"No," said Simon, reaching out both his hands. "By the Lord God Almighty! No! He shall die!"

Kalmar tore open his shirt, pulled out a crucifix.

"Will you swear by God and all the saints that if I fail you will take my place?"

Simon hesitated. The boy sprang forward, snatched the crucifix from his father's hand, pressed his lips against it and said in a loud voice, "I swear, by God and all the saints."

The father started back, and for a few moments silently contemplated his boy. "What, boy? You? You know not what you say."

"I do know, father. It was my mother you left there in the snow. Some day I will kill him."

"No, no, my boy," said the father, clasping him in his arms. "You are your father's son, your mother's son," he cried. "You have the heart, the spirit, but this oath I shall not lay upon you. No, by my hand he shall die, or let him go." He stood for some moments silent, his head leaning forward upon his breast. "No," he said again, "Simon is right. This is a new land, a new life. Let the past die with me. With this quarrel you have nothing to do. It is not yours."

"I will kill him," said the boy stubbornly, "I have sworn the oath. It was my mother you left in the snow. Some day I will kill him."

"Aha! boy," said the father, drawing him close to his side, "my quarrel is yours. Good! But first he is mine. When my hand lies still in death, you may take up the cause, but not till then. You hear me?"

"Yes, father," said the boy.

"And you promise?"

"I promise."

"Now farewell, my son. A bitter fate is ours. A bitter heritage I leave you!" He sank down upon the bench, drew his boy toward him and said brokenly, "Nay, nay, it shall not be yours. I shall free you from it. In this new land, let life be new with you. Let not the shadow of the old rest upon you." He gathered the boy up in his strong arms and strained him to his breast. "Now farewell, my son. Ah! God in Heaven!" he cried, his tears raining down upon the boy's face, "must I give up this too! Ah, those eyes are her eyes, that face her face! Is this the last? Is this all? How bitter is life!" He rocked back and forward on the bench, his boy's arms tight about his neck. "My boy, my boy! the last of life I give up here! Keep faith. This," pulling out the miniature, "I would give you now, but it is all I have left. When I die I will send it to you. Your sister I give to your charge. When you are a man guard her. Now go. Farewell."

The guard appeared at the door.

"Come, you must go. Time's up," he said roughly.

"Time is up," cried the father, "and all time henceforth is useless to me. Farewell, my son!" kissing him. "You must go from me. Don't be ashamed of your father, though he may die a prisoner or wander an exile."

The boy clung fast to his father's neck, drawing deep sobbing breaths.

"Boy, boy," said the father, mingling his sobs with those of his son, "help me to bear it!"

It was a piteous appeal, and it reached the boy's heart. At once he loosened one hand from its hold, put it up and stroked his father's face as his sobs grew quiet. At the touch upon his face, the father straightened himself up, gently removed his son's clinging arm from his neck.

"My son," he said quietly, "we must be men. The men of our blood meet not death so."

Immediately the boy slipped from his father's arms and stood erect and quiet, looking up into the dark face above him watchful for the next word or sign. The father waved his hand toward the door.

"We now say farewell," he said quietly. He stooped down, kissed his son gravely and tenderly first upon the lips, then upon the brow, walked with him to the barred door.

"We are ready," he said quietly to the guard who stood near by.

The boy passed out, and gave his hand to Paulina, who stood waiting for him.

"Simon Ketzel," said Kalmar, as he bade him farewell, "you will befriend my boy?"

"Master, brother," said Simon, "I will serve your children with my life." He knelt, kissed the prisoner's hand, and went out.

That afternoon, the name of Michael Kalmar was entered upon the roll of the Provincial Penitentiary, and he took up his burden of life, no longer a man, but a mere human animal driven at the will of some petty tyrant, doomed to toil without reward, to isolation from all that makes life dear, to deprivation of the freedom of God's sweet light and air, to degradation without hope of recovery. Before him stretched fourteen long years of slow agony, with cruel abundance of leisure to feed his soul with maddening memories of defeated vengeance, with fearful anxieties for the future of those dear as life, with feelings of despair over a cause for which he had sacrificed his all.



CHAPTER IX

BROTHER AND SISTER



Before summer had gone, Winnipeg was reminded of the existence of the foreign colony by the escape from the Provincial Penitentiary of the Russian prisoner Kalmar. The man who could not be held by Siberian bars and guards found escape from a Canadian prison easy. That he had accomplices was evident, but who they were could not be discovered. Suspicion naturally fell upon Simon Ketzel and Joseph Pinkas, but after the most searching investigation they were released and Winnipeg went back to its ways and forgot. The big business men rebuilding fortunes shattered by the boom, the little business men laying foundations for fortunes to be, the women within the charmed circle of Society bound to the whirling wheel of social functions, other women outside and striving to beg, or buy, or break their way into the circle, and still other women who cared not a pin's head whether they were within or without, being sufficient for themselves, the busy people of the churches with their philanthropies, their religious activities, striving to gather into their several folds the waifs and strays that came stumbling into their city from all lands—all alike, unaware of the growing danger area in their young city, forgot the foreign colony, its problems and its needs.

Meantime, summer followed winter, and winter summer, the months and years went on while the foreign colony grew in numbers and more slowly in wealth. More slowly in wealth, because as an individual member grew in wealth he departed from the colony and went out to make an independent home for himself in one of the farming colonies which the Government was establishing in some of the more barren and forbidding sections of the country; or it may be, loving the city and its ways of business, he rapidly sloughed off with his foreign clothes his foreign speech and manner of life, and his foreign ideals as well, and became a Canadian citizen, distinguished from his cosmopolitan fellow citizen only by the slight difficulty he displayed with some of the consonants of the language.

Such a man was Simon Ketzel. Simon was by trade a carpenter, but he had received in the old land a good educational foundation; he had, moreover, a shrewd head for affairs, and so he turned his energies to business, and with conspicuous success. For in addition to all his excellent qualities, Simon possessed as the most valuable part of his equipment a tidy, thrifty wife, who saved what her husband earned and kept guard over him on feast days, saved and kept guard so faithfully that before long Simon came to see the wisdom of her policy and became himself a shrewd and sober and well-doing Canadian, able to hold his own with the best of them.

His sobriety and steadiness Simon owed mostly to his thrifty wife, but his rapid transformation into Canadian citizenship he owed chiefly to his little daughter Margaret. It was Margaret that taught him his English, as she conned over her lessons with him in the evenings. It was Margaret who carried home from the little Methodist mission near by, the illustrated paper and the library book, and thus set him a-reading. It was Margaret that brought both Simon and Lena, his wife, to the social gathering of the Sunday School and of the church. It was thus to little Margaret that the Ketzels owed their introduction to Canadian life and manners, and to the finer sides of Canadian religion. And through little Margaret it was that those greatest of all Canadianising influences, the school and the mission, made their impact upon the hearts and the home of the Ketzel family. And as time went on it came to pass that from the Ketzel home, clean, orderly, and Canadian, there went out into the foul wastes about, streams of healing and cleansing that did their beneficent work where they went.

One of these streams reached the home of Paulina, to the great good of herself and her family. Here, again, it was chiefly little Margaret who became the channel of the new life, for with Paulina both Simon and Lena had utterly failed. She was too dull, too apathetic, too hopeless and too suspicious even of her own kind to allow the Ketzels an entrance to her heart. But even had she not been all this, she was too sorely oppressed with the burden of her daily toil to yield to such influence as they had to offer. For Rosenblatt was again in charge of her household. In a manner best known to himself, he had secured the mortgage on her home, and thus became her landlord, renting her the room in which she and her family dwelt, and for which they all paid in daily labour, and dearly enough. Rosenblatt, thus being her master, would not let her go. She was too valuable for that. Strong, patient, diligent, from early dawn till late at night she toiled and moiled with her baking and scrubbing, fighting out that ancient and primitive and endless fight against dirt and hunger, beaten by the one, but triumphing over the other. She carried in her heart a dull sense of injustice, a feeling that somehow wrong was being done her; but when Rosenblatt flourished before her a formidable legal document, and had the same interpreted to her by his smart young clerk, Samuel Sprink, she, with true Slavic and fatalistic passivity, accepted her lot and bent her strong back to her burden without complaint. What was the use of complaint? Who in all the city was there to care for a poor, stupid, Galician woman with none too savoury a reputation? Many and generous were the philanthropies of Winnipeg, but as yet there was none that had to do with the dirt, disease and degradation that were too often found in the environment of the foreign people. There were many churches in the city rich in good work, with many committees that met to confer and report, but there was not yet one whose special duty it was to confer and to report upon the unhappy and struggling and unsavoury foreigner within their city gate.

Yes, there was one. The little Methodist mission hard by the foreign colony had such a committee, a remarkable committee in a way, a committee with no fine-spun theories of wholesale reform, a committee with no delicate nostril to be buried in a perfumed handkerchief when pursuing an investigation (as a matter of fact, that committee had no sense of smell at all), a committee of one, namely, John James Parsons, the Methodist missionary, and he worked chiefly with committees of one, of which not the least important was little Margaret Ketzel.

It was through Margaret Ketzel that Parsons got his first hold of Paulina, by getting hold of her little girl Irma. For Margaret, though so much her junior in years and experience, was to Irma a continual source of wonder and admiration. Her facility with the English speech, her ability to read books, her fine manners, her clean and orderly home, her pretty Canadian dress, her beloved school, her cheery mission, all these were to Irma new, wonderful and fascinating. Gradually Irma was drawn to that new world of Margaret's, and away from the old, sordid, disorderly wretchedness of her own life and home.

After much secret conference with all the Ketzels, and much patient and skilful labour on the part of the motherly Lena, a great day at length arrived for Irma. It was the day on which she discarded the head shawl with the rest of the quaint Galician attire, and appeared dressed as a Canadian girl, discovering to her delighted friends and to all who knew her, though not yet to herself, a rare beauty hitherto unnoticed by any. Indeed, when Mr. Samuel Sprink, coming in from Rosenblatt's store to spend a few hurried minutes in gorging himself after his manner at the evening meal, allowed himself time to turn his eyes from his plate and to let them rest upon the little maid waiting upon his table, the transformation from the girl, slatternly, ragged and none too clean, that was wont to bring him his food, to this new being that flitted about from place to place, smote him as with a sudden blow. He laid down the instruments of his gluttony and for a full half minute forgot the steaming stew before him, whose garlic-laden odours had been assailing his nostrils some minutes previously with pungent delight. Others, too, of that hungry gorging company found themselves disturbed in their ordinary occupation by this vision of sweet and tender beauty that flitted about them, ministering to their voracity.

To none more than to Rosenblatt himself was the transformation of Irma a surprise and a mystery. It made him uneasy. He had an instinctive feeling that this was the beginning of an emancipation that would leave him one day without his slaves. Paulina, too, would learn the new ways; then she and the girl, who now spent long hours of hard labour in his service, would demand money for their toil. The thought grieved him sore. But there was another thought that stabbed him with a keener pain. Paulina and her family would learn that they need no longer fear him, that they could do without him, and then they would escape from his control. And this Rosenblatt dreaded above all things else. To lose the power to keep in degradation the wife and children of the man he hated with a quenchless hatred would be to lose much of the sweetness of life. Those few terrible moments when he had lain waiting for the uplifted knife of his foe to penetrate his shrinking eyeballs had taken years from him. He had come back to his life older, weaker, broken in nerve and more than ever consumed with a thirst for vengeance. Since Kalmar's escape he lived in daily, hourly fear that his enemy would strike again and this time without missing, and with feverish anxiety he planned to anticipate that hour with a vengeance which would rob death of much of its sting.

So far he had succeeded only partially. Paulina and Irma he held in domestic bondage. From the boy Kalman, too, he exacted day by day the full tale of his scanty profits made from selling newspapers on the street. But beyond this he could not go. By no sort of terror could he induce Paulina to return to the old conditions and rent floor space in her room to his boarders. At her door she stood on guard, refusing admittance. Once, indeed, when hard pressed by Rosenblatt demanding entrance, she had thrown herself before him with a butcher knife in her hand, and with a look of such transforming fierceness on her face as drove him from the house in fear of his life. She was no longer his patient drudge, but a woman defending, not so much her own, as her husband's honour, a tigress guarding her young.

Never again did Rosenblatt attempt to pass through that door, but schooled himself to wait a better time and a safer path to compass his vengeance. But from that moment, where there had been merely contempt for Paulina and her family, there sprang up bitter hatred. He hated them all—the woman who was his dupe and his slave, but who balked him of his revenge; the boy who brought him the cents for which he froze during the winter evenings at the corner of Portage and Main, but who with the cents gave him fierce and fearless looks; and this girl suddenly transformed from a timid, stupid, ill-dressed Galician child, into a being of grace and loveliness and conscious power. No wonder that as he followed her with his eye, noting all this new grace and beauty, he felt uneasy. Already she seemed to have soared far beyond his sordid world and far beyond his grasp. Deep in his heart he swore that he would find means to bring her down to the dirt again. The higher her flight, the farther her fall and the sweeter would be his revenge.

"What's the matter wit you, boss? Gone back on your grub, eh?"

It was his clerk, Samuel Sprink, whose sharp little eyes had not failed to note the gloomy glances of his employer.

"Pretty gay girl, our Irma has come to be," continued the cheerful Samuel, who prided himself on his fine selection of colloquial English. "She's a beaut now, ain't she? A regular bird!"

Rosenblatt started. At his words, but more at the admiration in Samuel's eyes, a new idea came to him. He knew his clerk well, knew his restless ambition, his insatiable greed, his intense selfishness, his indomitable will. And he had good reason to know. Three times during the past year his clerk had forced from him an increase of salary. Indeed, Samuel Sprink, young though he was and unlearned in the ways of the world, was the only man in the city that Rosenblatt feared. If by any means Samuel could obtain a hold over this young lady, he would soon bring her to the dust. Once in Samuel's power, she would soon sink to the level of the ordinary Galician wife. True, she was but a girl of fifteen, but in a year or so she would be ready for the altar in the Galician estimation.

As these thoughts swiftly flashed through his mind, Rosenblatt turned to Samuel Sprink and said, "Yes, she is a fine girl. I never noticed before. It is her new dress."

"Not a bit," said Samuel. "The dress helps out, but it is the girl herself. I have seen it for a long time. Look at her. Isn't she a bird, a bird of Paradise, eh?"

"She will look well in a cage some day, eh, Samuel?"

"You bet your sweet life!" said Samuel.

"Better get the cage ready then, Samuel," suggested Rosenblatt. "There are plenty bird fanciers in this town."

The suggestion seemed to anger Samuel, who swore an English oath and lapsed into silence.

Irma heard, but heeded little. Rosenblatt she feared, Samuel Sprink she despised. There had been a time when both she and Paulina regarded him with admiration mingled with awe. Samuel Sprink had many attractions. He had always plenty of money to jingle, and had a reputation for growing wealth. He was generous in his gifts to the little girl—gifts, it must be confessed, that cost him little, owing to his position as clerk in Rosenblatt's store. Then, too, he was so clever with his smart English and his Canadian manners, so magnificent with his curled and oily locks, his resplendent jewelry, his brilliant neckties. But that was before Irma had been brought to the little mission, and before she had learned through Margaret Ketzel and through Margaret's father and mother something of Canadian life, of Canadian people, of Canadian manners and dress. As her knowledge in this direction extended, her admiration and reverence for Samuel Sprink faded.

The day that Irma discarded her Galician garb and blossomed forth as a Canadian young lady was the day on which she was fully cured of her admiration for Rosenblatt's clerk. For such subtle influence does dress exercise over the mind that something of the spirit of the garb seems to pass into the spirit of the wearer. Self-respect is often born in the tailor shop or in the costumer's parlour. Be this as it may, it is certain that Irma's Canadian dress gave the final blow to her admiration of Samuel Sprink, and child though she was, she became conscious of a new power over not only Sprink, but over all the boarders, and instinctively she assumed a new attitude toward them. The old coarse and familiar horseplay which she had permitted without thought at their hands, was now distasteful to her. Indeed, with most of the men it ceased to be any longer possible. There were a few, however, and Samuel Sprink among them, who were either too dull-witted to recognise the change that had come to the young girl, or were unwilling to acknowledge it. Samuel was unwilling also to surrender his patronising and protective attitude, and when patronage became impossible and protection unnecessary, he assumed an air of bravado to cover the feeling of embarrassment he hated to acknowledge, and tried to bully the girl into her former submissive admiration.

This completed the revulsion in Irma's mind, and while outwardly she went about her work in the house with her usual cheerful and willing industry, she came to regard her admirer and would be patron with fear, loathing, and contempt. Of this, however, Samuel was quite unaware. The girl had changed in her manner as in her dress, but that might be because she was older, she was almost a woman, after the Galician standard of computation. Whatever the cause, to Samuel the change only made her more fascinating than ever, and he set himself seriously to consider whether on the whole, dowerless though she would be, it would not be wise for him to devote some of his time and energy to the winning of this fascinating young lady for himself.

The possibility of failure never entered Samuel's mind. He had an overpowering sense of his own attractions. The question was simply should he earnestly set himself to accomplish this end? Without definitely making up his mind on this point, much less committing himself to this object, Samuel allowed himself the pleasurable occupation of trifling with the situation. But alas for Samuel's peace of mind! and alas for his self-esteem! the daily presence of this fascinating maiden in her new Canadian dress and with her new Canadian manners, which appeared to go with the dress, quite swept him away from his ordinary moorings, and he found himself tossed upon a tempestuous sea, the helpless sport of gusts of passion that at once surprised and humiliated him. It was an intolerably painful experience for the self-centred and self-controlled Samuel; and after a few months of this acute and humiliating suffering he was prepared to accept help from almost any course.

At this point Rosenblatt, who had been keeping a watchful eye upon the course of events, intervened.

"Samuel, my boy," he said one winter night when the store was closed for the day, "you are acting the fool. You are letting a little Slovak girl make a game of you."

"I attend to my own business, all the same," growled Samuel.

"You do, Samuel, my boy, you do. But you make me sorry for you, and ashamed."

Samuel grunted, unwilling to acknowledge even partial defeat to the man whom he had beaten more than once in his own game.

"You desire to have that little girl, Samuel, and yet you are afraid of her."

But Samuel only snarled and swore.

"You forget she is a Galician girl."

"She is Russian," interposed Samuel, "and she is of good blood."

"Good blood!" said Rosenblatt, showing his teeth like a snarling dog, "good blood! The blood of a murdering Nihilist jail bird!"

"She is of good Russian blood," said Samuel with an ugly look in his face, "and he is a liar who says she is not."

"Well, well," said Rosenblatt, turning from the point, "she is a Galician in everything else. Her mother is a Galician, a low-bred Galician, and you treat the girl as if she were a lady. This is not the Galician manner of wooing. A bolder course is necessary. You are a young man of good ability, a rising young man. You will be rich some day. Who is this girl without family, without dower to make you fear or hesitate? What says the proverb? 'A bone for my dog, a stick for my wife.'"

"Yes, that is all right," muttered Samuel, "a stick for my wife, and if she were my wife I would soon bring her to time."

"Ho, ho," said Rosenblatt, "it is all the same, sweetheart and wife. They are both much the better for a stick now and then. You are not the kind of man to stand beggar before a portionless Slovak girl, a young man handsome, clever, well-to-do. You do not need thus to humble yourself. Go in, my son, with more courage and with bolder tactics. I will gladly help you."

As a first result of Rosenblatt's encouraging advice, Samuel recovered much of his self-assurance, which had been rudely shattered, and therefore much of his good humour. As a further result, he determined upon a more vigorous policy in his wooing. He would humble himself no more. He would find means to bring this girl to her place, namely, at his feet.

The arrival of a Saint's day brought Samuel an opportunity to inaugurate his new policy. The foreign colony was rigidly devoted to its religious duties. Nothing could induce a Galician to engage in his ordinary avocation upon any day set apart as sacred by his Church. In the morning such of the colony as adhered to the Greek Church, went en masse to the quaint little church which had come to be erected and which had been consecrated by a travelling Archbishop, and there with reverent devotion joined in worship, using the elaborate service of the Greek rite. The religious duties over, they proceeded still further to celebrate the day in a somewhat riotous manner.

With the growth of the colony new houses had been erected which far outshone Paulina's in magnificence, but Paulina's still continued to be a social centre chiefly through Rosenblatt's influence. For no man was more skilled than he in the art of promoting sociability as an investment. There was still the full complement of boarders filling the main room and the basement, and these formed a nucleus around which the social life of a large part of the colony loved to gather.

It was a cold evening in February. The mercury had run down till it had almost disappeared in the bulb and Winnipeg was having a taste of forty below. Through this exhilarating air Kalman was hurrying home as fast as his sturdy legs could take him. His fingers were numb handling the coins received from the sale of his papers, but the boy cared nothing for that. He had had a good afternoon and evening; for with the Winnipeg men the colder the night the warmer their hearts, and these fierce February days were harvest days for the hardy newsboys crying their wares upon the streets. So the sharp cold only made Kalman run the faster. Above him twinkled the stars, under his feet sparkled the snow, the keen air filled his lungs with ozone that sent his blood leaping through his veins. A new zest was added to his life to-night, for as he ran he remembered that it was a feast day and that at his home there would be good eating and dance and song. As he ran he planned how he would avoid Rosenblatt and get past him into Paulina's room, where he would be safe, and where, he knew, good things saved from the feast for him by his sister would be waiting him. To her he would entrust all his cents above what was due to Rosenblatt, and with her they would be safe. For by neither threatening nor wheedling could Rosenblatt extract from her what was entrusted to her care, as he could from the slow-witted Paulina.

Keenly sensitive to the radiant beauty of the sparkling night, filled with the pleasurable anticipation of the feast before him, vibrating in every nerve with the mere joy of living his vigorous young life, Kalman ran along at full speed, singing now and then in breathless snatches a wild song of the Hungarian plains. Turning a sharp corner near his home, he almost overran a little girl.

"Kalman!" she cried with a joyous note in her voice.

"Hello! Elizabeth Ketzel, what do you want?" answered the boy, pulling up panting.

"Will you be singing to-night?" asked the little girl timidly.

"Sure, I will," replied the lad, who had already mastered in the school of the streets the intricacies of the Canadian vernacular.

"I wish I could come and listen."

"It is no place for little girls," said Kalman brusquely; then noting the shadow upon the face of the child, he added, "Perhaps you can come to the back window and Irma will let you in."

"I'll be sure to come," said Elizabeth to herself, for Kalman was off again like the wind.

Paulina's house was overflowing with riotous festivity. Avoiding the front door, Kalman ran to the back of the house, and making entrance through the window, there waited for his sister. Soon she came in.

"Oh, Kalman!" she cried, throwing her arms about him and kissing him, "such a feast as I have saved for you! And you are cold. Your poor fingers are frozen."

"Not a bit of it, Irma," said the boy—they always spoke in Russian, these two, ever since the departure of their father—"but I am hungry, oh! so hungry!"

Already Irma was flying about the room, drawing from holes and corners the bits she had saved from the feast for her brother. She spread them on the bed before him.

"But first," she cried, "I shall bring to the window the hot stew. Paulina," the children always so spoke of her, "has kept it hot for you," and she darted through the door.

After what seemed to Kalman a very long time indeed, she appeared at the window with a covered dish of steaming stew.

"What kept you?" said her brother impatiently; "I am starved."

"That nasty, hateful, little Sprink," she said. "Here, help me through." She looked flushed and angry, her "burnin' brown eyes" shining like blazing coals.

"What is the matter?" said Kalman, when he had a moment's leisure to observe her.

"He is very rough and rude," said the girl, "and he is a little pig."

Kalman nodded and waited. He had no time for mere words.

"And he tried to kiss me just now," she continued indignantly.

"Well, that's nothing," said Kalman; "they all want to do that."

"Not for months, Kalman," protested Irma, "and never again, and especially that little Sprink. Never! Never!"

As Kalman looked at her erect little figure and her flushed face, it dawned on him that a change had come to his little sister. He paused in his eating.

"Irma," he said, "what have you done to yourself? Is it your hair that you have been putting up on your head? No, it is not your hair. You are not the same. You are—" he paused to consider, "yes, that's it. You are a lady."

The anger died out of Irma's brown eyes and flushed face. A soft and tender and mysterious light suffused her countenance.

"No, I am not a lady," she said, "but you remember what father said. Our mother was a lady, and I am going to be one."

Almost never had the children spoken of their mother. The subject was at once too sacred and too terrible for common speech. Kalman laid down his spoon.

"I remember," he said after a few moments' silence. A shadow lay upon his face. "She was a lady, and she died in the snow." His voice sank to a whisper. "Wasn't it awful, Irma?"

"Yes, Kalman dear," said his sister, sitting down beside him and putting her arms about his neck, "but she had no pain, and she was not afraid."

"No," said the boy with a ring in his voice, "she was not afraid; nor was father afraid either." He rose from his meal.

"Why, Kalman," exclaimed his sister, "you are not half done your feast. There are such lots of nice things yet."

"I can't eat, Irma, when I think of that—of that man. I choke here," pointing to his throat.

"Well, well, we won't think of him to-night. Some day very soon, we shall be free from him. Sit down and eat."

But the boy remained standing, his face overcast with a fierce frown.

"Some day," he muttered, more to himself than to his sister, "I shall kill him."

"Not to-day, at any rate, Kalman," said his sister, brightening up. "Let us forget it to-night. Look at this pie. It is from Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and this pudding."

The boy allowed his look to linger upon the dainties. He was a healthy boy and very hungry. As he looked his appetite returned. He shook himself as if throwing off a burden.

"No, not to-night," he said; "I am not going to stop my feast for him."

"No, indeed," cried Irma. "Come quick and finish your feast. Oh, what eating we have had, and then what dancing! And they all want to dance with me," she continued,—"Jacob and Henry and Nicholas, and they are all nice except that horrid little Sprink."

"Did you not dance with him?"

"Yes," replied his sister, making a little face, "I danced with him too, but he wants me to dance with no one else, and I don't like that. He makes me afraid, too, just like Rosenblatt."

"Afraid!" said her brother scornfully.

"No, not afraid," said Irma quickly. "But never mind, here is the pudding. I am sorry it is cold."

"All right," said the boy, mumbling with a full mouth, "it is fine. Don't you be afraid of that Sprink; I'll knock his head off if he harms you."

"Not yet, Kalman," said Irma, smiling at him. "Wait a year or two before you talk like that."

"A year or two! I shall be a man then."

"Oh, indeed!" mocked his sister, "a man of fifteen years."

"You are only fifteen yourself," said Kalman.

"And a half," she interrupted.

"And look at you with your dress and your hair up on your head, and—and I am a boy. But I am not afraid of Sprink. Only yesterday I—"

"Oh, I know you were fighting again. You are terrible, Kalman. I hear all the boys talking about you, and the girls too. Did you beat him? But of course you did."

"I don't know," said her brother doubtfully, "but I don't think he will bother me any more."

"Oh, Kalman," said his sister anxiously, "why do you fight so much?"

"They make me fight," said the boy. "They try to drive me off the corner, and he called me a greasy Dook. But I showed him I am no Doukhobor. Doukhobors won't fight."

"Tell me," cried his sister, her face aglow—"but no, I don't want to hear about it. Did you—how did you beat him? But you should not fight so, Kalman." In spite of herself she could not avoid showing her interest in the fight and her pride in her fighting brother.

"Why not?" said her brother; "it is right to fight for your rights, and if they bother me or try to crowd me off, I will fight till I die."

But Irma shook her head at him.

"Well, never mind just now," she cried. "Listen to the noise. That is Jacob singing; isn't it awful? Are you going in?"

"Yes, I am. Here is my money, Irma, and that is for—that brute. Give it to Paulina for him. I can hardly keep my knife out of him. Some day—" The boy closed his lips hard.

"No, no, Kalman," implored his sister, "that must not be, not now nor ever. This is not Russia, or Hungary, but Canada."

The boy made no reply.

"Hurry and wash yourself and come out. They will want you to sing. I shall wait for you."

"No, no, go on. I shall come after."

A shout greeted the girl as she entered the crowded room. There was no one like her in the dances of her people.

"It is my dance," cried one.

"Not so; she is promised to me."

"I tell you this mazurka is mine."

So they crowded about her in eager but good-natured contention.

"I cannot dance with you all," cried the girl, laughing, "and so I will dance by myself."

At this there was a shout of applause, and in a moment more she was whirling in the bewildering intricacies of a pas seul followed in every step by the admiring gaze and the enthusiastic plaudits of the whole company. As she finished, laughing and breathless, she caught sight of Kalman, who had just entered.

"There," she exclaimed, "I have lost my breath, and Kalman will sing now."

Immediately her suggestion was taken up on every hand.

"A song! A song!" they shouted. "Kalman Kalmar will sing! Come, Kalman, 'The Shepherd's Love.'" "No, 'The Soldier's Bride.'" "No, no, 'My Sword and my Cup.'"

"First my own cup," cried the boy, pressing toward the beer keg in the corner and catching up a mug.

"Give him another," shouted a voice.

"No, Kalman," said his sister in a low voice, "no more beer."

But the boy only laughed at her as he filled his mug again.

"I am too full to sing just now," he cried; "let us dance," and, seizing Irma, he carried her off under the nose of the disappointed Sprink, joining with the rest in one of the many fascinating dances of the Hungarian people.

But the song was only postponed. In every social function of the foreign colony, Kalman's singing was a feature. The boy loved to sing and was ever ready to respond to any request for a song. So when the cry for a song rose once more, Kalman was ready and eager. He sprang upon a beer keg and cried, "What shall it be?"

"My song," said Irma, who stood close to him.

The boy shook his head. "Not yet."

"'The Soldier's Bride,'" cried a voice, and Kalman began to sing. He had a beautiful face with regular clean-cut features, and the fair hair and blue grey eyes often seen in South Eastern Russia. As he sang, his face reflected the passing shades of feeling in his heart as a windless lake the cloud and sunlight of a summer sky. The song was a kind of Hungarian "Young Lochinvar." The soldier lover, young and handsome, is away in the wars; the beautiful maiden, forced into a hateful union with a wealthy land owner, old and ugly, stands before the priest at the altar. But hark! ere the fateful vows are spoken there is a clatter of galloping hoofs, a manly form rushes in, hurls the groom insensible to the ground, snatches away the bride and before any can interfere, is off on a coal-black steed, his bride before him. Let him follow who dares!

The boy had a voice of remarkable range and clearness, and he rendered the song with a verve and dramatic force remarkable in one of his age. The song was received with wild cheers and loud demands for more. The boy was about to refuse, when through the crowding faces, all aglow with enthusiastic delight, he saw the scowling face of Rosenblatt. A fierce rage seized him. He hesitated no longer.

"Yes, another song," he cried, and springing to the side of the musicians he hummed the air, and then took his place again upon the beer keg.

Before the musicians had finished the introductory bars, Irma came to his side and entreated, "Oh, Kalman, not that one! Not that one!"

But it was as though he did not hear her. His face was set and white, his blue eyes glowed black. He stood with lips parted, waiting for the cue to begin. His audience, to most of whom the song was known, caught by a mysterious telepathy the tense emotion of the boy, and stood silent and eager, all smiles gone from their faces. The song was in the Ruthenian tongue, but was the heart cry of a Russian exile, a cry for freedom for his native land, for death to the tyrant, for vengeance on the traitor. Nowhere in all the Czar's dominions dared any man sing that song.

As the boy's strong, clear voice rang out in the last cry for vengeance, there thrilled in his tones an intensity of passion that gripped hard the hearts of those who had known all their lives long the bitterness of tyranny unspeakable. In the last word the lad's voice broke in a sob. Most of that company knew the boy's story, and knew that he was singing out his heart's deepest passion.

When the song was finished, there was silence for a few brief moments; then a man, a Russian, caught the boy in his arms, lifted him on his shoulder and carried him round the room, the rest of the men madly cheering. All but one. Trembling with inarticulate rage, Rosenblatt strode to the musicians.

"Listen!" he hissed with an oath. "Do I pay you for this? No more of this folly! Play up a czardas, and at once!"

The musicians hastened to obey, and before the cheers had died, the strains of the czardas filled the room. With the quick reaction from the tragic to the gay, the company swung into this joyous and exciting dance. Samuel Sprink, seizing Irma, whirled her off into the crowd struggling and protesting, but all in vain. After the dance there was a general rush for the beer keg, with much noise and good-natured horse play. At the other end of the room, however, there was a fierce struggle going on. Samuel Sprink, excited by the dance and, it must be confessed, by an unusual devotion to the beer keg that evening, was still retaining his hold of Irma, and was making determined efforts to kiss her.

"Let me go!" cried the girl, struggling to free herself. "You must not touch me! Let me go!"

"Oh, come now, little one," said Samuel pleasantly, "don't be so mighty stiff about it. One kiss and I let you go."

"That's right, Samuel, my boy," shouted Rosenblatt; "she only wants coaxing just a little mucher."

Rosenblatt's words were followed by a chorus of encouraging cheers, for Samuel was not unpopular among the men, and none could see any good reason why a girl should object to be kissed, especially by such a man as Samuel, who was already so prosperous and who had such bright prospects for the future.

But Irma continued to struggle, till Kalman, running to her side, cried, "Let my sister go!"

"Go away, Kalman. I am not hurting your sister. It's only fun. Go away," said Sprink.

"She does not think it fun," said the boy quietly. "Let her go."

"Oh, go away, you leetle kid. Go away and sit down. You think yourself too much."

It was Rosenblatt's harsh voice. As he spoke, he seized the boy by the collar and with a quick jerk flung him back among the crowd. It was as if he had fired some secret magazine of passion in the boy's heart. Uttering the wild cry of a mad thing, Kalman sprang at him with such lightning swiftness that Rosenblatt was borne back and would have fallen, but for those behind. Recovering himself, he dealt the boy a heavy blow in the face that staggered him for a moment, but only for a moment. It seemed as if the boy had gone mad. With the same wild cry, and this time with a knife open in his hand, he sprang at his hated enemy, stabbing quick, fierce stabs. But this time Rosenblatt was ready. Taking the boy's stabs on his arm, he struck the boy a terrific blow on the neck. As Kalman fell, he clutched and hung to his foe, who, seizing him by the throat, dragged him swiftly toward the door.

"Hold this shut," he said to a friend of his who was following him close.

After they had passed through, the man shut the door and held it fast, keeping the crowd from getting out.

"Now," said Rosenblatt, dragging the half-insensible boy around to the back of the house, "the time is come. The chance is too good. You try to kill me, but there will be one less Kalmar in the world to-night. There will be a little pay back of my debt to your cursed father. Take that—and that." As he spoke the words, he struck the boy hard upon the head and face, and then flinging him down in the snow, proceeded deliberately to kick him to death.

But even as he threw the boy down, a shrill screaming pierced through the quiet of the night, and from the back of the house a little girl ran shrieking. "He is killing him! He is killing him!"

It was little Elizabeth Ketzel, who had been let in through the back window to hear Kalman sing, and who, at the first appearance of trouble, had fled by the way she had entered, meeting Rosenblatt as he appeared dragging the insensible boy through the snow. Her shrieks arrested the man in his murderous purpose. He turned and fled, leaving the boy bleeding and insensible in the snow.

As Rosenblatt disappeared, a cutter drove rapidly up.

"What's the row, kiddie?" said a man, springing out. It was Dr. Wright, returning from a midnight trip to one of his patients in the foreign colony. "Who's killing who?"

"It is Kalman!" cried Elizabeth, "and he is dead! Oh, he is dead!"

The doctor knelt beside the boy. "Great Caesar! It surely is my friend Kalman, and in a bad way. Some more vendetta business, I have no doubt. Now what in thunder is that, do you suppose?" From the house came a continuous shrieking. "Some more killing, I guess. Here, throw this robe about the boy while I see about this."

He ran to the door and kicked it open. It seemed as if the whole company of twenty or thirty men were every man fighting. As the doctor paused to get his bearings, he saw across the room in the farthest corner, Irma screaming as she struggled in the grasp of Samuel Sprink, and in the midst of the room Paulina fighting like a demon and uttering strange weird cries. She was trying to force her way to the door.

As she caught sight of the doctor, she threw out her hands toward him with a loud cry. "Kalman—killing! Kalman—killing!" was all she could say.

The doctor thrust himself forward through the struggling men, crying in a loud voice, "Here, you, let that woman go! And you there, let that girl alone!"

Most of the men knew him, and at his words they immediately ceased fighting.

"What the deuce are you at, anyway, you men?" he continued, as Paulina and the girl sprang past him and out of the door. "Do you fight with women?"

"No," said one of the men. "Dis man," pointing to Sprink, "he mak fun wit de girl."

"Mighty poor fun," said the doctor, turning toward Sprink. "And who has been killing that boy outside?"

"It is that young devil Kalman, who has been trying to kill Mr. Rosenblatt," replied Sprink.

"Oh, indeed," said the doctor, "and what was the gentle Mr. Rosenblatt doing meantime?"

"Rosenblatt?" cried Jacob Wassyl, coming forward excitedly. "He mak for hurt dat boy. Dis man," pointing to Sprink, "he try for kiss dat girl. Boy he say stop. Rosenblatt he trow boy back. Boy he fight."

"Look here, Jacob," said Dr. Wright, "you get these men's names—this man," pointing to Sprink, "and a dozen more—and we'll make this interesting for Rosenblatt in the police court to-morrow morning."

Outside the house the doctor found Paulina sitting in the snow with Kalman's head in her lap, swaying to and fro muttering and groaning. Beside her stood Irma and Elizabeth Ketzel weeping wildly. The doctor raised the boy gently.

"Get into the cutter," he said to Paulina. Irma translated. The woman ran without a word, seated herself in the cutter and held out her arms for the boy.

"That will do," said the doctor, laying Kalman in her arms. "Now get some shawls, quilts or something for your mother and yourself, or you'll freeze to death, and come along."

The girl rushed away and returned in a few moments with a bundle of shawls.

"Get in," said the doctor, "and be quick."

The men were crowding about.

"Now, Jacob," said the doctor, turning to Wassyl, who stood near, "you get me those names and we'll get after that man, you bet! or I'm a Turk. This boy is going to die, sure."

As he spoke, he sprang into his cutter and sent his horse off at a gallop, for by the boy's breathing he felt that the chances of life were slipping swiftly away.



CHAPTER X

JACK FRENCH OF THE NIGHT HAWK RANCH



A map of Western Canada showing the physical features of the country lying between the mountains on the one side and the Bay and the Lakes on the other, presents the appearance of a vast rolling plain scarred and seamed and pitted like an ancient face. These scars and seams and pits are great lazy rivers, meandering streams, lakes, sleughs and marshes which form one vast system of waters that wind and curve through the rolls of the prairie and nestle in its sunlit hollows, laving, draining, blessing where they go and where they stay.

By these, the countless herds of buffalo and deer quenched their thirst in the days when they, with their rival claimants for the land, the Black Feet and the Crees, roamed undisturbed over these mighty plains. These waterways in later days when The Honourable the Hudson's Bay Company ruled the West, formed the great highways of barter. By these teeming lakes and sleughs and marshes hunted and trapped Indians and half-breeds. Down these streams and rivers floated the great fur brigades in canoe and Hudson's Bay pointer with priceless bales of pelts to the Bay in the north or the Lakes in the south, on their way to that centre of the world's trade, old London. And up these streams and rivers went the great loads of supplies and merchandise for the far-away posts that were at once the seats of government and the emporiums of trade in this wide land.

Following the canoe and Hudson's Bay boat, came the river barge and side-wheeler, and with these, competing for trade, the overland freighter with ox train and pack pony, with Red River cart and shagginappi.

Still later, up these same waterways and along these trails came settlers singly or in groups, the daring vanguard of an advancing civilization, and planted themselves as pleased their fancy in choice spots, in sunny nooks sheltered by bluffs, by gem-like lakes or flowing streams, but mostly on the banks of the great rivers, the highways for their trade, the shining links that held them to their kind. Some there were among those hardy souls who, severing all bonds behind them, sought only escape from their fellow men and from their past. These left the great riverways and freighting trails, and pressing up the streams to distant head waters, there pitched their camp and there, in lonely, lordly independence, took rich toll of prairie, lake and stream as they needed for their living.

Such a man was Jack French, and such a spot was Night Hawk Lake, whose shining waters found a tortuous escape four miles away by Night Hawk Creek into the South Saskatchewan, king of rivers.

The two brothers, Jack and Herbert French, of good old English stock, finding life in the trim downs of Devon too confined and wearisome for their adventurous spirits, fell to walking seaward over the high head lands, and to listening and gazing, the soft spray dashing wet upon their faces, till they found eyes and ears filled with the sights and sounds of far, wide plains across the sea that called and beckoned, till in the middle seventies, with their mother's kiss trembling on their brows and on their lips, and their father's almost stern benediction stiffening their backs, they fared forth to the far West, and found themselves on the black trail that wound up the Red River of the North and reached the straggling hamlet of Winnipeg.

There, in one of Winnipeg's homes, they found generous welcome and a maiden, guarded by a stern old timer for a father and four stalwart plain-riding brothers, but guarded all in vain, for laughing at all such guarding, the two brothers with the hot selfishness of young love, each unaware of the other's intent, sought to rifle that house of its chief treasure.

To Herbert, the younger, that ardent pirate of her heart, the maiden struck her flaming flag, and on the same night, with fearful dismay, she sought pardon of the elder brother that she could not yield him like surrender. With pale appealing face and kind blue eyes, she sought forgiveness for her poverty.

"Oh, Mr. French," she cried, "if I only could! But I cannot give you what is Herbert's now."

"Herbert!" gasped Jack with parched lips.

"And oh, Jack," she cried again with sweet selfishness, "you will love Herbert still, and me?"

And Jack, having had a moment in which to summon up the reserves of his courage and his command, smiled into her appealing eyes, kissed her pale face, and still smiling, took his way, unseeing and unheeding all but those appealing, tearful eyes and that pleading voice asking with sweet selfishness only his life.

Three months he roamed the plains alone, finding at length one sunny day, Night Hawk Lake, whose fair and lonely wildness seemed to suit his mood, and there he pitched his camp. Thence back to Winnipeg a month later to his brother's wedding, and that over, still smiling, to take his way again to Night Hawk Lake, where ever since he spent his life.

He passed his days at first in building house and stables from the poplar bluffs at hand, and later in growing with little toil from the rich black land and taking from prairie, lake and creek with rifle and with net, what was necessary for himself and his man, the Scotch half-breed Mackenzie, all the while forgetting till he could forget no longer, and then with Mackenzie drinking deep and long till remembering and forgetting were the same.

After five years he returned to Winnipeg to stand by her side whose image lived ever in his heart, while they closed down the coffin lid upon the face dearest to her, dearest but one to him of all faces in the world. Then when he had comforted her with what comfort he had to give, he set face again toward Night Hawk Lake, leaving her, because she so desired it, alone but for her aged mother, bereft of all, husband, brothers, father, who might guard her from the world's harm.

"I am safe, dear Jack," she said, "God will let nothing harm me."

And Jack, smiling bravely still, went on his way and for a whole year lived for the monthly letter that advancing civilization had come to make possible to him.

The last letter of the year brought him the word that she was alone. That night Jack French packed his buckboard with grub for his six-hundred-mile journey, and at the end of the third week, for the trail was heavy on the Portage Plains, he drove his limping broncho up the muddy Main Street of Winnipeg.

When the barber had finished with him, he set forth to find his brother's wife, who, seeing him, turned deadly pale and stood looking sadly at him, her hand pressed hard upon her heart.

"Oh, Jack!" she said at length, with a great pity in her voice,—"poor Jack! why did you come?"

"To make you a home with me," said Jack, looking at her with eyes full of longing, "and wherever you choose, here or yonder at the Night Hawk Ranch, which is much better,"—at which her tears began to flow.

"Poor Jack! Dear Jack!" she cried, "why did you come?"

"You know why," he said. "Can you not learn to love me?"

"Love you, Jack? I could not love you more."

"Can you not come to me?"

"Dear Jack! Poor Jack!" she said again, and fell to sobbing bitterly till he forgot his own grief in hers. "I love my husband still."

"And I too," said Jack, looking pitifully at her.

"And I must keep my heart for him till I see him again." Her voice sank to a whisper, but she stood bravely looking into his eyes, her two hands holding down her fluttering heart as if in fear that it might escape.

"And is that the last word?" said Jack wearily.

"Yes, Jack, my brother, my dear, dear brother," she said, "it is the last. And oh, Jack, I have had much sorrow, but none more bitter than this!" And sobbing uncontrollably, she laid herself on his breast.

He held her to him, stroking her beautiful hair, his brown hand trembling and his strong face twisting strangely.

"Don't cry, dear Margaret. Don't cry like that. I won't make you weep. Never mind. You could not help it. And—I'll—get—over it—somehow. Only don't cry."

Then when she grew quiet again he kissed her and went out, smiling back at her as he went, and for fifteen years never saw her face again.

But month by month there came a letter telling him of her and her work, and this helped him to forget his pain. But more and more often as the years went on, Jack French and his man Mackenzie sat long nights in the bare ranch house with a bottle between them, till Mackenzie fell under the table and Jack with his hard head and his lonely heart was left by himself, staring at the fire if in winter, or out of the window at the lake if in summer, till the light on the water grew red, to his great hurt in body and in soul.

One spring day in the sixteenth year, in the middle of the month of May, when Jack had driven to the Crossing for supplies, an unexpected letter met him, which gave him much concern and changed forever the even current of his life. And this was the letter:

'My dear Jack,—You have not yet answered my last, you bad boy, but you know I do not wait for answers, or you would seldom hear from me.' "And that's true enough," murmured Jack. 'But this is a special letter, and is to ask you to do a great thing for me, a very great thing. Indeed, you may not be able to do it at all.' "Indeed!" said Jack. 'And if you cannot do it, I trust you to tell me so.' "Trust me! well rather," said Jack again.

'You know something of my work among the Galicians, but you do not know just how sad it often is. They are poor ignorant creatures, but really they have kind hearts and have many nice things.' "By Jove! She'd find good points in the very devil himself!" 'And I know you would pity them if you knew them, especially the women and the children. The women have to work so hard, and the children are growing up wild, learning little of the good and much of the bad that Winnipeg streets can teach them.' "Heaven help them of their school!" cried Jack.

'Well, I must tell you what I want. You remember seeing in the papers that I sent you some years ago, the account of that terrible murder by a Russian Nihilist named Kalmar, and you remember perhaps how he nearly killed a horrid man who had treated him badly, very badly, named Rosenblatt. Well, perhaps you remember that Kalmar escaped from the penitentiary, and has not been heard of since. His wife and children have somehow come under the power of this Rosenblatt again. He has got a mortgage on her house and forces the woman to do his will. The woman is a poor stupid creature, and she has just slaved away for this man. The boy is different. He is a fine handsome little fellow, thirteen or fourteen years old, who makes his living selling newspapers and, I am afraid, is learning a great many things that he would be better without.' "Which is true of more than him," growled Jack. 'Of course, he does not like Rosenblatt. A little while ago there was a dance and, as always at the dances, that awful beer! The men got drunk and a good deal of fighting took place. Rosenblatt and a friend of his got abusing the girl. The boy flew at him and wounded him with a knife,' "And served him jolly well right," said Jack with an oath. 'and then Rosenblatt nearly killed him and threw him out in the snow. There he would have certainly died, had not Dr. Wright happened along and carried him to the hospital, where he has been ever since. The doctor had Rosenblatt up before the Court, but he brought a dozen men to swear that the boy was a bad and dangerous boy and that he was only defending himself. Fancy a great big man against a boy thirteen! Well, would you believe it, Rosenblatt escaped and laid a charge against the boy, and would actually have had him sent to jail, but I went to the magistrate and offered to take him and find a home for him outside of the city.' "Good brave little lady! I know you well," cried Jack.

'I thought of you, Jack,' "Bless your kind little heart," said Jack. 'and I knew that if you could get him you would make a man of him.' "Aha! You did!" exclaimed Jack. 'Here he is getting worse and worse every day. He is so quick and so clever, he has never been to school, but he reads and speaks English well. He is very popular with his own people, for he is a wonderful singer, and they like him at their feasts. And I have heard that he is as fond of beer as any of them. He was terribly battered, but he is all right again, and has been living with his sister and his step-mother in the house of a friend of his father's. But I have promised to get him out of the city, and if I do not, I know Rosenblatt will be after him. Besides this, I am afraid something will happen if he remains. The boy says quite quietly, but you can't help feeling that he means it, that he will kill Rosenblatt some day. It is terribly sad, for he is such a nice boy.' "Seems considerable of an angel," agreed Jack. 'I am afraid you will have to teach him a good many things, Jack, for he has some bad habits. But if he is with you and away from the bad people he meets with here, I am sure he will soon forget the bad things he has learned.' "Dear lady, God grant you may never know," said Jack ruefully.

'This is a long letter, dear Jack. How I should like to go up to Night Hawk Ranch and see you, for I know you will not come to Winnipeg, and we do not see enough of each other. We ought to, for my sake and for Herbert's too.' "Ah God! and what of me?" groaned Jack. 'I cannot begin to thank you for all your kindness. And, Jack, you must stop sending me money, for I do not need it and I will not use it, and I just keep putting what you send me in the bank for you. The Lord has given me many friends, and He never has allowed me to want.

'I shall wait two weeks, and then send you Kalman—that is his name, Kalman Kalmar, a nice name, isn't it? And he is a dear good boy; that is, he might be.' "Good heart, so might we all," cried Jack. 'But I love him just as he is.' "Happy boy." 'Wouldn't it be fine if you could make him a good man? How much he might do for his people! And if he stays here he will get to be terrible, for his father was terrible, although, poor man, it was hardly his fault.' "I surely believe in God's mercy," said poor Jack.

'This is a long rambling letter, dear Jack, but you will forgive me. I sometimes get pretty tired.' And Jack's brown lean hand closed swiftly. 'There is so much to do. But I am pretty well and I have many kind friends. So much to do, so many sick and poor and lonely. They need a friend. The Winnipeg people are very kind, but they are very busy.

'Now, my dear Jack, will you do for Kalman all you can? And—may I say it?—remember, he is just a boy. I do not want to preach to you, but he needs to be under the care of a good man, and that is why I send him to you. 'Your loving sister, 'Margaret.'

There was a grim look on Jack French's face as he finished reading the letter the second time.

"You're a good one," he said, "and you have a wise little head as well as a tender heart. Don't want to preach to me, eh? But you get your work in all the same. Two weeks! Let's see, this letter has been four weeks on the way—up to Edmonton and back! By Jove! That boy ought to be along with Macmillan's outfit. I say, Jimmy," this to Jimmy Green, who, besides representing Her Majesty in the office of Postmaster, was general store keeper and trader to the community, "when will Macmillan be in?"

"Couple of days, Jack."

"Well, I guess I'll have to wait."

And this turned out an unhappy necessity for Jack French, for when the Macmillan outfit drove up to the Crossing he was lying incapable and dead to all around, in Jimmy Green's back store.



CHAPTER XI

THE EDMONTON TRAIL



Straight across the country, winding over plains, around sleughs, threading its way through bluffs, over prairie undulations, fording streams and crossing rivers, and so making its course northwest from Winnipeg for nine hundred miles, runs the Edmonton trail.

Macmillan was the last of that far-famed and adventurous body of men who were known all through the western country for their skill, their courage, their endurance in their profession of freighters from Winnipeg to the far outpost of Edmonton and beyond into the Peace River and Mackenzie River districts. The building of railroads cut largely into their work, and gradually the freighters faded from the trails. Old Sam Macmillan was among the last of his tribe left upon the Edmonton trail. He was a master in his profession. In the packing of his goods with their almost infinite variety, in the making up of his load, he was possessed of marvellous skill, while on the trail itself he was easily king of them all.

Macmillan was a big silent Irishman, raw boned, hardy, and with a highly developed genius for handling ox or horse teams of any size in a difficult bit of road, and possessing as well a unique command of picturesque and varied profanity. These gifts he considered as necessarily related, and the exercise of each was always in conjunction with the other, for no man ever heard Macmillan swear in ordinary conversation or on commonplace occasions. But when his team became involved in a sleugh, it was always a point of doubt whether he aroused more respect and admiration in his attendants by his rare ability to get the last ounce of hauling power out of his team or by the artistic vividness and force of the profanity expended in producing this desired result. It is related that on an occasion when he had as part of his load the worldly effects of an Anglican Bishop en route to his heroic mission to the far North, the good Bishop, much grieved at Macmillan's profanity, urged upon him the unnecessary character of this particular form of encouragement.

"Is it swearing Your Riverence objects to?" said Macmillan, whose vocabulary still retained a slight flavour of the Old Land. "I do assure you that they won't pull a pound without it."

But the Bishop could not be persuaded of this, and urged upon Macmillan the necessity of eliminating this part of his persuasion.

"Just as you say, Your Riverence. I ain't hurried this trip and we'll do our best."

The next bad sleugh brought opportunity to make experiment of the new system. The team stuck fast in the black muck, and every effort to extricate them served only to imbed them more hopelessly in the sticky gumbo. Time passed on. A dark and lowering night was imminent. The Bishop grew anxious. Macmillan, with whip and voice, encouraged his team, but all in vain. The Bishop's anxiety increased with the approach of a threatening storm.

"It is growing late, Mr. Macmillan, and it looks like rain. Something must be done."

"It does that, Your Lordship, but the brutes won't pull half their own weight without I speak to them in the way they are used to."

The good man was in a sore strait. Another half hour passed, and still with no result. It was imperative that his goods should be brought under cover before the storm should break. Again the good Bishop urged Macmillan to more strenuous effort.

"We can't stay here all night, sir," he said. "Surely something can be done."

"Well, I'll tell Your Lordship, it's one of two things, stick or swear, and there's nothing else for it."

"Well, well, Mr. Macmillan," said the Bishop resignedly, "we must get on. Do as you think best, but I take no responsibility in the matter." At which Pilate's counsel he retired from the scene, leaving Macmillan an untrammelled course.

Macmillan seized the reins from the ground, and walking up and down the length of his six-horse team, began to address them singly and in the mass in terms so sulphurously descriptive of their ancestry, their habits, and their physical and psychological characteristics, that when he gave the word in a mighty culminating roar of blasphemous excitation, each of the bemired beasts seemed to be inspired with a special demon, and so exerted itself to the utmost limit of its powers that in a single minute the load stood high and dry on solid ground.

One other characteristic made Macmillan one of the most trusted of the freighters upon the trail. While in charge of his caravan he was an absolute teetotaler, making up, however, for this abstinence at the end of the trip by a spree whose duration was limited only by the extent of his credit.

It was to Mr. Macmillan's care that Mrs. French had committed Kalman with many and anxious injunctions, and it is Macmillan's due to say that every moment of that four weeks' journey was one of undiluted delight to the boy, although it is to be feared that not the least enjoyable moments in that eventful journey were those when he stood lost in admiration while his host, with the free use of his sulphurously psychological lever, pried his team out of the frequent sleughs that harassed the trail. And before Macmillan had delivered up his charge, his pork and hard tack, aided by the ardent suns and sweeping winds of the prairie, had done their work, so that it was a brown and thoroughly hardy looking lad that was handed over to Jimmy Green at the Crossing.

"Here is Jack French's boy," said Macmillan. "And it's him that's got the ear for music. In another trip he'll dust them horses out of a hole with any of us. Swear! Well, I should smile! By the powers! he makes me feel queer."

"Swear," echoed a thick voice from behind the speaker, "who's swearing?"

"Hello! Jack," said Macmillan quietly. "Got a jag on, eh?"

"Attend to your own business, sir," said Jack French, whose dignity grew and whose temper shortened with every bottle. "Answer my question, sir. Who is swearing?"

"Oh, there's nothing to it, Jack," said Macmillan. "I was telling Jimmy here that that's a mighty smart boy of yours, and with a great tongue for language."

"I'll break his back," growled Jack French, his face distorted with a scowl. "Look here, boy," he continued, whirling fiercely upon the lad, "you are sent to me by the best woman on earth to make a man of you, and I'll have no swearing on my ranch," delivering himself of which sentiment punctuated by a feu de joie of muddled oaths, he lurched away into the back shop and fell into a drunken sleep, leaving the boy astonished and for some minutes speechless.

"Is that her brother?" he asked at length, when he had found voice.

"Whose brother?" said Jimmy Green.

"Yes, boy, that's her brother," said Macmillan. "But that is not himself any more than a mad dog. Jimmy here has been filling him up," shaking his finger at the culprit, "which he had no right to do, knowing Jack French as he does, by the same token."

"Oh, come on, Mac," said Jimmy apologetically. "You know Jack French, and when he gets a-goin' could I stop him? No, nor you."

Next morning when Kalman came forth from the loft which served Jimmy Green as store room for his marvellously varied merchandise, he found that Macmillan had long since taken the trail and was by this time miles on his journey toward Edmonton. The boy was lonely and sick at heart. Macmillan had been a friend to him, and had constituted the last link that held him to the life he had left behind in the city. It was to Macmillan that the little white-faced lady who was to the boy the symbol of all that was high and holy in character, had entrusted him for safe deliverance to her brother Jack French. Kalman had spent an unhappy night, his sleep being broken by the recurring vision of the fierce and bloated face of the man who had cursed him and threatened him on the previous evening. The boy had not yet recovered from the horror and surprise of his discovery that this drunken and brutalized creature was the noble-hearted brother into whose keeping his friend and benefactress had given him. That a man should drink himself drunk was nothing to his discredit in Kalman's eyes, but that Mrs. French's brother, the loved and honoured gentleman whom she had taught him to regard as the ideal of all manly excellence, should turn out to be this bloated and foul-mouthed bully, shocked him inexpressibly. From these depressing thoughts he was aroused by a cheery voice.

"Hello! my boy, had breakfast?"

He turned quickly and beheld a tall, strongly made and handsome man of middle age, clean shaven, neatly groomed, and with a fine open cheery face.

"No, sir," he stammered, with unusual politeness in his tone, and staring with all his eyes.

It was Jack French who addressed him, but this handsome, kindly, well groomed man was so different from the man who had reeled over him and poured forth upon him his abusive profanity the night before, that his mind refused to associate the one with the other.

"Well, boy," said Jack French, "you must be hungry. Jimmy, anything left for the boy?"

"Lots, Jack," said Jimmy eagerly, as if relieved to see him clothed again and in his right mind. "The very best. Here, boy, set in here." He opened a door which led into a side room where the remains of breakfast were disclosed upon the table. "Bacon and eggs, my boy, eggs! mind you, and Hudson's Bay biscuit and black strap. How's that?"

The boy, still lost in wonder, fell to with a great access of good cheer, and made a hearty meal, while outside he could hear Jack French's clear, cheery, commanding voice directing the packing of his buckboard.

The packing of the buckboard was a business calling for some skill. In the box seat were stowed away groceries and small parcels for the ranch and for settlers along the trail. Upon the boards behind the seat were loaded and roped securely, sides of pork, a sack of flour, and various articles for domestic use. Last of all, and with great care, French disposed a mysterious case packed with straw, the contents of which were perfectly well known to the boy.

The buckboard packed, there followed the process of hitching up, —a process at once spectacular and full of exciting incident, for the trip to the Crossing was to the bronchos, unbroken even to the halter, their first experience in the ways of civilized man. Wild, timid and fiercely vicious, they were brought in from their night pickets on a rope, holding back hard, plunging, snorting, in terror, and were tied up securely in an out shed. There was no time spent in gentle persuasion. French took a collar and without hesitation, but without haste, walked quietly to the side of one of the shuddering ponies, a buckskin, and paying no heed to its frantic plunging, slipped it over his neck, keeping close to the pony's side and crowding it hard against the wall. The rest of the harness offered more difficulty. The pony went wild at every approach of the trailing straps and buckles. Kalman looked on in admiration while French, without loss of temper, without oath or objurgation, went on quietly with his work.

"Have to put a hitch on him, Jimmy, I guess," said French after he had failed in repeated attempts.

Jimmy took a thin strong line of rope, put a running noose around the pony's jaw, threw the end over its neck and back through the noose again, thus making a most cruel bridle, and gave the rope a single sharp jerk. The broncho fell back upon its haunches, and before it had recovered from its pain and surprise, French had the harness on its back and buckled into place.

The second pony, a piebald or pinto, needed no "Commache hitch," but submitted to the harnessing process without any great protest.

"Bring him along, Jimmy," said French, leading out the pinto.

But this was easier said than done, for the buckskin after being faced toward the door, set his feet firmly in front of him and refused to budge an inch.

"Touch him up behind, boy," said Green to Kalman, who stood by eager to assist.

Kalman sprang forward with a stick in his hand, dodged under the poles which formed the sides of the stall, and laid a resounding whack upon the pony's flank. There was a flash of heels, a bang on the shed wall, a plunge forward, and the pony was found clear of the shed and Kalman senseless on the ground.

"Jimmy, you eternal fool!" cried French, "hold this rope!" He ran to the boy and picked him up in his arms. "The boy is killed, and there'll be the very deuce to pay."

He laid the insensible lad on the grass, ran for a pail of water and dashed a portion of it in his face. In a few moments the boy opened his eyes with a long deep sigh, and closed them again as if in contented slumber. French took a flask from his pocket, opened the boy's mouth, and poured some of its contents between his lips. At once Kalman began to cough, sat up, and gazed around in a stupid manner upon the ponies and the men.

"He's out," he said at length, with his eyes upon the pinto.

"Out? Who's out?" cried French.

"Judas priest!" exclaimed Jimmy, using his favourite oath. "He means the broncho."

"By Jove! he is out, boy," said French, "and you are as near out as you are likely to be for some time to come. What in great Caesar's name were you trying to do?"

"He wouldn't move," said the boy simply, "and I hit him."

"Listen here, boy," said Jimmy Green solemnly, "when you go to hit a broncho again, don't take anything short of a ten-foot pole, unless you're on top of him."

The boy said nothing in reply, but got up and began to walk about, still pale and dazed.

"Good stuff, eh, Jimmy?" said French, watching him carefully.

"You bet!" said Jimmy, "genuine clay."

"It is exceptionally lucky that you were standing so near the little beast," said French to the boy. "Get into the buckboard here, and sit down."

Kalman climbed in, and from that point of vantage watched the rest of the hitching process. By skillful manoeuvring the two men led, backed, shoved the ponies into position, and while one held them by the heads, the other hitched the traces. Carefully French looked over all straps and buckles, drew the lines free, and then mounting the buckboard seat, said quietly, "Stand clear, Jimmy. Let them go." Which Jimmy promptly did.

For a few moments they stood surprised at their unexpected freedom, and uncertain what to do with it, then they moved off slowly a few steps till the push of the buckboard threw them into a sudden terror, and the fight was on. Plunging, backing, kicking, jibing, they finally bolted, fortunately choosing the trail that led in the right direction.

"Good-by, Jimmy. See you later," sang out French as, with cool head and steady hand, he directed the running ponies.

"Jumpin' cats!" replied Jimmy soberly, "don't look as if you would," as the bronchos tore up the river bank at a terrific gallop.

Before they reached the top French had them in hand, and going more smoothly, though still running at top speed. Kalman sat clinging to the rocking, pitching buckboard, his eyes alight and his face aglow with excitement. There was stirring in the boy's brain a dim and far-away memory of wild rides over the steppes of Southern Russia, and French, glancing now and then at his glowing face, nodded grim approval.

"Afraid, boy?" he shouted over the roar and rattle of the pitching buckboard.

Kalman looked up and smiled, and then with a great oath he cried, "Let them go!"

Jack French was startled. He hauled up the ponies sharply and turned to the boy at his side.

"Boy, where did you learn that?"

"What?" asked the boy in surprise.

"Where did you learn to swear like that?"

"Why," said Kalman, "they all do it."

"Who all?"

"Why, everybody in Winnipeg."

"Does Mrs. French?" said Jack quietly.

The boy's face flushed hotly.

"No, no," he said vehemently, "never her." Then after a pause and an evident struggle, "She wants me to stop, but all the men and the boys do it."

"Kalman," said French solemnly, "no one swears on my ranch."

Kalman was perplexed, remembering the scene of the previous night.

"But you—" he began, and then paused.

"Boy," repeated French with added solemnity, "swearing is a foolish and unnecessary evil. There is no swearing on my ranch. Promise me you will give up this habit."

"I will not," said the boy promptly, "for I would break my word. Don't you swear?"

French hesitated, and then as if forming a sudden resolution he replied, "When you hear me swear you can begin. And if you don't mean to quit, don't promise. A gentleman always keeps his word."

The boy looked him steadily in the eye and then said, as if pondering this remark, "I remember. I know. My father said so."

French forbore to press the matter further, but for both man and boy an attempt at a new habit of speech began that day.

Once clear of the Saskatchewan River, the trail led over rolling prairie, set out with numerous "bluffs" of western maple and poplar, and diversified with sleughs and lakes of varying size, a country as richly fertile and as fair to look upon as is given the eyes of man to behold anywhere in God's good world. In the dullest weather this rolling, tree-decked, sleugh-gemmed prairie presents a succession of scenes surpassingly beautiful, but with a westering sun upon it, and on a May day, it offers such a picture as at once entrances the soul and lives forever in the memory. The waving lines, the rounded hills, the changing colour, the chasing shadows on grass and bluff and shimmering water, all combine to make in the soul high music unto God.

For an hour and more the buckboard hummed along the trail smooth and winding, the bronchos pulling hard on the lines without a sign of weariness, till the bluffs began to grow thicker and gradually to close into a solid belt of timber. Beyond this belt of timber lay the Ruthenian Colony but newly placed. The first intimation of the proximity of this colony came in quite an unexpected way. Swinging down a sharp hill through a bluff, the bronchos came upon a man with a yoke of oxen hauling a load of hay. Before their course could be checked the ponies had pitched heavily into the slow moving and terrified oxen, and so disconcerted them that they swerved from the trail and upset the load. Immediately there rose a volley of shrill execrations in the Galician tongue.

"Whoa, buck! Steady there!" cried Jack French cheerily as he steered his team past the wreck. "Too bad that, we must go back and help to repair damages."

He tied the bronchos securely to a tree and went back to offer aid. The Galician, a heavily-built man, was standing on the trail with a stout stake in his hand, viewing the ruins of his load and expressing his emotions in voluble Galician profanity with a bad mixture of halting and broken English. Kalman stood beside French with wrath growing in his face.

"He is calling you very bad names!" he burst out at length.

French glanced down at the boy's angry face and smiled.

"Oh, well, it will do him good. He will feel better when he gets it all out. And besides, he has rather good reason to be angry."

"He says he is going to kill you," said Kalman in a low voice, keeping close to French's side.

"Oh! indeed," said French cheerfully, walking straight upon the man. "That is awkward. But perhaps he will change his mind."

This calm and cheerful front produced its impression upon the excited Galician.

"Too bad, neighbour," said French in a loud, cheerful tone as he drew near.

The Galician, who had recovered something of his fury, damped to a certain extent by French's calm and cheerful demeanour, began to gesticulate with his stake. French turned his back upon him and proceeded to ascertain the extent of the wreck, and to advise a plan for its repair. As he stooped to examine the wagon for breakages, the wrathful Galician suddenly swung his club in the air, but before the blow fell, Kalman shrieked out in the Galician tongue, "You villain! Stop!"

This unexpected cry in his own speech served at once to disconcert the Galician's aim, and to warn his intended victim. French, springing quickly aside, avoided the blow and with one stride he was upon the Galician, wrenched the stake from his grasp, and, taking him by the back of the neck, faced him toward the front wheels of the wagon, saying, as he did so, "Here, you idiot! take hold and pull."

The strength of that grip on his neck produced a salutary effect upon the excited Galician. He stood a few moments dazed, looking this way and that way, as if uncertain how to act.

"Tell the fool," said French to Kalman quietly, "to get hold of those front wheels and pull."

The boy stood amazed.

"Ain't you going to lick him?" he said.

"Haven't time just now," said French cheerfully.

"But he might have killed you."

"Would have if you hadn't yelled. I'll remember that too, my boy. But he didn't, and he won't get another chance. Tell him to take hold and pull."

Kalman turned to the subdued and uncertain Galician, and poured forth a volume of angry abuse while he directed him as to his present duty. Humbly enough the Galician took hold, and soon the wagon was put to rights, and after half an hour's work, was loaded again and ready for its further journey.

By this time the man had quite recovered his temper and stood for some time after all was ready, silent and embarrassed. Then he began to earnestly address French, with eager gesticulations.

"What is it?" said French.

"He says he is very sorry, and feels very bad here," said Kalman, pointing to his heart, "and he wants to do something for you."

"Tell him," said French cheerfully, "only a fool loses his temper, and only a cad uses a club or a knife when he fights."

Kalman looked puzzled.

"A cat?"

"No, a cad. Don't you know what a cad is? Well, a cad is—hanged if I know how to put it—you know what a gentleman is?"

Kalman nodded.

"Well, the other thing is a cad."

The Galician listened attentively while Kalman explained, and made humble and deprecating reply.

"He says," interpreted Kalman, "that he is very sorry, but he wants to know what you fight with. You can't hurt a man with your hands."

"Can't, eh?" said French. "Tell him to stand up here to me."

The Galician came up smiling, and French proceeded to give him his first lesson in the manly art, Kalman interpreting his directions.

"Put up your hands so. Now I am going to tap your forehead."

Tap, tap, went French's open knuckles upon the Galician's forehead.

"Look out, man."

Tap, tap, tap, the knuckles went rapping on the man's forehead, despite his flying arms.

"Now," said French, "hit me."

The Galician made a feeble attempt.

"Oh, don't be afraid. Hit me hard."

The Galician lunged forward, but met rigid arms.

"Come, come," said French, reaching him sharply on the cheek with his open hand, "try better than that."

Again the Galician struck heavily with his huge fists, and again French, easily parrying, tapped him once, twice, thrice, where he would, drawing tears to the man's eyes. The Galician paused with a scornful exclamation.

"He says that's nothing," interpreted Kalman. "You can't hurt a man that way."

"Can't, eh? Tell him to come on, but to look out."

Again the Galician came forward, evidently determined to land one blow at least. But French, taking the blow on his guard, replied with a heavy left-hander fair on the Galician's chest, lifted him clear off his feet and hurled him breathless against his load of hay. The man recovered himself, grinning sheepishly, nodding his head vigorously and talking rapidly.

"That is enough. He says he would like to learn how to do that. That is better than a club," interpreted Kalman.

"Tell him that his people must learn to fight without club or knife. We won't stand that in this country. It lands them in prison or on the gallows."

Kalman translated, his own face fiery red meanwhile, and his own appearance one of humiliation. He was wondering how much of his own history this man knew.

"Good-by," said French, holding out his hand to the Galician.

The man took it and raised it to his lips.

"He says he thanks you very much, and he wishes you to forget his badness."

"All right, old man," said French cheerfully. "See you again some day."

And so they parted, Kalman carrying with him an uncomfortable sense of having been at various times in his life something of a cad, and a fear lest this painful fact should be known to his new master and friend.

"Well, youngster," said French, noticing his glum face, "you did me a good turn that time. That beggar had me foul then, sure enough, and I won't forget it."

Kalman brightened up under his words, and without further speech, each busy with himself, they sped along the trail till the day faded toward the evening.

But the Edmonton trail that day set its mark on the lives of boy and man,—a mark that was never obliterated. To Kalman the day brought a new image of manhood. Of all the men whom he knew there was none who could command his loyalty and enthral his imagination. It is true, his father had been such a man, but now his father moved in dim shadow across the horizon of his memory. Here was a man within touch of his hand who illustrated in himself those qualities that to a boy's heart and mind combine to make a hero. With what ease and courage and patience and perfect self-command he had handled those plunging bronchos! The same qualities too, in a higher degree, had marked his interview with the wrathful and murderous Galician, and, in addition, all that day Kalman had been conscious of a consideration and a quickness of sympathy in his moods that revealed in this man of rugged strength and forceful courage a subtle something that marks the finer temper and nobler spirit, the temper and the spirit of the gentleman. Not that Kalman could name this thing, but to his sensitive soul it was this in the man that made appeal and that called forth his loyal homage.

To French, too, the day had brought thoughts and emotions that had not stirred within him since those days of younger manhood twenty years ago when the world was still a place of dreams and life a tourney where glory might be won. The boy's face, still with its spiritual remembrances in spite of all the sordidness of his past, the utter and obvious surrender of soul that shone from his eyes, made the man almost shudder with a new horror of the foulness that twenty years of wild license upon the plains had flung upon him. A fierce hate of what he had become, an appalling vision of what he was expected to be, grew upon him as the day drew to a close. Gladly would he have refused the awful charge of this young soul as yet unruined that so plainly exalted him to a place among the gods, but for a vision that he carried ever in his heart of a face sad and sweet and eloquent with trustful love.

"No, by Jove!" he said to himself between his shut teeth, "I can't funk it. I'd be a cad if I did."

And with these visions and these resolvings they, boy and man, swung off from the Edmonton trail black and well worn, and into the half-beaten track that led to Wakota, the centre of the Galician colony.



CHAPTER XII

THE MAKING OF A MAN



Wakota, consisting of the mud-house of a Galician homesteader who owned a forge and did blacksmithing for the colony in a primitive way, they left behind half an hour before nightfall, with ten miles of bad going still before them. The trail wound through bluffs and around sleughs, dived into coulees and across black creeks, and only the most skilful handling could have piloted the bronchos through.

It was long after dark when they reached the ravine of the Night Hawk Creek, through which they must pass before arriving at the Lake. Down the sides of this ravine they zigzagged, dodging trees and boulders till they came to the last sharp pitch, at the foot of which ran the Creek. During this whole descent Kalman sat clinging to the back and side of the seat, expecting every moment to have the buckboard turn turtle over him, but when they reached the edge of the final pitch, were it not for sheer shame, he would have begged permission to scramble down on hands and knees rather than trust himself to the swaying, pitching vehicle. A moment French held his bronchos steady, poised on the brink of this rocky steep, and then reaching back, he seized the hind wheel and, holding it fast, used it as a drag, while the bronchos slid down on their haunches over the mass of gravel and rolling stones till they reached the bed of the Creek in safety. A splash through the water, a scramble up the other bank, a long climb, and they were out again on the prairie. A mile of good trail and they were at home, welcomed by the baying of two huge Russian wolf hounds.

Through the dim light Kalman could discover the outlines of what seemed a long heap of logs, but what he afterwards discovered to be a series of low log structures which did for house, stable and sheds of various kinds.