But for a slightly peculiar taste in the sweet, the dumpling was unimpeachable.

'I suppose Mrs. Jackey uses maple sugar in her confectionery,' said Robert; 'a soupcon of trees runs through it.'

Late in the evening, as the pitch-pine logs were flaring abundance of light through the cabin—light upon Robert at his shingles, and upon Arthur at his work-bench, and upon Andy shaving and packing the slips of white pine as fast as his master split them, with a stinging night outside, some twenty-five degrees below zero, and the snow crusted at top hard enough to bear anything—all three raised their heads to listen to some approaching sound through the dead silence of the frozen air. It was a very distant vagrant tinkling, as of sheep-bells on a common in old Europe; they looked at one another, and Andy crossed himself reverently.

'Like chapel bells over the say from poor Ireland,' he muttered, and crept to the door, which Robert had opened. 'Sure there isn't fairies all the ways out here? an' 'tis mighty like it'—

'Hush—h—!' Andy crossed himself again as the tinkling became more plainly audible. A sweetly plaintive jangling it seemed—a tangled careless music. Nearer, and still nearer it came.

'What a fool I am!' exclaimed Robert; 'it must be sleigh-bells. Travellers, I suppose.'

And before many minutes were past, the sleigh had rounded its way among the stumps, over the smooth snow, to the shanty door, filled with brilliant wood-light.



CHAPTER XXIII.

'STILL-HUNTING.'

From the buffalo robes of the sleigh emerged a gentleman so wrapped in lynx-furs and bearskin, that, until his face stood revealed by the firelight, nothing but his voice was recognisable by the Wynns.

'Argent! is it possible?'

'Most possible: didn't you remember that my regiment was quartered out here? But I'm sure it is a very unexpected pleasure to meet you in the bush, old fellow;' and they shook hands warmly again. 'For though I heard from my mother that you had gone to settle in Canada, she didn't mention the locality, and I've been inquiring about you in all directions without success, until, as good fortune would have it, I stopped at the odious Yankee tavern yonder this evening, and overheard a fellow in the bar mention your name. You may imagine I seized him, and ascertained particulars—harnessed the sleigh again, and started off up here, to ask you for a night's lodging, which means a rug before the fire.'

His servant had been unloading the sleigh of knapsacks, and rifles, and other hunting gear. Captain Argent gave him a few directions, and presently the silver-sounding bells tinkled swiftly away along the concession road, and back to the 'Corner' again.



'Och sure,' quoth Andy to himself, as he witnessed from among his shingles the reunion of the old acquaintances, 'what a house for him to come into—not as big as the butler's bedroom at Scutcheon Castle—an' nothin' but pork an' bear's mate to give the likes of a gran' gintleman like him: I wish he'd sted at home, so I do. Oh, Misther Robert asthore, if I ever thought to see the family so reduced; an' sure I was hopin' nobody would know it but ourselves—leastways, none of the quality at home.'

Andy's soliloquy was interrupted by a summons from his master to prepare supper; but the under-current of his thoughts went on as he set about his cooking.

'An' to have to be fryin' mate ondher his very nose, an' the kitchen in the castle is a good quarther of a mile from the dinin' parlour, anyhow; an' all our chaney is made of wood, barrin' the couple of plates; an' our glasses is nothin' but cows' horns. An' sorra a bit of a table-cloth, unless I spread one of the sheets. An' to sit on shtools for want of chairs. An' to sleep on the flure like meself. Arrah, what brought him here at all?'

The subject of these reflections had meanwhile lighted his silver-mounted meerschaum, and was puffing contentedly in the intervals of animated chat, apparently quite satisfied with his position and prospective hardships, not giving a thought to the humble accommodations of his friends' shanty; which, on the first entrance, had contracted in Robert's vision into a mere wood-cutter's hut, devoid of every elegance and most of the comforts of civilised life. He imagined that thus it would be seen through Argent's eyes. But if it was so, Argent neither by look nor manner gave token of the least thought of the sort.

He was the youngest son of a poor peer, Lord Scutcheon, living in the neighbourhood of Dunore; and often had the Wynns ridden with him at the same meet, and shouldered fowling-pieces in the same sporting party.

'But picking off pheasants in a preserve is tame work to the noble game one can shoot in these forests,' said he. 'I'm bound at present on a "still-hunting" expedition; which doesn't mean looking out for illegal distilleries, as it might signify in Ireland, ha, ha!'

Captain Argent had very high animal spirits, and a small joke sufficed to wake them into buoyant laughter, which was infectious by its very abundance.

'Deer-stalking is the right word; I've done it in Scotland, but now I mean to try my hand on the moose—grandest of American ruminants. I've engaged an old trapper to come with me for a few days into their haunts. Now, 'twould be a delightful party if you two would join. What do you say, Wynn? Come, lay by your axe, and recreate yourself for a week, man.'

Arthur looked a very decided acceptance of the proposition, but Robert shook his head. 'Couldn't leave the place,' said he, smiling; 'too much to be done.'

'Nonsense; the trees will stand till your return, and you can't plough through four feet of snow.'

'If I was far enough advanced to have land fit for ploughing, nothing could be pleasanter than to join you, Argent; but unfortunately no end of trees have to be cut down, and logged in heaps for burning before then. But, Arthur, wouldn't you go?'

His faint opposition, because he did not like to leave his brother, was easily overcome. Captain Argent made another attack upon Robert's resolve. 'People always consider winter the time for amusement in Canada. Nature gives a tolerably good hint to the same effect, by blocking up the rivers so that ships can't sail, and snowing up the farms, so that the ground isn't seen for months; and if that isn't a licence for relaxation'—

'I suspect that in the earlier stages of bush-life there are no holidays,' replied Robert: 'if you just reflect that everything in the way of civilisation has to be done afresh from the beginning pretty much like living on a desert island. Now I've got a house to build by summer time, and here are all the preparations towards it as yet;' and he pointed to the shingles.

'Why, thin, I'd like to know for what Misther Robert is dhrawin' up the poverty of the family, an' makin' little of himself before the captain,' thought Andy angrily, and betraying the feeling by a bang of the frying-pan as he laid it aside. 'Can't he talk to him of sojers, or guns, or wild bastes, or somethin' ginteel of that kind, an' not be makin' a poor mouth, as if he hadn't a single hap'ny.' Andy was relieved when the conversation veered round to a consideration of Canada as military quarters.

'About the pleasantest going,' was the Hon. Captain Argent's opinion. 'Of course I can't exactly make out why we're sent here, unless to stave off the Yankees, which it seems to me the colonists are sufficiently inclined and sufficiently able to do themselves; neither can I imagine why Joe Hume and his school of economists submit to such expense without gaining anything in return, save the honour and glory of calling Canada our colony. But leaving that matter to wiser heads than mine, I can say for myself that I like the quarters greatly, and am inclined to agree with Canadian eulogists, that it is the finest country in the world—barring our own little islands.'

'I don't feel, though, as if it ever could be home,' observed Robert, who had taken to his shingles again.

'Perhaps not; but we military men have an essentially homeless profession, you know.'

'The red-coats in Montreal and Quebec seemed a visible link with mother country, most welcome to my eyes in the new land; and so, Argent, when you're commander-in-chief, do continue the regiments in Canada, for my sake.'

'But, my dear fellow,' said the officer quite seriously, as he struck the ashes from his pipe, 'it is waste of the most expensive manufactured material on earth, the British soldier. When he's within reach of the States, he deserts by whole pickets, ready armed and accoutred to the Yankees' hands; I've had the pleasant job of pursuing the chaps myself, and being baulked by the frontier. It's the garrison duty they detest; and an unlimited licence beckons them over the border.'

'And you think,' said Robert, 'the colonists are sufficiently loyal, and all that, to be left to themselves?'

'I don't think they would join the States, at all events. What a horrid set those Yankees are! Canadians are too respectable to wish to sail in the same ship with them.' This truly cogent argument was followed by a series of profound whiffs. 'And if they did,' added Captain Argent presently, 'we've been building the strongest fortifications in the world, spending millions at Halifax and Quebec and other places, on fosses and casemates, and bomb-proof towers, just for the Yankees! And I suppose that Barrack Hill in the middle of Bytown will be made into another Acropolis for the same end.'

'Ah,' said Robert, shaving his shingle attentively, 'so long as Canadians look back to England as home, and speak of it as home, there's little fear of annexation or revolt. Mother country has only to keep up the motherly relation, and patiently loosen the leading strings, according as her colonies grow able to run alone.'

'That sentiment might fall from the lips of a Colonial Secretary in his place in the Commons. By the way, did you hear that my brother Percy has been returned member for the county at home?'

'No; we have not seen a newspaper since we left, except a shabby little Canadian print, which gives half a dozen lines to the English mail. Tell us about it, Argent. Was there a contest?'

How intensely interesting were the particulars, and how Robert and Arthur did devour the ill-printed provincial news-sheet issuing from the obscure Irish country town, and burning all through with political partisanship! Luckily Argent had the last received copy in his pocket, which detailed all the gossip of the election, with the familiar names, and localities of the struggle.

Looking back half a lifetime seemed to be concentrated in the months since they had left Europe. Things widely different from all past experience had filled their thoughts to overflowing, and drowned out old sympathies, till this evening vivified them afresh. Yet Robert felt, with a sort of little pain, that they must gradually die away, be detached, and fall off from his life. His logs and shingles, his beaver meadow and water privilege, were more to him now than all the political movements which might shake Ireland to its centre.

Long after Argent's short athletic figure, crowned with fair curls, lay fast asleep on his buffalo rugs, enjoying hunters' repose, the brothers sat talking and musing. It was not the first time that Robert had to reason down Arthur's restless spirit, if he could. This rencontre had roused it again. He was not satisfied with the monotonous life of the backwoods. He envied Argent, rather, who could make pleasure his pursuit, if he chose.

They set off for the hunting grounds with sunrise next morning; the experienced Ina Moose, a half-bred trapper, marching in advance of the sledge. First, he had stored in the shanty the jingling strings of bells, without consulting their owner; he had a constitutional antipathy to noise of all sorts, and could see no especial good in warning the game.

'What an erect fellow he is, and as taciturn as a mole!' quoth the lively Argent. 'I hope we shall meet with some of his step-relations, the Indians; I've quite a passion for savage life, that is, to look at. Last winter's leave I made some excursions on Lake Simcoe; the islands there are all savage territory, belonging to the Ojibbeways. Poor fellows, they're dying out—every year becoming fewer; yet one can discern the relics of a magnificent race. Red cunning has been no match for white wisdom, that's certain.'

Arthur was a willing listener to many stories about his friend's excursions; and so the time was wiled away as they drove deeper into the recesses of the forest, even to the extreme end of all concession lines.

Here was Ina's wigwam, on the edge of a small pond, which was closely hedged in with pines. Wasting no words, he merely stepped back to unbuckle the shaggy pony, and at the ensuing noonday meal Arthur for the first time tasted the wilderness preserve called 'pemmican.' It was not unlike what housewives at home denominate 'collar,' he thought, cutting in compact slices of interwoven fat and lean.

'How is it made, Argent?'

'I believe the dried venison is pounded between stones till the fibres separate, and in that powdery state is mixed with hot melted buffalo's fat, and sewed up in bags of skin. They say it is most nutritive—a pound equal to four pounds of ordinary meat. A sort of concentrated nourishment, you see.'

'What are those blackish things hanging up in the smoke, I wonder?'

'Beavers' tails, captured in the creeks off the lake, I suppose; capital food, tasting like bacon, but a little gristly.'

'And does the fellow live here, all alone?' A quick and perhaps unfriendly glance of Ina's black eyes proved that he was not deaf, though by choice dumb.

'Well, I suppose so, this year; but he's a great rover. Was with me on the Simcoe last year. I never met such a lover of the chase for its own sake. His forefathers' instincts are rampant in him. Ina, have we any chance of a moose?'

The trapper shook his grisly head. 'Only on the hard wood ridges all winter,' he answered; 'they "yard" whar maples grows, for they live on the tops and bark. Bariboos come down here, mostly.'

What these were, Arthur had soon an opportunity of knowing. Ina kindled into a different being when the hunting instinct came over him. Every sense was on the alert.

The hunters had drawn white shirts over their clothes, to disguise their approach through the snow from the far-seeing deer which they were to stalk. They proceeded some distance before meeting with game. What intense and inexpressible stillness through the grand woods! Arthur started, and almost exclaimed, when, from a pine tree close to him, issued a report sharp as a pistol shot. It was only the violent contraction of the wood from the severe frost, as he knew in a moment; and the deer browsing yonder on branch tops never winced, though a whisper or a footfall would have sent them bounding away. Presently the crack of Argent's rifle was followed by the spring of a buck high into the air, all four feet together, poor animal, as the death-pang pierced his heart.

'I thought I never should get fair aim, from the way he was protected by trees,' said the sportsman, reloading with satisfaction. 'And it's cruel to maim a creature, you know;' whence the reader may perceive that Captain Argent was humane.

'Holloa! what's this?' said Arthur, nearly stumbling over a pair of antlers.

'Moose,' replied Ina laconically, as he glanced upwards to see whether the maple twigs had been nipped short.

'He must have been a trifle lighter for the loss of these,' observed Arthur, lifting them. 'Nearly six feet across, and half-a-hundred weight, if an ounce. I'm curious to see the animal that can carry them composedly.'

'The largest beast on the continent,' said Argent. But much as they searched, the shed antlers were all they saw of moose for that day.



CHAPTER XXIV.

LUMBERERS.

Scene, early morning; the sun pouring clear light over the snowy world, and upon Captain Argent in front of the hut, just emerged from his blankets and rugs.

'Why, Arthur, here's an elk walking up to the very hall door!'

Almost at the same minute Ina appeared among the distant trees, and fired. He had gone off on snow-shoes long before daybreak, to run down the moose he knew to be in the neighbourhood, had wounded a fine bull, and driven him towards his camp.

'Why didn't you finish him off on the spot,' asked Arthur, 'instead of taking all that trouble?'

'No cart to send for the flesh,' replied Ina significantly.

There might be a thousand pounds of that, covered with long coarse hair, and crested with the ponderous antlers. A hunch on the shoulders seemed arranged as a cushion support to these last; and in the living specimens seen afterwards by Arthur, they carried the huge horns laid back horizontally, as they marched at a long trot, nose in the air, and large sharp eyes looking out on all sides.

'It was a sharp idea to make the elk his own butcher's boy,' quoth Argent.

The massive thick lips formed the 'mouffle,' prized in the wilderness as a dainty: Arthur would have been ashamed to state his preference for a civilised mutton chop. Other elks shared the fate of this first; though it seemed a wanton waste of nature's bounties to slay the noble animals merely for their skins, noses, and tongues. Ina was callous, for he knew that thus perished multitudes every year in Canada West, and thousands of buffaloes in the Hudson's Bay territory. Arthur could not help recalling little Jay; and many a time her lesson kept his rifle silent, and spared a wound or a life.

One day, while stalking wild turkeys, creeping cautiously from tree to tree, an unwonted sound dissipated their calculations. Coming out on a ridge whence the wood swept down to one of the endless ponds, they heard distant noises as of men and horses drawing a heavy load.

'Lumberers,' explained Ina, pricking his ears. He would have immediately turned in a contrary direction; but the prospect of seeing a new phase of life was a strong temptation to Captain Argent, so they went forward towards a smoke that curled above a knot of pines.

It proceeded from the lumber shanty; a long, windowless log-hut with a door at one end, a perpetual fire in the centre, on a large open hearth of stones; the chimney, a hole in the roof. Along both sides and the farther end was a sort of dais, or low platform of unhewn trees laid close together, and supporting the 'bunks,' or general bed, of spruce boughs and blankets. Pots slung in the smoke and blaze were bubbling merrily, under presidence of a red night-capped French Canadian, who acted as cook, and was as civil, after the manner of his race, as if the new arrivals were expected guests.

'Ah, bon-jour, Messieurs; vous etes les bienvenus. Oui, monsieur—sans doute ce sont des gens de chantier. Dey vork in forest,' he added, with a wave of his hand—plunging into English. 'Nous sommes tous les gens de chantier—vat you call hommes de lumbare: mais pour moi, je suis chef de cuisine pour le present:' and a conversation ensued with Argent, in which Arthur made out little more than an occasional word of the Canadian's—with ease when it was so Anglican as 'le foreman.'

'What a good-looking, merry-faced chap he is!' observed Arthur, when the red nightcap had been pulled off in an obeisance of adieu, as they went to seek for the others, and witness their disforesting operations.

'French Canadians are generally the personifications of good humour and liveliness,' returned Argent; 'the pleasantest possible servants and the best voyagers. Listen to him now, carolling a "chanson" as he manages his smutty cookery. That's the way they sing at everything.'

'So the lumberers have a foreman?'

'Curious how the French can't invent words expressive of such things, but must adopt ours. He tells me "le foreman's" duty is to distribute the work properly, allotting to each gang its portion; and also to make a report of conduct to the overseer at the end of the season, for which purpose he keeps a journal of events. I had no idea there was so much organization among them; and it seems the gangs have regular duties—one to fell, one to hew, one to draw to the water's edge with oxen; and each gang has a headman directing its labours.'

Nearing the sound of the axes, they came to where a group of lumber-men were cutting down some tall spruce-firs, having first laid across over the snow a series of logs, called 'bedding timbers,' in the line that each tree would fall. One giant pine slowly swayed downwards, and finally crashed its full length on the prepared sleepers, just as the strangers approached. Immediately on its fall, the 'liner' commenced to chop away the bark for a few inches wide all along the trunk, before marking with charcoal where the axes were to hew, in squaring the timber; meantime another man was lopping the top off the tree, and a third cutting a sort of rough mortise-hole at the base, which he afterwards repeated at the upper end.

So busy were the whole party, that the hewer, a genuine Paddy, who stood leaning on his broad axe until the timber was ready for him, was the first to raise his eyes and notice the new-comers. Arthur asked him what the holes were for.

'Why, then, to raft the trees together when we get 'em into the water,' was his reply; and in the same breath he jumped on to the trunk, and commenced to notch with his axe as fast as possible along the sides, about two feet apart. Another of his gang followed, splitting off the blocks between the deep notches into the line mark. And this operation, repeated for the four sides, squared the pine into such a beam as we see piled in our English timber yards.

What was Arthur's surprise to recognise, in the mass of lumberers gathered round a huge mast, the Milesian countenance of Murty Keefe, a discontented emigrant with whom he had picked up a casual acquaintance on the steamboat which took him to Montreal. He was dressing away the knots near the top with his axe, as though he had been used to the implement all his life. When, after infinite trouble and shouting in all tongues, the half-dozen span of strong patient oxen were set in motion, dragging the seventy-feet length of timber along the snow towards the lake, Arthur contrived to get near enough to his countryman for audible speech. Murty's exaggerated expectations had suffered a grievous eclipse; still, if he became an expert hewer, he might look forward to earning more than a curate's salary by his axe. And they were well fed: he had more meat in a week now than in a twelvemonth in Ireland. He was one of half-a-dozen Irishmen in this lumberers' party of French Canadians, headed by a Scotch foreman; for through Canada, where address and administrative ability are required, it is found that Scotchmen work themselves into the highest posts.

During the rude but abundant dinner which followed, this head of the gang gave Argent some further bits of information about the lumber trade.

'We don't go about at random, and fell trees where we like,' said he. 'We've got a double tax to pay: first, ground rent per acre per annum for a licence, and then a duty of a cent for every cubic foot of timber we bring to market. Then, lest we should take land and not work it, we are compelled to produce a certain quantity of wood from every acre of forest we rent, under pain of forfeiting our licence.'

'And will you not have it all cut down some day? Then what is the country to do for fuel and the world for ships?'

The foreman rubbed his rusty beard with a laugh.

'There's hundreds of years of lumbering in the Bytown district alone,' said he; 'why, sir, it alone comprehends sixty thousand square miles of forest.'



CHAPTER XXV.

CHILDREN OF THE FOREST.

There could hardly be a wider contrast than between Captain Argent's usual dinner at his regimental mess, and that of which he now partook in the lumbermen's shanty. Tables and chairs were as unknown as forks and dishes among the gens de chantier; a large pot of tea, dipped into by everybody's pannikin, served for beer and wine; pork was the piece de resistance, and tobacco-smoking the dessert; during all of which a Babel of tongues went on in French patois, intermingled with an occasional remark in Irish or Scottish brogue.

'Your men seem to be temperance folk,' observed Argent to the foreman.

'Weel, they must be,' was the laconic reply. 'We've no stores where they could get brandy-smash in the bush, and it's so much the better for them, or I daursay they wad want prisons and juries next. As it is, they're weel behaved lads eneugh.'

'I'm sure it must be good in a moral point of view; but do you find them equal to as much work as if they had beer or spirits?' asked Captain Argent. 'And lumbering seems to me to be particularly laborious.'

'Weel, there's a fact I'll mak a present to the teetotallers,' answered the foreman. 'Our lumberers get nothing in the way of stimulant, and they don't seem to want it. When I came fresh from the auld country, I couldna hardly b'lieve that.'

'Au large, au large!'

At this word of command all hands turned out of the shanty, and went back to work in their several gangs. Again the fellers attacked the hugest pines; the hewers sprang upon the fallen, lining and squaring the living trees into dead beams; and the teamsters yoked afresh their patient oxen, fitting upon each massive throat the heavy wooden collar, and attaching to chains the ponderous log which should be moved towards the water highway.

Argent and Arthur found themselves presently at the foot of a colossal Weymouth or white pine, the trunk and top of which were almost as disproportionate as a pillar supporting a paint-brush, but which the Scottish foreman admired enthusiastically, considering it in the abstract as 'a stick,' and with reference to its future career in the shape of a mast. All due preparation had been made for its reception upon level earth; a road twenty feet wide cut through the forest, that it and half-a-dozen brother pines of like calibre in the neighbourhood might travel easily and safely to the water's edge; and forty yards of bedding timbers lay a ready-made couch, for its great length.

'I daursay now, that stick's standing aboot a thousand years: I've counted fourteen hunder rings in the wood of a pine no much bigger. Ou, 'twill mak a gran' mast for a seventy-four—nigh a hunder feet lang, and as straight as a rod.'

Stripping off the bark and dressing the knots was the next work, which would complete its readiness for Devonport dockyards, or perchance for the Cherbourg shipwrights. During this operation the foreman made an excursion to visit his other gangs, and then took his visitors a little aside into the woods to view what he termed a 'regular take-in.' It was a group of fine-looking pines, wearing all the outward semblance of health, but when examined, proving mere tubes of bark, charred and blackened within, and ragged along the seam where the fire had burst out.

'How extraordinary!' said Argent. 'Why were they not burned equally through?'

'I hae been thinkin' the fire caught them in the spring, when the sap rins strong; so the sap-wood saved thae shells, to misguide the puir axmen. I thought I had a fair couple o' cribs o' lumber a' ready to hand, when I spied the holes, and found my fine pines naething but empty pipes.'

He had been fashioning two saplings into strong handspikes, and now offered one each to the gentlemen. 'Ye'll not be too proud to bear a hand wi' the mast aboon: it'll be a kittle job lugging it to the pond; so just lend us a shove now and then.'

The great mass was at last got into motion, by a difficult concerted starting of all the oxen at the same moment.

Round the brilliant log fire, while pannikins of tea circulated, and some flakes of the falling snow outside came fluttering down into the blaze, the lumberers lay on their bunks, or sat on blocks, talking, sleeping, singing, as the mood moved. French Canadians are native-born songsters; and their simple ballad melodies, full of refrain and repetition, sounded very pleasing even to Argent's amateur ears.

'I can imagine that this shanty life must be pleasant enough,' said Argent, rolling himself in his buffalo robe preparatory to sleep by the fire.

'I'll just tell ye what it is,' returned the foreman; 'nane that has gane lumbering can tak' kindly to ony ither calling. They hae caught the wandering instinct, and the free life o' the woods becomes a needcessity, if I might say sae. D'ye ken the greatest trouble I find in towns? Trying to sleep on a civilised bed. I canna do't, that's the fact; nor be sitting to civilised dinners, whar the misguided folk spend thrice the time that's needfu', fiddling with a fork an' spune. I like to eat an' be done wi' it.'

Which little social trait was of a piece with Mr. Foreman's energy and promptness in all the circumstances of life. In a very few minutes from the aforesaid speech he was sound asleep, for he was determined to waste no time in accomplishing that either.

Argent and Arthur left this wood-cutting polity next morning, and worked, or rather hunted their way back to the settled districts. The former stayed for another idle week at Cedar Creek; and then the brothers were again alone, to pursue their strife with the forest.

It went on, with varying success, till 'the moon of the snow crust,' as the Ojibbeways poetically style March. A chaos of fallen trunks and piled logs lay for twenty-five acres about the little shanty; Robert was beginning to understand why the French Canadians called a cleared patch 'un desert,' for beyond doubt the axe had a desolating result, in its present stage.

'Why, then, Masther Robert, there's one thing I wanted to ax you,' said Andy, resting a moment from his chopping: 'it's goin' on four months now since we see a speck of green, an' will the snow ever be off the ground agin, at all, at all?'

'You see the sun is only just getting power enough to melt,' returned his master, tracing with his axe-head a furrow in the thawing surface.

'But, sure, if it always freezes up tight agin every evenin', that little taste of meltin' won't do much good,' observed Andy. 'Throth, I'm fairly longin' to see that lake turn into wather, instead ov bein' as hard as iron. Sure the fish must all be smothered long ago, the crathurs, in prison down there.'

'Well, Andy, I hope they'll be liberated next month. Meanwhile the ice is a splendid high road. Look there.'

From behind a wooded promontory, stretching far into the lake, at the distance of about half a mile from where they were chopping, emerged the figure of a very tall Indian, wrapped in a dark blanket and carrying a gun. After him, in the stately Indian file, marched two youths, also armed; then appeared a birchen traineau, drawn by the squaw who had the honour of being wife and mother respectively to the preceding copper-coloured men, and who therefore was constituted their beast of burden. A girl and a child—future squaws—shared the toil of pulling along the family chattels, unaided by the stalwart lords of the creation stalking in front.

'Why, thin, never welcome their impidence, an' to lave the poor women to do all the hard work, an' they marchin' out forenenst 'em like three images, so stiff an' so sthraight, an' never spakin' a word. I'm afeard it's here they're comin.' An' I give ye my word she has a child on her back, tied to a boord; no wondher for 'em to be as stiff as a tongs whin they grows up, since the babies is rared in that way.'

Not seeming to heed the white men, the Indians turned into a little cove at a short distance, and stepped ashore. The woman-kind followed, pulling their traineau with difficulty over the roughnesses of the landing place; while husband and sons looked on tranquilly, and smoked 'kinne-kanik' in short stone pipes. The elderly squaw deposited her baby on the snow, and also comforted herself with a whiff; certain vernacular conversation ensued between her and her daughters, apparently about the place of their camp, and the younger ones set to work clearing a patch of ground under some birch trees. Mrs. Squaw now drew forth a hatchet from her loaded sledge, and chopped down a few saplings, which were fixed firmly in the earth again a few yards off, so as to make an oval enclosure by the help of trees already standing.

'Throth an' I'll go an' help her,' quoth good-natured Andy, whose native gallantry would not permit him to witness a woman's toil without trying to lighten it. 'Of all the ould lazy-boots I ever see, ye're the biggest,' apostrophizing the silent stoical Indians as he passed where they lounged; 'ye've a good right to be ashamed of yerselves, so ye have, for a set of idle spalpeens.'

The eldest of the trio removed his pipe for an instant and uttered the two words—'I savage.' Andy's rhetoric had been totally incomprehensible.

'Why, then, ye needn't tell me ye're a savidge: it's as plain as a pikestaff. What'll I do with this stick, did ye say, ma'am? Oh, surra bit o' me knows a word she's sayin', though it's mighty like the Irish of a Connaught man. I wondher what it is she's tryin' to make; it resimbles the beginnin' of a big basket at present, an' meself standin' in the inside of the bottom. I can't be far asthray if I dhrive down the three where there's a gap. I don't see how they're to make a roof, an' this isn't a counthry where I'd exactly like to do 'athout one. Now she's fastenin' down the branches round, stickin' 'em in the earth, an' tyin' 'em together wid cord. It's the droll cord, never see a rope-walk anyhow.'

Certainly not; for it was the tough bast of the Canadian cedar, manufactured in large quantities by the Indian women, twisted into all dimensions of cord, from thin twine to cables many fathoms long; used for snares, fishing nets, and every species of stitching. Mrs. Squaw, like a provident housekeeper, had whole balls of it in her traineau ready for use; also rolls of birch-bark, which, when the skeleton wigwam was quite ship-shape, and well interlaced with crossbars of supple boughs, she began to wrap round in the fashion of a covering skirt.

Had crinoline been in vogue in the year 1851, Robert would have found a parallel before his eyes, in these birch-bark flounces arranged over a sustaining framework, in four successive falls, narrowing in circumference as they neared the top, where a knot of bast tied the arching timbers together. He was interested in the examination of these forest tent cloths, and found each roll composed of six or seven quadrangular bits of bark, about a yard square apiece, sewed into a strip, and having a lath stitched into each end, after the manner in which we civilised people use rollers for a map. The erection was completed by the casting across several strings of bast, weighted at the ends with stones, which kept all steady.

The male Indians now vouchsafed to take possession of the wigwam. Solemnly stalking up to Andy, the chief of the party offered his pipe to him for a puff.

'Musha thin, thank ye kindly, an' I'm glad to see ye've some notions o' civiltude, though ye do work the wife harder than is dacent.' But after a single 'draw,' Andy took the pipe in his fingers and looked curiously into its bowl. 'It's the quarest tobacco I ever tasted,' he observed: 'throth if I don't think it's nothin' but chips o' bark an' dead leaves. Here 'tis back for you, sir; it don't shute my fancy, not bein' an Indjin yet, though I dunno what I mightn't come to.' The pipe was received with the deepest gravity.

No outward sign had testified surprise or any other emotion, at the discovery that white men had settled close to their 'sugar-bush,' and of course become joint proprietors. The inscrutable sphinx-like calm of these countenances, the strangeness of this savage life, detained Robert most of the afternoon as by a sort of fascination. Andy's wrath at the male indolence was renewed by finding that the squaw and her girls had to cut and carry all the firewood needful: even the child of seven years old worked hard at bringing in logs to the wigwam. He was unaware that the Indian women hold labour to be their special prerogative; that this very squaw despised him for the help he rendered her; and that the observation in her own tongue, which was emphasized by an approving grunt from her husband, was a sarcasm levelled at the inferiority and mean-spiritedness of the white man, as exemplified in Andy's person.

One of the young fellows, who had dived into the forest an hour before, returned with spoil in the shape of a skunk, which the ever-industrious squaw set about preparing for the evening meal. The fearful odour of the animal appeared unnoticed by the Indians, but was found so hateful by Robert and his Irish squire, that they left the place immediately.



CHAPTER XXVI.

ON A SWEET SUBJECT.

This Indian family was only the precursor of half a dozen others, who also established 'camps,' preparatory to their great work of tapping the maple trees. The Wynns found them inoffensive neighbours, and made out a good deal of amusement in watching their ways.

'I'd clear 'em out of that in no time,' said Zack Bunting, 'if the land were mine. Indians hain't no rights, bein' savages. I guess they darsn't come nigh my farm down the pond—they'd be apt to cotch it right slick, I tell you. They tried to pull the wool over my eyes in the beginnin', an' wanted to be tappin' in my bush as usual, but Zack Buntin' warn't the soft-headed goney to give in, I tell you. So they vamosed arter jest seein' my double-barrel, an' they hain't tried it on since. They know'd I warn't no doughface.'

'Well, I mean to let them manufacture as much sugar as they want,' said Robert; 'there's plenty for both them and me.'

'Rights is rights,' returned Zack, 'as I'd soon show the varmints if they dar'st come near me. But your Britisher Government has sot 'em up altogether, by makin' treaties with 'em, an' givin' 'em money, an' buyin' lands from 'em, instead of kickin' 'em out as an everlastin' nuisance.'

'You forget that they originally owned the whole continent, and in common justice should have the means of livelihood given to them now,' said Robert. 'It is not likely they'll trouble the white man long.'

'I see yer makin' troughs for the sap,' observed Zack. 'What on airth, you ain't never hewin' 'em from basswood?'

'Why not?'

''Cos 'twill leak every single drop. Yer troughs must be white pine or black ash; an' as ye'll want to fix fifty or sixty on 'em at all events, that half-dozen ain't much of a loss.'

'Couldn't they be made serviceable anyhow?' asked Robert, unwilling quite to lose the labour of his hands.

'Wal, you might burn the inside to make the grain closer: I've heerd tell on that dodge. If you warn't so far from the "Corner," we could fix our sugar together, an' make but one bilin' of it, for you'll want a team, an' you don't know nothin' about maples.' Zack's eyes were askance upon Robert. 'We might 'most as well go shares—you give the sap, an' I the labour,' he added. 'I'll jest bring up the potash kettle on the sled a Monday, an' we'll spill the trees. You cut a hundred little spouts like this: an' have you an auger? There now, I guess that's fixed.'

But he turned back after a few yards to say—'Since yer hand's in, you 'most might jest as well fix a score troughs for me, in case some o' mine are leaked:' and away he went.

'That old sharper will be sure to have the best of the bargain,' thought Robert. 'It's just his knowledge pitted against my inexperience. One satisfaction is that I am learning every day.' And he went on with his troughs and spouts until near sundown, when he and Arthur went to look at the Indian encampment, and see what progress was being made there.

'I can't imagine,' said the latter, 'why the tree which produces only a watery juice in Europe should produce a diluted syrup in Canada.'

'Holt said something of the heat of the March sun setting the sap in motion, and making it sweet. You feel how burning the noon is, these days.'

'That's a statement of a fact, but not an explanation,' said the cavilling Arthur. 'Why should a hot sun put sugar in the sap?'

Robert had no answer, nor has philosophy either.

The Indians had already tapped their trees, and placed underneath each orifice a sort of rough bowl, for catching the precious juice as it trickled along a stick inserted to guide its flow. These bowls, made of the semicircular excrescences on a species of maple, serve various uses in the cooking line, in a squaw's menage, along with basins and boxes of the universally useful birchen bark. When the sap has been boiled down into syrup, and clarified, it is again transferred to them to crystallize, and become solid in their keeping.

An Indian girl was making what is called gum-sugar, near the kettles: cutting moulds of various shapes in the snow, and dropping therein small quantities of the boiling molasses, which cooled rapidly into a tough yellowish substance, which could be drawn out with the fingers like toffy. Arthur much approved of the specimen he tasted; and without doubt the sugar-making was a sweetmeat saturnalia for all the 'papooses' in the camp. They sat about on the snow in various attitudes, consuming whole handfuls and cakes of the hot sweet stuff, with rather more gravity, but quite as much relish, as English children would display if gifted with the run of a comfit establishment.

'Did you ever see anything like their solemnity, the young monkeys!' said Arthur. 'Certainly the risible faculties were left out in the composition of the Indian. I wonder whether they know how to laugh if they tried?'

'Do you know,' said Robert, 'Holt says that Indian mythology has a sort of Prometheus, one Menabojo, who conferred useful arts upon men; amongst others, this art of making maple-sugar; also canoe-building, fishing, and hunting.'

'A valuable and original genius,' rejoined Arthur; 'but I wonder what everybody could have been doing before his advent, without those sources of occupation.'

Zack and his team arrived two mornings subsequently.

'Wal, Robert, I hope you've been a clearin' yer sugar-bush, an' choppin' yer firewood, all ready. Last night was sharp frosty, an' the sun's glorious bright to-day—the wind west, too. I hain't seen a better day for a good run o' sap this season. Jump on the sled, Arthur—there's room by the troughs.'

'No, thank you,' said the young man haughtily, marching on before with his auger. He detested Zack's familiar manner, and could hardly avoid resenting it.

'We're worth some punkins this mornin', I guess,' observed Zack, glancing after him. 'He'll run his auger down instead of up, out o' pure Britisher pride an' contrariness, if we don't overtake him.'

Arthur was just applying the tool to the first tree, when he heard Zack's shout.

'The sunny side! Fix yer spile the sunny side, you goney.'

Which term of contempt did not contribute to Arthur's good humour. He persisted in continuing this bore where he had begun; and one result was that, at the close of the day, the trough underneath did not contain by a third as much as those situate on the south side of the trees.

'It ain't no matter o' use to tap maples less than a foot across. They hain't no sugar in 'em,' said Zack, among his other practical hints. 'The older the tree, the richer the sap. This 'ere sugar bush is as fine as I'd wish to tap: mostly hard maple, an' the right age. Soft maple don't make nothing but molasses, hardly—them with whitish skin; so you are safe to chop 'em down.'

The little hollow spouts drained, and the seventy troughs slowly filled, all that livelong day in the sunny air; until freezing night came down, and the chilled sap shrank back, waiting for persuasive sunbeams to draw its sweetness forth again. Zack came round with his team next afternoon, emptied all the troughs into one big barrel on his sled, and further emptied the barrel into the huge kettle and pot which were swung over a fire near the shanty, and which he superintended with great devotion for some time.

'I could not have believed that the trees could spare so much juice,' observed Robert. 'Are they injured by it, Bunting?'

'I ha' known a single maple yield a matter o' fifty gallons, an' that not so big a one neither,' was the reply. 'An' what's more, they grow the better for the bleedin'. I guess you hadn't none of this sort o' sugar to hum in England?'

'Not a grain: all cane sugar imported.'

'Wal, you Britishers must be everlastin' rich,' was Zack's reply. 'An' I reckon you don't never barter, but pays hard cash down? I wish I'd a good store somewhar in your country, Robert: I guess I'd turn a profit.'



CHAPTER XXVII.

A BUSY BEE.

'We'd ha' best sugar off the whole lot altogether,' Zack had said, and being the only one of the makers who knew anything about the manufacture, he was permitted to prescribe the procedure. The dark amber-coloured molasses had stood and settled for some days in deep wooden troughs, before his other avocations, of farmer and general storekeeper at the 'Corner,' allowed him to come up to the Cedars and give the finishing touch.

A breathless young Bunting—familiarly known as Ged, and the veriest miniature of his father—burst into the shanty one day during dinner—a usual visiting hour for members of his family.

'Well, Ged, what do you want?'

'Uncle Zack'll be here first thing in the mornin' to sugar the syrup, and he says yo're to have a powerful lot o' logs ready chopped for the fires,' was the message. 'I guess I thought I'd be late for dinner,' the boy added, with a sort of chuckle, 'but I ain't;' and he winked knowingly.

'Well,' observed Arthur, laughing, 'you Yankees beat all the world for cool impudence.'

'I rayther guess we do, an' fur most things else teu,' was the lad's reply, with his eyes fixed on the trencher of bear's meat which Andy was serving up for him. 'Don't you be sparing of the pritters—I'm rael hungry:' and with his national celerity, the viands disappeared.

When the meal was ended, Robert, as always, returned thanks to God for His mercies, in a few reverent words. The boy stared.

'I guess I hain't never heerd the like of that 'afore,' he remarked. 'Sure, God ain't nowhar hereabouts?'

Robert was surprised to find how totally ignorant he was of the very rudiments of the Christian faith. The name of God had reached his ear chiefly in oaths; heaven and hell were words with little meaning to his darkened mind.

'I thought a Methodist minister preached in your father's big room once or twice a year,' observed Robert, after some conversation.

'So he do; but I guess we boys makes tracks for the woods; an' besides, there ain't no room for us nowhar,' said Ged.

Here I may just be permitted to indicate the wide and promising field for missionary labour that lies open in Canada West. No fetters of a foreign tongue need cramp the ardent thought of the evangelist, but in his native English he may tell the story of salvation through a land large as half a dozen European kingdoms, where thousands of his brethren according to the flesh are perishing for want of knowledge. A few stray Methodists alone have pushed into the moral wilderness of the backwoods; and what are they among so many? Look at the masses of lumberers: it is computed that on the Ottawa and its tributaries alone they number thirty thousand men; spending their Sabbaths, as a late observer has told us, in mending their clothes and tools, smoking and sleeping, and utterly without religion. Why should not the gospel be preached to these our brothers, and souls won for Christ from among them?

And in outlying germs of settlements like the 'Corner,' which are the centre of districts of sparse population, such ignorance as this of young Bunting's, though rare elsewhere in Canada or the States, is far from uncommon among the rising generation.

Zack arrived with the ox-sled at the time appointed, and Ged perched on it.

'Just look at the pile of vessels the fellow has brought to carry away his share of the molasses and sugar,' said Arthur, as the clumsy vehicle came lumbering up. ''Twas a great stroke of business to give us all the trouble, and take all the advantage to himself—our trees, our fires, nothing but the use of his oxen as a set-off.'

The advantage was less than Arthur supposed; for maples are not impoverished by drainage of sap, and firewood is so abundant as to be a nuisance. But for Zack's innate love of even the semblance of overreaching, he might have discerned that his gain in this transaction was hardly worth the pains.

'Wal, Robert, you ha' poured off the molasses into the kettles; an' now fur the clarifyin'. I knowed as how ye had nothen' fit—milk, nor calf's blood, nor eggs, nor nothen'—so I brought up the eggs, an' when we're settlin' shares they kin be considered.'

'The old sharper!' muttered Arthur.

'I'm afeerd like they're beat up already,' said Mr. Bunting, picking them gingerly out of his pockets, 'though I made Ged drive a purpose. But that near ox has a trick of stickin' over stumps, an' I had obliged to cut a handspike to him. I declar' if they ain't all whole arter all, 'cept one.' He smashed them into a wooden bowl half full of molasses, and beat them up with a chip, then emptied the contents into the kettles, stirring well. Hung over a slow fire, from a pole resting on two notched posts, the slight simmering sound soon began; and on the top of the heated fluid gathered a scum, which Zack removed. After some repetitions of this skimming, and when the molasses looked bright and clear, Mr. Bunting asked for a bit of fat bacon.

'Which can be considered when we're dividing shares,' said Arthur, handing it to him a few minutes afterwards. A glance was Zack's reply, as he strung the bacon on a cord, and hung it below the rim, within two inches of the boiling surface.

'Indeed,' quoth Robert, looking on at the operation of this expedient for preventing the spilling over of the molasses, 'I wonder some cleaner mode of keeping the boiling within bounds has not been invented.'

'The Scotchman Davidson cools with a run of cold sap, out of a little spout an' a keg; but them notions don't suit me nohow; the bit o' bacon fixes it jest as right. By the way, did you hear that his farm is took? By a Britisher gentleman—I'm told an officer, too; I guess he'll want to back out o' the bush faster than he got in, ef he's like the most of 'em. I know'd some o' the sort, an' they never did a cent's worth o' good, hardly, though they was above bein' spoke to. 'Tain't a location for soft hands an' handsome clothes, I guess; an' I declar ef I don't think I ever saw gentlemen Britishers git along so remarkably smart as yerselves: but ye hain't been above work, that's a fact.'

The Wynns were glad enough of the prospect of a new neighbour of the educated class; for, more than once or twice, the total absence of congenial society in any sense of the word had been felt as a minor privation. Robert foresaw that when with future years came improved means and enlarged leisure, this need would be greater. Zack thought the new settlers ought to try and arrive before spring thaw.

'Yer own logging-bee might be 'bout that time, Robert,' he observed, while he narrowly watched his kettles and their incipient sugar. 'The fallow looks ready for burnin', I guess.'

'Yes, 'tis nearly all chopped and piled; but I'm more anxious to have a raising-bee for my new house. The logging can wait for a couple of months, Davidson tells me.'

'Wal, you'll want considerable of whisky for the teu,' observed Zack briskly; 'all the "Corner" 'll be sure to come, an' raise yer house off the ground right slick at onst. A frame-house, I calc'late?'

'Clapboarded and painted, if I can, Mr. Bunting.'

'Now I don't want ever to hear of no better luck than I had in gittin' that consignment of ile an' white lead t'other day. Jest the very thing fur you, I guess!'

Robert did not seem similarly struck by the coincidence.

'Any one but Zack would have melted away long ago over that roaring fire,' said Arthur some time afterwards, withdrawing from his kettle to fan himself. 'Being a tall bag of bones, I suppose he can't dissolve readily. What's he going to do now, I wonder?'

Mr. Bunting had chipped a thin piece of wood from one of the fire logs, and wrought through it a narrow hole, inch long; this he dipped in the seething molasses, and drew it forth filled with a thin film, which he blew out with his breath into a long bubble of some tenacity.

'Thar! 'tis sugared at last,' said he, jerking aside the chip; 'an' now fur the pans.'

By a remarkable clairvoyance, just at this juncture various younger members of the Bunting family made their appearance in the sugar-bush; and as fast as Uncle Zack poured forth the sweet stuff into the tins and shallow wooden vessels placed to receive it, did half-a-dozen pilfering hands abstract portions to dip in the snow and devour. Zack's remonstrances and threats were of no avail, and whenever he made a dash towards them, they dispersed in all directions 'quick as wink.'

'Ef I ketch you, Ged, you'll know the defference of grabbin' a pound out of this 'ere tin, I guess, you young varmint!'

''Taint so kinder aisy to catch a 'coon, Uncle Zack,' was the lad's rejoinder from the fork of a birch where he had taken refuge, and sucked his stolen goods at ease. Similar raids harassed the long line of cooling tins, and not all the efforts of the sugar-makers at mounting guard could protect them, until the guerilla corps of youngsters became in some degree surfeited, and slid away through the woods as they had come. Meanwhile, the best part of a stone of the manufacture had vanished.

'Them are spry chaps, I reckon,' was the parent's reflection, with some pride in their successful free-booting, though he had opposed its details.

'I would teach them to be honest, Mr. Bunting;' which speech only evoked a laugh.

'Now I guess you're riled 'cos they ran away with yer sugar, jest as ef 'twarn't more mine than yourn.'

This was unpromising as portended the division into shares, wherein Robert was overreached, as he knew he should be; but he comforted himself by the reflection that next year he should be able to do without his odious assistant, and that for this summer he had housekeeping-sugar enough. He utterly refused to enter into any coalition for the making of vinegar or beer. Towards the close of the sap season he tapped a yellow birch, by his Scotch neighbour's advice, drew from it thirty gallons in three days, boiled down that quantity into ten gallons, and set it to ferment in a sunny place, with a little potato yeast as the exciting cause. Of course the result was immensely too much vinegar for any possible household needs, considering that not even a cucumber bed was as yet laid out in the embryo garden.

But now April, 'the moon for breaking the snow-shoes,' in Ojibbeway parlance, was advancing; patches of brown ground began to appear under the hot sunlight, oozy and sloppy until the two-feet depth of frost was gradually exhaled. The dwellers in the shanty had almost forgotten the look of the world in colours, for so many months had it slept in white array. Robert could have kissed the earliest knot of red and blue hepaticas which bloomed at the base of a log-heap. But he looked in vain for that eldest child of an English spring, 'the wee modest crimson-tipped' daisy, or for the meek nestling primrose among the moss. And from the heaven's blue lift no music of larks poured down; no twitter of the chaffinch or whistle of the thrush echoed from the greening woods. Robert thought the blue-bird's voice a poor apology for his native songsters.

He had, indeed, little time for any reflections unconnected with hard work. The cedar swamp was shrinking before his axe, and yielding its fragrant timbers for the future house. From early morning till late at night the three men never ceased labour except for short meals; having, as their object and reward, the comfort of those dear ones who would arrive in July or August at farthest.

The existing shanty was to be retained as kitchen, and a little room could be railed off the end as a place for stores. Four apartments would constitute the new house, one of them to be a sitting room for the mother and Linda. How easy to build and furnish in fancy; how difficult in fact! Yet the raising-bee accomplished a great deal, though the Yankee storekeeper was discomfited to find that Davidson of Daisy Burn had undertaken the guidance of the hive; he sulked somewhat in consequence, and also because the consumption of spirits was not, as he had contemplated, to intoxication. Robert was backed by his sturdy Scottish neighbour in that resolve; and the more sensible of the workers could not but approve.

Four walls and roof were put together by the joint-stock labour of the day. Standing in the vacant doorway, Robert looked over the moonlit view of woods and islanded lake well pleased.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

OLD FACES UPON NEW NEIGHBOURS.

Now, while Arthur devoted himself chiefly to the interior carpentering, Robert burned and cleared a patch of fallow to be a garden. Their good friend Hiram Holt, among his other useful gifts, had sent with them in the waggon a stock of young apple trees, which had lain all winter half buried in a corner of the hut, to be grubbed up in spring and planted out in rows four rods apart. Beds of potatoes and turnips, set at the edges with pumpkin seeds and squares of Indian corn, filled the garden space in an orderly manner before the end of May; then rail fences sprang up about it, and the first bit of forest was fairly reclaimed.

During breakfast one morning, Andy rushed in, proclaiming that a raft was in sight on the lake, 'one 'most as big as a five-acre field,' he said. This proved rather an imaginative description on Andy's part, like many other of his verbal sketches; for the raft was infantine compared with its congeners of the great lake and the St. Lawrence. A couple of bonds lashed together—that was all; and a bond containeth twenty cribs, and a crib containeth a variable amount of beams, according to lumberers' arithmetical tables. Arthur recognised his acquaintance, the Scotch foreman, pacing the deck; he hailed the unwieldy craft, and shipped himself aboard for a voyage to the 'Corner,' where he had business at the store.

'Wid a horn in front, an' a tail behind, there it goes,' observed Andy, in allusion to the long oars projecting from rowlocks at each end. 'An' now, Masther Robert, what'll become o' that in the rapids below the sawmill? Sure 'twill be batthered in pieces, an' the water so mighty coorse intirely there; enough to make chaneys of any raft.'

''Twill be taken asunder, and the cribs sent down separately over the falls,' replied Mr. Wynn.

Arthur saw the operation by and by, and the hardy raftsmen shooting the rapids in what appeared to him circumstances of exciting peril. While he and all the disengaged dwellers at the 'Corner' were as yet looking on, a waggon came in sight from among the trees, and turned their curiosity into another channel.

Gradually it drew near, stumbling among the stumps and ruts, with all sorts of language applied to the oxen. Arthur thought he had formerly seen that figure marching by the off-wheel. That peculiar gentleman-like and military air, even shouldering a handspike, could not be mistaken.

'I guess as how 'tis the Britisher officer as has took Davidson's betterments,' said 'cute Zack; 'an' thar's womanfolks behind the waggon afoot. Wal, now, but I say I do pity them Britisher ladies a-coming into the bush—them that hain't never in their hull life as much as baked a biscuit. I ha' seen the like o' such in Montreal—delicate critters, that you wouldn't hardly think knowed the use of a fryin'-pan when they see'd it, an' couldn't lift one if they was to git a handful o' dollars. I guess these ain't much betterer nohow.'

It was a homily on the appearance of Edith Armytage and the child Jay picking their steps along after the waggon; while within, on hampers and boxes, stretched heavily, lay their brother, taking things easy by means of sleep. The captain's salute to Arthur was most cordial.

'So, my dear young friend! What most fortunate fate has thrown us together again? A very pleasant freak of destiny, truly. I left you last with an uncomfortable old gentleman, who was particularly obstinate in his opinions about the seignorial system, as I remember. He was right, my young friend, in condemning that system, eh? Perfectly right. I left it in disgust. Incompatible with a British officer's feelings, eh?'

Here his monologue was disturbed by little Jay's running up to Arthur very joyously. 'I told Edith we should meet you. I knew we should. And how is Robert and your funny servant? Ah, I am very glad!'

'Jane, my dear, I have repeatedly told you not to be so boisterous,' put in her father. 'Go back, and walk with your sister Edith.'

The little girl tried to withdraw her hand and obey, though with a wistful look; but Arthur detained it, and went with her the few steps to meet Miss Armytage:

'Edith, are you not glad? They all live at Cedar Creek, quite close to Daisy Burn, and we can see them every day; and he says Daisy Burn is a very nice place'—

'I have had some experience of children,' began Captain Armytage stiffly, 'but one so talkative as Jane I have seldom met. You should correct her, Edith, my dear.' For the man's voice was what he wished to hear. Edith's hand was most gently laid on the dear little sister's arm as a caution; but at this juncture both gentlemen were obliged to press forward and help the oxen out of some critical situations, and Jay could whisper her delight and her anticipations without fear of reprimand for a few minutes at least.

Then, when the waggon brought up in front of Mr. Bunting's store, young Armytage woke up with a mighty yawn and stretch to declare that bush travelling was the greatest bore—would they ever reach the farm? And he thereupon arose to the exertion of kindling his pipe.

'Nonsense, Wynn, can that be you? Glad to see some face I know among these endless trees. They're nearly as sickening to me as waves to a fellow in his first voyage. Hope the farm has been well cleared of them. You know the ground, eh?'

'Not all cleared by any means; but if you had to take the axe in hand as we have'—

'Gentlemen, are you going to liquor?' said Zack in a persuasive tone, marshalling the way into his bar. 'Almeria, tell your ma to bring here some of her best beer to treat these gentlemen—partic'lar friends. Be spry, will you?'

The tawny black-eyed young lady answering to the above high-sounding cognomen returned in a few moments with a jug, whence her father poured forth three horn goblets of dark fluid. Arthur, through superior knowledge not touching his, was highly amused by the grimaces of the others. Indeed, the captain had swallowed a huge gulp of it before he realized fully its strange flavour, and then could but sputter and scour his moustache and lips with his handkerchief. Mr. Bunting looked on with exemplary gravity.

'Thar! I told th' ole woman that spruce beer ain't so good as usual this brewin'.'

'Good! the vilest compound. A fir-tree steeped in a stagnant pool!' exclaimed the irate captain, with considerable warmth of colouring. 'Bring me something, sirrah, to take away the odious taste—anything you like.'

Mr. Bunting obeyed with alacrity. Arthur left father and son over their pipes and glasses, and went outside to join Miss Armytage and Jay, who had declined various overtures to enter the store, and were the cynosure of all eyes in the 'Corner' as they walked to and fro on the stumpless strip of ground in the place—a fair child and a pale girl. Presently forth came the captain.

'Edith, my dear,' he said blandly, 'I may be detained here for half an hour; I find that mine host, Mr. Bunting, has a very exact knowledge of the locality to which we are going. I think you both might be going on with the waggon; your brother will follow in a minute or so when his smoke is finished, he says. Driver, you may go forward; au revoir, Edith.'

He kissed the tips of his fingers to his daughter gallantly, and passed into the bar again with a jaunty air.

'If you will allow me to accompany you,' said Arthur, seeing that she hesitated, 'you will do me a kindness, for I have rather a large pack to carry going home; I can rest it on the waggon; and Daisy Burn is more than half-way to Cedar Creek.'

'Did I not tell you we would find out Arthur and Robert?' said the child Jay, with an ecstatic clasp of her fingers upon young Wynn's. 'You said you were afraid we should have no friends in the woods, but I knew that God would not let us be so forsaken as that.'

And the three walked on into the long vista of the concession line.



CHAPTER XXIX.

ONE DAY IN JULY.

A summer more glorious than our settlers could have imagined, followed on the steps of the tardy spring. What serene skies—what brilliant sunshine—what tropical wealth of verdure! At every pore the rich earth burst forth into fruit and flower. Two months after the grass had been sunk deep beneath the snow, sheets of strawberries were spread in the woods, an extemporized feast.

One might think that the cottage at Cedar Creek had also bloomed under the fair weather; for when July—hottest of Canadian months—came, the dingy wooden walls had assumed a dazzling white, with a roof so grey that the shingles might have been veritable slates. Resemblance to the lime-washed houses of home was Robert's fancy; which, in Zack Bunting's mind, was a perverted taste, as he recommended a brilliant green groundwork, picked out with yellow, such canary-bird costume being favourite in Yankee villages.

The few feet of garden railed off in front are filled with bushes of the fragrant Canadian wild-rose; yellow violets, lobelias, and tiger-lilies, transplanted thither from the forest glades, appear to flourish. The brothers had resolved that Linda should not miss her flower-beds and their gentle care even in bush-life.

For the rest, the clearing looks wild enough, notwithstanding all civilising endeavours. That mighty wall of trees has not been pushed back far, and the debris of the human assault, lying on the soil in vast wooden lengths, seems ponderous even to discouragement. Robert has been viewing it all through stranger eyes for the last week, since he heard the joyful news that they for whom he has worked have landed at Montreal; he has been putting finishing touches wherever he could, yet how unfinished it is!

To-day Andy alone is in possession; for his young masters have gone to meet the expected waggon as far as Peter Logan's—nay, to Greenock if necessary. He has abundance of occupation for the interval; first, to hill up a patch of Indian corn with the hoe, drawing the earth into little mounds five or six inches high round each stalk; and after that, sundry miscellaneous duties, among which milking the cow stands prominent. She is enjoying herself below in the beaver meadow, while the superior animal, Andy, toils hard among the stumps, and talks to himself, as wont.

'Why, thin, I wondher what th' ould masther 'ull say to our clearin', an' how he'll take to the life, at all, at all; he that niver did a hand's turn yet in the way of business, only 'musin' himself wid papers an' books as any gintleman ought; how he'll stand seein' Masther Robert hoein' and choppin' like a labourin' man? More be token, it's little o' that thim pair down at Daisy Burn does. I b'lieve they 'spect things to grow ov thimselves 'athout any cultivatin'. An' to see that poor young lady hillin' the corn herself—I felt as I'd like to bate both the captin an' his fine idle son—so I would, while I could stand over 'em.'

He executed an aerial flourish with his hoe, and the minute after, found practical occupation for it in chasing two or three great swine who were poking at the fence, as if they longed for the sweet young cornstalks within. Whence the reader may perceive that Mr. Wynn had become proprietor of certain items of live stock, including sundry fowls, which were apt to keep all parties in exhilarating exercise by their aggressions on the garden.

'Musha, but 'tis very hot intirely,' soliloquized Andy, returning from the aggravated stern-chase of the swine, and lifting his grass hat to fan his flushed face. 'The sun don't know how to obsarve a madium at all in this counthry, as our poor ould Irish sun does. We're aither freezin' or fryin' the year round.' Hereupon, as reminded by the last-named experience, he threw down his hoe, and went to settle the smouldering fires in the fallow, where one or two isolated heaps of brush were slowly consuming, while their bluish smoke curled up lazily in the still air. 'It's quare to think of how lonesome I am this minnit,' continued he, as he blackened himself in ministering to the heaps. 'Sorra livin' sowl to spake to nearer than the captin's, barrin' the cow, an' the pigs, an' thim savidges down at the swamp.'

Here he made an infuriate swing backwards of a bush, fortunately in his hand; but it was against no Indian foe; on the contrary, his own shoulders received the blow, and another to make sure; whereby an individual enemy was pasted to the spot where its proboscis had pierced shirt and skin, and half-a-dozen others saved themselves by flight—being the dreaded black flies of Canada.

'Why, thin, ye murtherin' villins, will ye follow me into the smoke itself?' said Andy, whirling his bush in the air to disperse their squadrons. 'I thought ye wor satisfied wid most atin' us last week, an' blindin' the young gintlemin, an' lavin' lumps on their faces as big as hazel nuts. Betune yerselves an' the miss kitties, it's hard for a man to do a sthroke of work, wid huntin' ye. Ay, ye may well moo, ye crathur below in the meadow, that has only horns an' a tail to fight 'em. An' sure, may be 'tain't the cow at all that's roarin', only one of them big frogs that bellows out of the swamp, for all the world as if they was bullocks.'

To settle the question, he walked away down to the beaver meadow, now an expanse of the most delicious level green, and found that the cow had protected herself against all winged adversaries by standing in the creek up to her throat in the cool water, where she chewed the cud tranquilly, and contemplated with an impassive countenance the construction of a canoe at a little distance by two red men and their squaws. Andy paused and looked on likewise.

One woman was stripping a large white birch of its bark with a sharp knife; she scraped away the internal coating as a tanner would scrape leather, and laid the pieces before the other squaw, whose business was to stitch them together with bast. The men meanwhile prepared a sausage-shaped framework of very thin cedar ribs, tying every point of junction with firm knots; for the aforesaid bast is to the Indian what glue and nails are to the civilised workman.

'Throth, only for the birch threes I dunno what they'd do; for out of it's skin they make houses, an' boats, an' pots to bile vittles, an' candles to burn, an' ornaments like what Mr. Robert has above.' A pause, as he watched the bark turned over the ribs, and wedge-shaped pieces cut out to prevent awkward foldings near the gunwale—all carried on in solemn silence. 'Well, there's no manner of doubt but savages are great intirely at houldin' their tongues; sure, may be it's no wondher, an' their langidge the quare sort it is, that they don't want to spake to each other but as little as they can help.'

Here the nearest Indian raised his head, and appeared to listen to a distant sound; a low word or two attracted the attention of the others, who also listened, and exchanged a few sentences, with a glance at Andy, whose curiosity was roused; and he asked, chiefly by signs, what it was all about.

'Oxen—waggon,' was the reply; 'me hear driver. White man no have long ears.'

Andy fled with precipitation to his neglected duties, while the red men laughed their low quiet laugh, knowing that the waggon they heard could not reach Cedar Creek in less than an hour.

But at last it came. At last Linda, pressing eagerly forward upon Robert's arm, had caught a first glimpse of their cottage home, and exclaimed, 'O Bob, how pretty! Why, you told me it was a rough sort of a place; how very pretty!'

'Well, you can't deny that the place is rough,' said he, after a pause of much satisfaction; 'look at the log-heaps—as tangled as a lady's work-basket.'

'Never mind the log-heaps; the house is neat enough for a picture; and the view! what a lovely placid lake! what islands! what grand woods!'

Linda's speech was nothing but interjections of admiration for the next half-hour; she would be charmed with every handiwork of the dear brothers who had wrought so hard for them. And how were these repaid for that past toil, by the sweet mother's smile as she entered the neat little parlour, and was established in the rocking-chair which Arthur had manufactured and cushioned with exceeding pains! The other furniture was rather scholastic, it is true, being a series of stools and a table, set upon rushen matting of Indian make; the beams overhead were unceiled, and the hearth necessarily devoid of a grate. But the chimney space—huge in proportion to the room—was filled with fragrant and graceful forest boughs; and through the open casement window (Arthur had fitted the single sash on hinges, doorwise) looked in stray sprays of roses, breathing perfume. Mrs. Wynn was well satisfied with her exile at that moment, when she saw the loving faces of her sons about her again, in the home of their own raising.

A most joyful reunion! yet of that gladness which is near akin to tears. Robert would not give anybody a minute to think, or to grow sad. His father and George must walk with him all round the clearing and down to the beaver meadow. His acres of spring-burned fallow, his embryo garden, his creek and its waterfalls, must be shown off as separate articles of the exhibition.

'Bob, what are these?' The old gentleman stopped before an expanse of blackened stumps, among which a multitude of molehills diversified the soil.

'Potatoes, sir. That's the Canadian way of raising them on new land—in hills of five thousand to the acre. You see ridges would be out of the question, or any even system of culture, on account of the stumps and roots.'

'I suppose so,' said Mr. Wynn drily; 'such ground must certainly require a peculiar method of working. I daresay you find it incumbent on you to forget all your Irish agriculture.'

'Well, I had a good deal to unlearn,' answered Robert. 'I hoped to have had our logging-bee before your arrival, and then the farm would have looked tidier; but I could not manage it.'

'Do you mean to say the trees stood as thick here as they do there? If so, you have done wonders already,' said his father. 'My poor boys, it was killing work.'

'Not at all, sir,' contradicted Robert right cheerily; 'I enjoyed it after the first few weeks, as soon as I began to see my way. We've been quite happy this winter in the woods, though bush-life was so new and strange.'

'It seems to me simply to mean a permanent descent into the ranks of the labouring classes, without any of the luxuries of civilisation such as an English artisan would enjoy,' said the old gentleman.

'Except the luxury of paying neither rent nor taxes,' rejoined Robert promptly.

'You seem to have been carpenter, house-painter, wood-cutter, ploughman'—

'No, sir; there isn't a plough on the premises, and I shouldn't know what to do with it if there were.'

'Had you no assistance in all this?'

'Oh yes; invaluable help in Jacques Dubois, a lively little French Canadian from the "Corner," whose indomitable esprit was worth more than the stronger physique of a heavy Anglo-Saxon. But come, sir, I hear the dinner bell.'

Which was the rattling of a stick on an invalided kettle, commonly used by Andy to summon his masters home. To impress the new arrivals with a sense of their resources, a feast, comprising every accessible delicacy, had been prepared. Speckled trout from the lake, broiled in the hot wood ashes, Indian fashion; wild-fowl of various species, and wild fruits, cooked and au naturel, were the components.

'I hardly thought that you would have found time for strawberry cultivation,' observed Mr. Wynn the elder.

'And we have far more extensive strawberry beds, sir, than I ever saw in Ireland,' said Robert, with a twinkle of his eyes. 'I'm thinking of turning in the pigs to eat a few pailfuls; they are quite a drug for abundance.'

'A raspberry tart!' exclaimed Linda, 'and custards! Why, Bob!'

'Would you like to know a secret?'—followed by a whisper.

'Nonsense! not you!'

They seemed to have other secrets to tell by and by, which required the open air. The eleven months last gone past had brought many changes to both. And there they walked to and fro on the margin of the forest, until the moon's silver wheel rolled up over the dusk trees, and lit Cedar Creek gloriously.

'What pure and transparent air!' exclaimed Linda, coming back to the present from the past. 'Is your moonlight always laden with that sweet aromatic odour?'

'Don't you recognise balm of Gilead? Your greenhouse and garden plant is a weed here. Our pines also help in the fragrance you perceive.'

'Robert, I know that the red patches burning steadily yonder are the stumps you showed me; but the half circular rings of fire, I don't understand them.'

'The niggers round the trunks of some trees,' explained Robert. 'That's a means we use for burning through timber, and so saving axe-work. Do you notice the moving light in the distance, on the lake? It comes from a pine-torch fixed in the bow of a canoe, by which an Indian is spearing fish.'

'Oh, have you Indians here? how delightful! I have always so longed to see a real live red man. Are they at all like Uncas and Chingachgook? I shall pay them a visit first thing in the morning.'

'You'll be visited yourself, I imagine;' and Robert laughed. 'You don't know the sensation your arrival has caused.'



CHAPTER XXX.

VISITORS AND VISITED.

And next day Mrs. and Miss Wynn had indeed visitors. Up from the 'Corner' trundled Mrs. Zack Bunting on the ox-sled, accompanied by her son Nimrod, and by her daughter Almeria; and truly, but for the honour of bringing a vehicle, it had been better for her personal comfort to have left it at home. Dressed in the utmost finery they could command, and which had done duty on all festive occasions for years back, they lumbered up to the front door, where Linda was doing some work in the flower-beds.

'Good morning, Miss. Is your ma to hum?' said Mrs. Zack, bestowing a stare on her from head to foot. 'I'm Miss Bunting, as you may have heerd Robert speak on. This young lady is my daughter Almeria; I guess you're older than her, though she's a good spell taller. Nim, call that boy to mind the oxen while you come in, or I've a notion they'll be makin' free with Miss's flowers here.'

The boy was George Wynn, who came up slowly and superciliously in answer to Nim's shout, and utterly declined to take charge of the team, intimating his opinion that it was very good employment for 'swallow-tail' himself. Which remark alluded to the coat worn by Mr. Nimrod—a vesture of blue, with brass buttons, rendered further striking by loose nankeen continuations, and a green cravat.

How insignificant was gentle Mrs. Wynn beside the Yankee woman's portly presence! How trifling her low voice in answer to the shrill questioning! Linda cast herself into the breach (metaphorically), and directed the catechism upon herself. As for the young lady Almeria, she was quite satisfied to sit and stare with unwinking black eyes, occasionally hitching up her blue silk cape by a shrug of shoulder, or tapping the back of her faded pink bonnet against the wall, to push it on her head. Nim entered the room presently, and perched himself on the edge of a stool; but his silent stare was confined to Linda's face, now flushed prettily through the clear skin with a mixture of anger and amusement.

'I guess now, that's the latest Europe fashion in yer gown?' taking up the hem of the skirt for closer inspection. 'Half-a-dollar a yard 'twould be in Bytown, I reckon; but it's too fine for a settler's wife, Miss. You've come to the right market for a husband, I guess; gals is scarce in Gazelle township,' with a knowing smile. The crimson mounted to Linda's brow, under the conjoint influence of Nimrod's stare and also of the entrance of another person, Sam Holt, who had come with the party yesterday from Mapleton.

But in two minutes he had quietly turned the conversation, and repressed, as much as it was in man's power to do, Mrs. Bunting's interrogative propensities.

'That's a washy, good-for-nothin' woman, that Mis' Wynn,' was the visitor's judgment, as she departed in state on the ox-sled. 'The young un's spryer; but I'd like to be waitin' till they'd ha' the house clar'd up between 'em, wouldn't I? Did you see that hired help o' theirn, Almeria?'

'Yes, ma, an Irish girl, I guess. She was a-top o' the waggon yesterday.'

'So our Libby hain't no chance o' bein' took, 'less this young un should grow cockish, as 'most all Britisher helps does, when they gets a taste o' liberty. Wal, now, but I'd like to know what business them ladies has—for they're rael, an' no mistake, very different from Mis' Davidson, with her hands like graters an' her v'ice like a loon's so loud an' hard—an' you may know the rael ladies by the soft hand an' the aisy v'ice.'

Almeria rubbed her own knuckles, seeking for the symptom of gentle blood.

'What business has they,' continued Mrs. Zack, 'away down here in the bush? I guess they couldn't wash a tub o' clothes or fix a dinner for the men.'

'But they hadn't need to,' put Miss Almeria, out of sorts at finding her hand rough as a rasp. 'They've helps, an' needn't never look at a tub.' Which circumstance apparently set her in a sulk for the next mile.

Although Mrs. Davidson was failing in some ladylike requirements, as the storekeeper's wife had indicated, and also came to visit her new neighbour in a homespun suit, the very antipodes of Mrs. Zack's attire of many colours, yet her loud cheery voice and sensible face—with a possible friendship in it—were exceedingly pleasing, in contrast with the first visitor's nasal twang and 'smart' demeanour. Mrs. Wynn would like to see her often; but the Scotchwoman was thrifty and hardworking, with a large family to provide for: she could not afford to pay visits, and scarcely to receive them.

'I wadna ha' come down the day, but thinkin' mayhap ye wad be wantin' help o' some sort; an' if there's anything we could do—Sandy or me and the lads—just send your lad rinnin' up; we'll be glad eneugh. Sabbath, may be, I'd ha' time to tak' a stroll down: ye ken there's na kirk.'

Ah, it was one of Mrs. Wynn's greatest troubles in coming to the bush that there were no public means of grace, and that no sound of the church-going bell was ever heard in these solitudes.

Late in the afternoon Linda was able to find Robert, and bring him with her towards the Indian encampment. Sam Holt joined them.

'Now for my first introduction into savage life: I hope I shan't be disappointed.'

'Unreasonable expectations always are,' observed Mr. Holt. 'Don't expect to find Fenimore Cooper's model Indians. But I believe them in the main to be a fine people, honest and truthful where "civilisation" has not corrupted them.'