet and body for additional warmth, and, skates in hand, went down to the lake to explore.

On reaching the point of the headland, he looked round. The weather was much clearer; but westwards a glimmering sheen of ice—black land stretching along, black islands, snow-crowned, rising midway afar. Eastward, ha! that is what should have been done hours ago. A fire burned on the edge of the woods at some distance. So they had really passed Cedar Creek unawares, as he suspected from the nature of the ground and trees.

While Robert and Andy crouched by their fire, feeding it up to full blaze with the most resinous wood they could find, the distant shout of the coming travellers gladdened their ears. The servant flung his whole stock of balsam on the beacon at once, causing a most portentous flame-burst, and sprang up with a wild 'hurroo!' wielding one half-burnt fagot a la shillelah about his head.

'Oh, then, Mister Robert, achora, it's yerself is the janius; an' to think of mekin' a lighthouse to guide 'em wid, an' here they are safe home by the manes of it. But now, sir, if ye'll take my advice, as we're always lost when we goes anywhere by ourselves, we ought niver part for the futhur, an' thin we'll all go asthray together safe an' sound.'

'Let's warm ourselves at this glorious fire before we go up to the shanty,' said Arthur, stretching out his feet to the fire. 'Pity to let it waste its sweetness on the desert air.'

So they stood explaining matters by the fire for a few minutes, till Andy, who was never tired of heaping on fresh fuel, came forward with an armful and a puzzled face.

'Mr. Holt, there's somethin' quare in that three, sir, which has a big hole in it full of dhry sticks an' brush, and there's something woolly inside, sir, that I felt wid me two hands; an' more be token it's a big baste, whatever it is.'

'A bear, probably,' said Mr. Holt, as he warmed the sole of one foot. 'Better let him alone till morning, and tuck in his bedclothes again for to-night, poor fellow.' But Arthur had started up to investigate, and must pull the black fleece for his personal satisfaction.

'Oh, throth he's stirrin' now!' exclaimed Andy, who had begun to cram the orifice with the former stuffing of dried bough and brush. 'We've woke him up, Masther Arthur, if it's asleep he was at all, the rogue; an' now he's sthrugglin' out of the hole wid all his might. Keep in there, you big villyan, you don't dare to offer to come out;' for Andy set his shoulder against the great carcase, which nevertheless sheered round till muzzle and paws could be brought into action, and their use illustrated on Andy's person.

'Och, murther!' roared the sufferer; 'he has his arms round me, the baste; he's squeezing me into m—m—mash!'

A blazing stick, drawn from the fire by Mr. Holt's hand, here struck the bear's nose and eyes; which, conjoined with Andy's own powerful wrenching, caused him to loosen his hold, and a ball from the rifle which Robert had fortunately brought down as the companion of their night watch, finished his career.

'Well done, Bob!' when, after a run of thirty yards or so, they stood beside the prostrate enemy; 'you've won our first bear-skin. Now we shall see what the paws are like, in the way of eatables; don't you say they're delicious, Holt?'

Borne upon two strong poles, the bear made his way up to the shanty, and was housed for the rest of the night. Poor Andy was found to be severely scratched by the long sharp claws. 'Sure I'm glad 'twas none of yerselves he tuk to huggin',' said the faithful fellow; 'an' scrapin' as if 'twas a pratie he wanted to peel!'

He had his revenge on the forepaws next morning when Mr. Holt cut them off, some time before breakfast, and set them in a mound of hot ashes to bake, surrounding and crowning them further with live coals. Bruin himself was dragged outside into the snow, preparatory to the operation of skinning and cutting up into joints of excellent meat.

'Do you know, I saw an amazing resemblance to a fur-coated man, as he stood up last night before Robert's shot,' said Arthur.

'You're not the first to see it,' replied Holt. 'The Indians call him "the forest man," and the Lower Canadians the "bourgeois;" they attribute to him a sagacity almost human; the Crees and Ojibbeways fancy him an enchanted being, and will enter into conversation with him when they meet in the woods.'

'Yet they take an unfair advantage of his paws.'

'That's true: my cookery must be almost done.' And he re-entered the hut to dish up his dainty. 'Come, who'll feast with me?'

'Appearances are much against them,' said Robert, eyeing the charcoal-looking paws, which presented soles uppermost on the trencher. Mr. Holt scooped out a portion on to his own plate, and used no further persuasion.

''Twould never do not to know the taste of bear's paw,' said Arthur, as if winding himself up to the effort of picking a small bit. Mr. Holt was amused to see the expression of enlightened satisfaction that grew on his face. 'Oh, Bob, 'tis really capital. That's only a prejudice about its black look,' helping himself again. 'The Indians aren't far removed from epicures, when this is their pet dish.'

'Well,' observed Mr. Holt, filling his horn cup with tea from the kettle, 'they equally relish fried porcupines and skunks; but some of their viands might tempt an alderman—such as elk's nose, beaver's tail, and buffalo's hump.'

'Holt,' said Arthur, scooping the paw a third time, 'it seemed to me that chap had fixed himself in a hole barely big enough, to judge by the way he wriggled out.'

'Very likely. "Bears are the knowingest varmint in all creation," as Uncle Zack would say. They sometimes watch for days before entering a tree, and then choose the smallest opening possible, for warmth's sake, and scrape up brush and moss to conceal themselves. I've known the hollow tree to be such a tight fit that the hunters were compelled to cut it open to get at the bear after he was shot. I suspect the heat of our fire had roused this one, even before Andy pulled away the brush, or he wouldn't ha' been so lively.'

'What's the meat like, Holt? I hope it don't taste carnivorous.'

'You'll hardly know it from beef, except that the shorter grain makes it tenderer; for the bear lives on the best products of the forest. He'll sit on his haunches before a serviceberry tree, bend the branches with his paws, and eat off the red fruit wholesale. He'll grub with his claws for the bear potatoes, and chew them like tobacco. He'll pick the kernels out of nuts, and help himself to your maize and fall wheat when you have them, as well as to your sucking pigs and yearly calves.'

'Then we may fairly eat him in return,' said Robert; 'but I'll leave the paws to you and Arthur.'

'Thank you for the monopoly. Now these knives are sufficiently sharp.' Sam Holt had been putting an edge on them at the grindstone during his talk. 'Come and have your lesson in fur-making, for I must be off.'

'Off! oh, nonsense; not to-day,' exclaimed both. But he was quite unpersuadeable when once his plan was fixed. He took the stage at Greenock that afternoon.



CHAPTER XXII.

SILVER SLEIGH-BELLS.

The shanty was ere long lined in a comely manner with the planks which had journeyed up the pond in the ice-boat, affording many an evening's work for Arthur. About Christmas all was right and tight.

Now, to those who have any regrets or sadnesses in the background of memory, the painfullest of all times are these anniversaries. One is forced round face to face with the past and the unalterable, to gaze on it, perchance, through blinding tears. The days return—unchanged: but, oh, to what changed hearts!

Were they not thinking of the Canadian exiles to-day, at home, at dear old Dunore? For nothing better than exiles did the young men feel themselves, this snow-white Christmas morning, in the log-hut among the backwoods, without a friendly face to smile a greeting, except poor Andy's; and his was regretful and wistful enough too.

'I say, Bob, what shall we do with ourselves? I'm sure I wish I didn't know 'twas Christmas day at all. It makes a fellow feel queer and nonsensical—homesick, I suppose they call it—and all that sort of thing. I vote we obliterate the fact, by chopping as hard as any other day.'

So, after reading the chapters for the day (how the words brought up a picture of the wee country church in Ireland, with its congregation of a dozen, its whitewashed walls and blindless lancet windows!), they went forth to try that relief for all pains of memory—steady hard work. The ten acres allotted for December were nearly chopped through by this time, opening a considerable space in front of the shanty, and beginning to reveal the fair landscape of lake and wooded slopes that lay beyond. The felled trees lay piled in wind rows and plan heaps so far as was possible without the help of oxen to move the huge logs; snow covered them pretty deeply, smoothing all unsightliness for the present.

'How I long to have something done towards the building of our house!' said Robert, pausing after the fall of a hemlock spruce, while Arthur attacked the upper branches. 'I'd like so much to have it neatly finished before my father and mother and Linda come next summer.'

'Well, haven't you no end of shingles made for the roof?' said the other, balancing his axe for a blow. 'You're working at them perpetually; and Andy isn't a bad hand either at wooden slates, as he calls them.'

'We must have a raising-bee in spring,' concluded Robert, after some rumination—'as soon as the snow melts a little. Really, only for such co-operative working in this thinly peopled country, nothing large could be ever effected. Bees were a great device, whoever invented them.'

'By the way,' said Arthur presently, returning from chopping apart the trunk into two lengths of fifteen feet, 'did you hear that the Scotchman between us and the "Corner," at Daisy Burn, wants to sell his farm and improvements, and is pushing out into the wild land farther up the pond? Nim told me yesterday. He expects three pounds sterling an acre, including fixtures, and he got the ground for nothing; so that's doubling one's capital, I imagine.'

'How for nothing?'

'It was before a human being had settled in these townships, and the concession lines were only just blazed off by the surveyors. Davidson obtained a grant of land on condition of performing what are called settlement duties, which means chopping out and clearing the concession lines for a certain distance. Of course that was another way of payment, by labour instead of cash. But on swearing that it was done, he obtained what Nim calls a "lift," a crown patent, we should say, and the land was his estate for ever.'

'I wish we could transfer a couple of his fenced fields here,' said Robert, 'and his young orchard. We must have some sort of a garden, Arthur, before Linda comes.'

'Yes, she never could get on without her flower beds. I say, Bob, won't Cedar Creek look awfully wild to them?'

They worked on awhile both thinking of that. Any one accustomed to smooth enclosed countries, with regular roads and houses at short distances, would indeed find the backwoods 'awfully wild.' And that most gentle mother, how would she bear the transplanting?

'I had a very misty idea of what bush-life was, I own, till I found myself in it,' quoth Robert, after a long silence, broken only by the ring of the axes.

'Living like a labourer at home, but without half his comforts,' said Arthur, piling the boughs. 'Tell you what, Bob, we wouldn't be seen doing the things we do here. Suppose Sir Richard Lacy or Lord Scutcheon saw us in our present trim?'

'But you know that's all false pride,' said Robert, with a little glow on his cheek nevertheless. 'We shouldn't be ashamed of anything but wrong.'

'Say what you will, Bob, it strikes me that we aren't of the class which do best in Canada. The men of hard hands, labouring men and women, are those who will conquer the forest and gain wealth here.'

'Well, if that be the rule, you and I must strive to be the exception,' said Robert; 'for I'm determined to have a comfortable homestead for the dear old people from Dunore, and I'm equally determined to set my mark on Canadian soil, and to prosper, if it be God's will.'

He lifted off his cap for a moment, looking at the serene sky. The rising discontent in his brother's heart was stilled by the gesture. Both worked assiduously, till Andy, with an unusual twinkle in his eyes, summoned them to dinner.

'What has the fellow been about, I wonder? I know 'twasn't respect for the holiday kept him indoors all the morning.'

It was presently explained. Andy, ignorant of courses, dished up, together with the ham, a very fine dumpling emitting the odour of apples.

'Sure, as ye can't have yer own plum puddin' in this outlandish counthry, ye can have a thing the same shape, anyhow. Mrs. Jackey showed me how to make it iligant, of the string of dried bits I had thrun in the box since we kem here first. Throth an' I'm cur'ous to see did they ever swell out agin, afther the parchin' they got.'