S
everal days were employed in plastering all the crevices of the shanty with clay, cutting out a doorway and a single window in the front wall, and building a hearth and chimney. But when completed, and the goods and chattels moved in, quite a proud sense of proprietorship stole into the owner's heart.
As yet, this arduous bush-life had not ceased to be as it were a play: Sam Holt's cheery companionship took the edge off every hardship; and their youthful health and strength nourished under toil.
'Now, considering we are to be dependent on ourselves for furniture, the best thing I can fashion in the first instance will be a work bench,' said Arthur, whose turn for carpentering was decided. 'Little I ever thought that my childish tool-box was educating me for this.'
'I think a door ought to be your first performance,' suggested Robert. 'Our mansion would be snugger with a door than a screen of hemlock brush.'
'But I must go to the "Corner" for boards, and that will take an entire day, the road is so vile. Ican't see why I couldn't hew boards out of a pine myself; eh, Holt?'
'You want to try your hand at "slabbing," do you? I warn you that the labour is no joke, and the planks never look so neat as those from the sawmill.'
'We have flung "looks" overboard long ago,' replied Arthur. 'Come, teach me, like a good fellow.'
'Choose your tree as clean and straight in the grain as possible.'
'And how am I to tell how its grain runs?' asked the pupil.
'Experiment is the only certainty; but if the tree be perfectly clear of knots for thirty or forty feet, and its larger limbs drooping downwards, so as to shelter the trunk in a measure from the influence of the sun, these are presumptions in favour of the grain running straight.'
'What has the sun to do with it?'
'The grain of most trees naturally inclines to follow the annual course of the sun. Hence its windings, in great measure. Having selected and felled your pine, cut it across into logs of the length of plank you want.'
'But you said something of experiment in deciding about the grain of the wood.'
'Oh, by cutting out a piece, and testing it with the axe, to see whether it splits fair. When you have the logs chopped, mark the ends with a bit of charcoal into the width of your planks: then slab them asunder with wedges.'
'Holt, where did you pick up such a variety of knowledge as you have?'
'I picked up this item among the lumber-men.You must know I spent more than one long vacation in exploring the most-out-of-the-way locations I could find. But I'd advise you to go to the sawmill for your planks, though I do understand the theory of slabbing.'
After due consideration—and as glass for the window was a want for which the forest could supply no substitute—it was agreed that all should take a half-holiday next day, and go down to the 'Corner' to Uncle Zack's store.
'Now that is settled,' said Robert, with a little difficulty, 'I wanted to say—that is, I've been thinking—that we are here in the wilderness, far away from all churches and good things of that kind, and we ought to have prayers of our own every evening, as my mother has at home.'
'Certainly,' said both Arthur and Sam Holt.
'I have never so felt the presence of God,' added Robert solemnly, 'as since I've been in these forest solitudes; never so felt my utter dependence upon Him for everything.'
'No,' rejoined Sam. 'He seems to draw very near to the soul in the midst of these His grand works. The very stillness exalts one's heart towards Him.'
And so that good habit of family worship was commenced, inaugurating the shanty that very night. Andy Callaghan sat by and listened.
'Throth, but they're fine words,' said he. 'I wouldn't believe any one now, that that book is bad to listen to.'
'And at home you'd run away from the sight of it. How's that, Andy?' asked Mr. Wynn.
'It's aisy explained, sir,' replied the servant, lookingdroll. 'Don't you see, I haven't his riverence at me elbow here, to turn me into a goat if I did anything contrary, or to toss me into purgatory the minit the breath is out of my poor body.'
Thousands of Andy's countrymen find the same relief to their consciences as soon as they tread the free soil of Canada West.
Truly a primitive settlement was the 'Corner.' The dusk forest closed about its half dozen huts threateningly, as an army round a handful of invincibles. Stumps were everywhere that trees were not; one log-cabin was erected upon four, as it had been, legs ready to walk away with the edifice. 'Uncle Zack's' little store was the most important building in the place, next to the sawmill on the stream.
'The situation must be unhealthy,' said Robert; 'here's marsh under my very feet. Why, there's a far better site for a town plot on my land, Holt.'
'Ay, and a better water privilege too. Let me see what your energy does towards developing its resources, Robert.'
They discovered one source of the storekeeper's prosperity in the enormous price he exacted for the commonest articles. Necessity alone could have driven Arthur to pay what he did for the wretched little window of four panes to light the shanty. And Uncle Zack had as much to say about the expense and difficulty of getting goods to a locality so remote, and as much sympathizing with his purchaser because of the exorbitant cost, as if he were a philanthropist, seeking solely the convenience of his neighbours by his sales.
'That fellow's a master of soft sawder when hechooses: but did you see how he clutched the hard cash after all? My opinion is, he don't often get paid in the circulating medium,' said Arthur.
'Of that you may be sure,' rejoined Sam Holt; 'currency here lies more in potash or flour, just as they have salt in Abyssinia. Society seems to be rather mixed at the "Corner." Yonder's a French Canadian, and here's an Indian.'
No glorious red man, attired in savage finery of paint and feathers; no sculptor's ideal form, or novelist's heroic countenance; but a mild-looking person, in an old shooting jacket and red flannel shirt, with a straw hat shading his pale coppery complexion. He wield a tomahawk or march on a war trail! Never. And where was the grim taciturnity of his forefathers? He answered when spoken to, not in Mohawk, or Cherokee, or Delaware, but in nasal Yankeefied English; nay, he seemed weakly garrulous.
'There's another preconceived idea knocked on the head,' said Arthur. 'My glorious ideal Indian! you are fallen, never to rise.'
D
oor and window were fitted into the holes cut in the front wall of the shanty, and no carpenter's 'prentice would have owned to such clumsy joinery; but Arthur was flushed with success, because the door could positively shut and the window could open. He even projected tables and chairs in his ambitious imagination,en suitewith the bedstead of ironwood poles and platted bass-work bark, which he had already improvised; and which couch of honour would have been awarded by common consent to Mr. Holt, had he not adhered to the hemlock brush with all the affection of an amateur.
The great matter on the minds of our settlers now, was the underbrushing. They might calculate on the whole month of November for their work—the beautiful dreamy November of Canada, as different from its foggy and muddy namesake in Britain as well may be. Measuring off thirty acres as next summer's fallow, by blazing the trees in a line around, took up the best part of a day; and it necessitated also a more thorough examination of Robert's domains. Suchgiant trees! One monarch pine must be nigh a hundred feet from root to crest. The great preponderance of maple showed that the national leaf symbol of Canada had been suitably selected.
'And is there no means,' quoth Robert, who had been mentally gauging his small axe with the infinitude of forest—'is there no means of getting rid of wood without chopping it down?'
'Well, yes, some slower means still; the trees may be "girdled;" that is, a ring of bark cut from the trunk near the base, which causes death in so far that no foliage appears next spring: consequently the tall melancholy skeleton will preside over your crops without injury.'
'Can't say I admire that plan.'
'You are fastidious. Perhaps you would like "niggers" better?'
'I thought they were contraband in any but slave states.'
'Oh, these are "niggers" inanimate—pieces of wood laid round the trunk, and set on fire where they touch it; of course the tree is burned through in process of time. These two expedients might be useful in subsidiary aids; but you perceive your grand reliance must be on the axe.'
'There is no royal road to felling, any more than to learning. And when may I hope to get rid of the stumps?'
'I don't think the pine stumps ever decay; but the hardwood, or those of deciduous trees, may be hitched up by oxen and a crowbar after six or seven years; or you might burn them down.'
'Hulloa! what's that?'
The exclamation was from Robert, following a much louder exclamation from Andy in advance. 'He has met with some wild animal,' concluded Mr. Holt. He was certainly cutting the strangest capers, and flourishing his hand as if the fingers were burned, howling the while between rage and terror.
'You disgustin' little varmint! you dirty vagabone, to stick all thim things in me hand, an' me only goin' to lay a hold on ye gentle-like, to see what sort of an outlandish baste ye was! Look, Masther Robert, what he did to me with a slap of his tail!'
Callaghan's fingers radiated handsomely with porcupine's quills, some inches long, stuck in pretty strongly and deeply; and the animal himself, quite ready for further offensive warfare, crouched in the fork of a small maple, just out of reach.
'Ah, then, come down here, you unnatural baste, an' may be I won't strip off your purty feathers,' exclaimed Andy with unction.
'Cut down the tree,' suggested Arthur. But the porcupine, being moreau faitwith the ways of the woods than these new-comers, got away among the branches into a thicket too dense for pursuit.
'They're as sharp as soords,' soliloquized the sufferer, as he picked out the quills from his hand and wrist in rather gingerly fashion, and stanched the blood that followed. 'Masther Robert, avourneen, is he a four-footed baste or a fowl? for he has some of the signs of both on him. Wisha, good luck to the poor ould counthry, where all our animals is dacent and respectable, since St. Patrick gev the huntin' to all the varmint.'
'A thrashing from a porcupine's tail would be no joke,' observed Arthur.
'I've known dogs killed by it,' said Mr. Holt. 'The quills work into all parts of their bodies, and the barbed points make extraction very difficult.'
'I believe the Indians use these in some sort of embroidery.' Robert held in his hand a bunch of the quills such as had wounded Andy's fingers. 'I've seen penholders of them, when I little thought I should handle the unsophisticated originals out here.'
Before this time he had learned how enervating were reminiscences of home; he resolutely put away the remembrance from him now, and walked on to chop the blaze on the next tree. Breast-high the mark was cut, and at one blaze another could always be discerned ahead.
'I've a regard for the beeches and elms,' quoth he, as he hacked at a hickory stem. 'They are home trees; but the shrubs have chiefly foreign faces, so I can chop them down without compunction.'
'All such sentimental distinctions will evaporate when you get into the spirit of your work,' said his friend Sam. 'Your underbrushing rule does not spare anything less than six inches in diameter; all must be cut close to the ground, and piled in heaps for the burning.'
'A tolerable job to clear such a thicket as this! What a network of roots must interlace every foot of soil!'
'Rather, I should say. But the first crop will amply repay your pains, even though your wheat and Indian corn struggle into existence through stumps and interlacing roots. Then there's the potash—thirtydollars a barrel for second quality: less than two and a half acres of hardwood timber will produce a barrel.'
'I don't quite understand.'
'Next summer, after your logging bee, you'll know what I mean. This creek is as if 'twas made on purpose for an ashery.'
'By the way, here's my site for a town plot;' as they came to a fine natural cascade over a granite barrier, after which plunge the stream hurried down the slope towards the beaver meadow. 'Water power for half a dozen mills going to waste there, Holt.'
'Let's give it a name!' sang out Arthur—'this our city of magnificent intentions.'
'I hope you won't call it Dublin on the Liffey,' said Mr. Holt. 'How I hate those imported names—sinking our nationality in a ludicrous parody on English topography—such as London on the Thames, Windsor, Whitby, Woodstock; while the language that furnished "Toronto," "Quebec," "Ottawa," lies still unexplored as a mine of musical nomenclature.'
'In default of an Indian name,' said Robert, 'let us call our future settlement after the existing fact—Cedar Creek.'
'And posterity can alter it, if it chooses,' rejoined Arthur. 'All right. Now I'll cut down this birch where the post-office is to stand hereafter;' and a few sturdy blows of his axe prostrated the young tree. 'When I'm writing to Linda, I shall date from Cedar Creek, which will give her an exalted idea of our location: at the same time she will be convinced it is situated on the seashore, if I forget to say that in Canada every stream is a "creek."'
'Our people have an absurd partiality for whatthey imagine "handsome names,"' said Mr. Holt. 'Not satisfied with giving their children the most far-fetched they can discover,—for instance, we have a maid Armenia, at Maple Grove, and I could not resist designating her brother as Ararat, by way of localizing their relationship,—but also the young settlements of the country have often the most bombastic names. In the backwoods, one time, I found a party of honest settlers in a tavern over an old romance, searching for some sufficiently high-sounding title to confer on their cluster of cabins.'
'I was amused to find that Zack Bunting's eldest son is called Nimrod, familiarized to "Nim,"' said Robert. 'I never saw a more remarkable likeness to a parent, in body and mind, than that youth exhibits; every tuft of ragged beard and every twinkle of the knowing little eyes are to match.'
Nearing the shanty they heard a sound as of one making merry, and espied in the window the glow of a glorious fire. Within, Peter Logan was making himself at home, cooking his dinner, while he trilled a Yankee ditty at the top of his powerful voice.
No manner of apology for having opened their cellar, and made free with their barrel of pork, did he seem to think necessary; but when his meal was finished, he inquired abruptly why they hadn't built their chimney of 'cats'? 'For I reckon this stick chimney will blaze up some night,' added he.
Robert hearkened at that startling intimation.
'Mine is of cats,' said Mr. Logan. 'Cats is clay,' he continued sententiously, 'kinder like straw an' clay mixed up. I guess I'll stay an' help you to fix one to-morrow, if you've a mind to.'
With rugged but real kindness, he took a day from his hunting excursion for the purpose. The framework of the new chimney was of four upright poles, set in one corner of the shanty, and laced across by rungs of wood, round which the clay was well kneaded, and plastered inside. An opening three feet high was left for the fireplace in front. Peter promised that by and by the clay would burn hard and red, like tilework.
'I wonder you have not built yourself a handsome house, before now,' said Mr. Wynn, 'instead of that handsome barn. Why you live in a shanty, while your corn is in a frame building, puzzles me.'
'Ay,' assented the settler, 'but the frame barn is paving the way for the frame house, I calculate: Benny'll have both; and for the present I'd sooner have my crops comfortable than myself;' a persuasion which Robert afterwards found to be rooted in common sense, for the Canadian climate permits not of stacks or ricks wintering in the open air.
After his usual unmannerly fashion, Mr. Logan bade no farewell, but shouldered his gun at some hour prior to daybreak, and knapsack on back, left the sleeping camp by the light of a young moon.
O
ne day it happened that about noon, while Arthur was 'brushing' at a short distance from the shanty, he noticed a pack of grouse among the underwood within shot. Dropping his axe, he ran home for the gun, which stood loaded in one corner.
It was not altogether the sportsman's organ of destructiveness (for he had never forgotten little Jay's lesson on that head), but probably a growing dislike to the constant diet of pork, that urged him to an unrelenting pursuit. Cautiously he crept through the thickets, having wafted an unavailing sigh for the pointer he had left at Dunore, his companion over many a fallow and stubble field, who would greatly have simplified this business. Unconsciously he crossed the blazed side-line of the lot into the dense cover beyond, tantalized by glimpses of game, which never came near enough for good aim. 'I must regularly stalk them,' thought Arthur.
Noiselessly creeping on, he was suddenly brought to by an unexpected sight. The head and horns of a noble buck were for a moment visible through thethicket. Arthur's heart throbbed in his ears as he stood perfectly motionless. Grouse were utterly forgotten in the vision of venison. With every sense concentrated in his eyes, he watched the brush which screened the browsing deer. By a slight crackling of twigs presently, he was made aware that the animal was moving forward; he crept in the same direction. The leaves had been damped by a shower two hours before, and the cloudy day permitted them to retain moisture, or their crispness might have betrayed his tread.
Ha! a dried stick on which he inadvertently set his foot snapped across. The splendid shy eyes of the deer looked round in alarm as he bounded away. A shot rang through the forest after him, waking such a clamour of jays and crows and woodpeckers, that Arthur was quite provoked with them, they seemed exulting over his failure. Pushing aside the dried timber which had caused this mischance, he pressed on the track of the deer impetuously. He could not believe that his shot had missed altogether, though the white tail had been erected so defiantly; which 'showing of the white feather,' as the Canadian sportsman calls it, is a sign that the animal is unwounded.
But four feet had much the advantage of two in the chase. One other glimpse of the flying deer, as he came out on the brow of a ridge, was all that Arthur was favoured with. Some partridge got up, and this time he was more successful; he picked up a bird, and turned homewards.
Homewards! After walking a hundred yards or so he paused. Had he indeed gone back on his own track? for he had never seen this clump of pinesbefore. He could not have passed it previously without notice of its sombre shade and massive boles. He would return a little distance, and look for the path his passage must have made in brushing through the thickets.
Brought to a stand again. This time by a small creek gurgling deeply beneath matted shrubs. He had gone wrong—must have diverged from his old course. More carefully than before, he retraced his way to the pine-clump, guided by the unmistakeable black plumage of the tree-tops. There he stood to think what he should do.
The sky was quite obscured: it had been so all the morning. No guidance was to be hoped for from the position of the sun. He had heard something of the moss on the trees growing chiefly at the north side; but on examination these pines seemed equally mossed everywhere. What nonsense! surely he must be close to his own path. He would walk in every direction till he crossed the track.
Boldly striking out again, and looking closely for footmarks on the soft ground, he went along some distance; here and there turned out of his straight course by a thicket too dense for penetration, till before him rose pine-tops again. Could it be? The same pines he had left!
He covered his eyes in bewilderment. Having stood on the spot for several minutes previously, he could not be mistaken. Yet he thought he could have been sure that he was proceeding in a direction diametrically opposite for the last quarter of an hour, while he must have been going round in a circle. Now, indeed, he felt that he was lost in the woods.
Poor Arthur's mind was a sort of blank for some minutes. All the trees seemed alike—his memory seemed obliterated. What horrid bewilderment had possession of his faculties? Shutting him in, as by the walls of a living tomb, the great frowning forest stood on all sides. A mariner on a plank in mid-ocean could not have felt more hopeless and helpless.
Rousing himself with a shake from the numb, chill sensation which had begun to paralyze exertion, he thought that, if he could reach the little creek before mentioned, he might pursue his course, as it probably fell into their own lake at the foot of the Cedars. Keeping the pine-tops in a right line behind him, he succeeded in striking the creek, and discovering which way it flowed. After pushing his way some hours along a path of innumerable difficulties, he found himself, in the waning light, at the edge of a cypress swamp.
Almost man though he was, he could have sat down and cried. Blackest night seemed to nestle under those matted boughs, and the sullen gleams of stagnant water—the plash of a frog jumping in—the wading birds that stalked about—told him what to expect if he went farther. At the same instant a gleam of copper sunset struck across the heavens on the tops of the evergreens, and the west was not in the direction that the wanderer had imagined; he now easily calculated that he had all this time been walkingfromhome instead of towards it.
Strange to say, a ray of hope was brought upon that sunbeam, even coupled with the conviction that he had been hitherto so wofully astray. To-morrow might be bright (and to all the wanderers in thisworld the anchor is to-morrow); he would be able to guide his course by the sun, and would come all right. He resolved to spend the night in a tree near his fire for fear of wild beasts, and selected a fine branching cedar for his dormitory. Laying his gun securely in one of the forks, and coiling himself up as snugly as possible, where four boughs radiated from the trunk, about twenty feet from the ground, he settled himself to sleep as in an arm-chair, with the great hushing silence of the forest around him. Unusual as his circumstances were, he was soon wrapt in a dreamless slumber.
Dull and slow dawned the November morning among the trees; broad daylight on their tops, when but a twilight reached the earth, sixty or eighty feet below. Arthur found himself rather stiff and chill after his unwonted night's lodging; he tried to gather up the brands of the evening's fire, which had sunk hours before into grey ashes, that he might at least warm himself before proceeding farther. Simultaneously with its kindling appeared the sun—oh, welcome sight! and shot a golden arrow aslant a line of trees. Then was revealed to Arthur the mossy secret of wood-craft, that the north side bears a covering withheld from the south; for he perceived that, viewed in the aggregate, the partial greenery on the various barks was very distinct. Examining individual trunks would not show this; but looking at a mass, the fact was evident.
Now he knew the points of the compass; but of what practical avail was his knowledge? Whether he had wandered from the shanty to the north, south, east, or west, was only conjecture. How could thatcreek have led him astray? He must have crossed the rising ground separating two watersheds—that sloping towards his own lake and towards some other. There flowed the little stream noiselessly, sucked into the swampy cypress grove: of course it got out somewhere at the other side; but as to following it any farther into the dismal tangled recesses, with only a chance of emergence in a right direction, he felt disinclined to try.
No breakfast for him but a drink of water; though with carnivorous eyes he saw the pretty speckled trout glide through the brown pool where he dipped his hand; and he crossed the creek over a fallen tree, ascending to the eastward. He could not be insensible to the beauty of nature this morning—to the majesty of the mighty forest, standing in still solemnity over the face of the earth. Magnificent repose! The world seemed not yet wakened; the air was motionless as crystal; the infinitely coloured foliage clung to maples and aspens—tattered relics of the royal raiment of summer. The olden awe overshadowed Arthur's heart; his Creator's presence permeated these sublime works of Deity. Alone in the untrodden woods, his soul recognised its God; and a certain degree of freedom from anxiety was the result. Personal effort was not his sole dependence, since he had felt that God was present, and powerful.
Still he kept on to the south-east, hoping at last to strike some of the inhabited townships; and the unvarying solidity of forest was well-nigh disheartening him, when he saw, after several miles' walking, the distinctly defined imprint of a man's foot on some clayey soil near a clump of chestnut trees. Yes, therecould be no mistake: some person had passed not long since; and though the tracks led away considerably from the south-easterly direction he had hitherto kept, he turned, without hesitation to follow them, and proceeded as rapidly as possible, in hope of overtaking the solitary pedestrian, whoever he might be. He shouted aloud, he sang some staves of various familiar old songs; but no response from other human voice came, anxiously as he listened for such echo. But the footmarks were before his eyes as tangible evidence; he had got very sharp by this time at detecting the pressure of a heel on the dead leaves, or the displacement of a plant by quick steps. The tracks must lead to something. Certainly; they led to a creek.
Impossible! It cannot be that he has followed his own footprints of yesterday! Planting his boot firmly on the bank beside the other mark, he compared the twain. A glance was enough; the impressions were identical.
The bewildered feeling of one in a labyrinth recurred. He saw nothing better for it than to return to the point whence he had diverged to follow the tracks. He now remembered having made this detour the previous day to avoid cutting his way through a dense underwood on the bank of the stream.
Nigh an hour had been lost by this delusive retracing of footmarks. He thought that if he climbed the highest tree he could find, he would be able to get a bird's-eye view of the country round. Oh that he might behold some islet of clearing amid the ocean of woods!
To reach the branches of any of the largest treeswas the difficulty; for the smooth shaft of a massive marble pillar would be as easily climbed as the trunk of some arboreal giants here, rising fifty feet clear of boughs. However, by swinging from the smaller trees he accomplished his object, and saw beneath him on all sides the vast continuity of forest.
Desert could not be lonelier nor more monotonous. No glimmer even of distant lake on the horizon; no brown spots of clearing; no variety, save the autumn coat of many colours, contrasted with sombre patches of pine. Stay—was not that a faint haze of smoke yonder? a light bluish mist floating over a particular spot, hardly moving in the still air. Arthur carefully noted the direction, and came down from his observatory on the run. He was confident there must be a trapper's fire, or a camp, or some other traces of humanity where that thin haze hung. He could not be baulked this time. Hope, which is verily a beauteous hydra in the young breast, revived again in strength. If he only had somewhat to eat, he wouldn't mind the long tramp before him. Beech-mast rather increased than appeased his hunger; and nothing came in view that could be shot.
He had not walked far, when a sharp, wild cry, as of some small animal in pain, struck his ear. Pushing away the brush at the left, he saw the cause—a little dark furry creature hanging to a sapling, as it seemed; and at his appearance the struggles to escape were redoubled, and the weakly cries of fear became more piteous. Arthur perceived that to the top of the sapling was fastened a steel snaptrap, clasping a forepaw in its cruel teeth, and that each convulsive effort to get free only set the animal dangling in theair, as a trout is played from a rod. Hopelessly snared, indeed, was the poor marten; he had not even the resource of parting with his paw, which, had he had any 'purchase' to strive against, would probably have been his choice. By what blandishments of bait he had ever been seduced into his present melancholy position was out of Arthur's power to imagine.
But now at least it was beyond all doubt that men were near. Raising his eyes from inspection of the marten-trap, he saw on a tree close by a freshly-cut blaze. Some rods farther on he could see another. Now a question arose, which way should he follow the line?—one end was probably in pathless forest. He concluded to take that direction which suited the smoke he had seen.
He wondered what blazed lino this was—whether marking the side lots of a concession, or a hunter's private road through the woods. Presently, at a little distance, the sight of a man's figure stooping almost made his heart leap into his mouth. How lonely he had been, how almost desperate at times, he had not fully known till this his deliverance. Oh, that blessed human form! be he the rudest trapper or Indian, Arthur could have embraced him. Much more when, the face being lifted from examining the trap, and fixing its eyes with a very astonished stare on the approaching figure, Arthur recognised the shrewd features of Peter Logan.
I
declar, if you hain't 'most skeered me!' was Peter's exclamation. 'For sartin I never seed a ghost, but it looked like enough this time. Now, do tell what brought you so far from hum? Thirteen mile, if it's a rod. You ain't lookin' partic'ler spry, anyhow. Now, Arthur, doen't, poor lad, doen't.'
For he could not speak during a minute or two; his arm pressed heavily on the backwoodsman's sturdy shoulder, in the effort to steady the strong trembling that shook him from head to foot like a spasm of ague.
'Lost in the bush, you war? Well, that ain't agreeable nohow exactly;' and Peter betook himself to a fumbling in his capacious pocket for a tin flask, containing some reviving fluid. 'Here, take a pull—this'll fix you all right. Warn't it wonderful that I went my road of traps when I did, instead of early this mornin'. There's a providence in that, for sartin.'
Deep in Arthur's heart he acknowledged the same truth gratefully.
'You've got a plaguy touch of ague, likely,' addedPeter considerately, willing to shift the responsibility of that trembling from the mind to the body. 'Campin' out is chill enough these nights. I han't much furder to go to the end of my blaze, and then I'll be back with you. So will you wait or come along?'
Arthur had too lately found human company to be willing to relinquish it, even with certainty of its return; he dreaded nothing so much as the same solitude whence he had just emerged; therefore he followed Peter, who over his shoulder carried a bag containing various bodies of minks, fishers, and other furry animals, snared in his traps, and subsequently knocked on the head by his tough service-rod.
That night Arthur found comfortable shelter in Peter's hut, and was initiated into many mysteries of a trapper's life by him and his half-Indian assistant. Next morning they guided him as far as a surveyor's post, on which was legibly written the names of four townships, which was the signal for the separation of the party. Arthur turned his face towards civilisation, along a blazed boundary line. The others plunged deeper into the woods, walking in the unsociable Indian file.
The blazed line went on fairly enough for some miles, over hillocks of hardwood, and across marshes of dank evergreens, where logs had been laid lengthwise for dry footing. At last Arthur thought he must be drawing near to a clearing, for light appeared through the dense veil of trees before him, as if some extensive break to the vast continuity of forest occurred beyond. Soon he stood on its verge. Ay, surely a clearing; but no human hands had been at work.
Hundreds of huge trees lay strewn about, as if they had been wrenched off their stumps by some irresistible power seizing the branched heads and hurling them to the earth. Torn up by the massy roots, or twisted round as you would try to break an obstinately tough withe, for many score of acres the wildest confusion of prostrate maples and elms and pines, heaped upon one another, locked in death-embraces, quite obliterated any track, and blocked across the country. Arthur had come upon what French Canadians call a 'renversé' effected by some partial whirlwind during the preceding summer.
Such tornadoes often crash a road of destruction through the bush for miles; a path narrow in comparison with its length, and reminding the traveller of the explosive fury of some vast projectile. The track of one has been observable for more than forty miles right through the heart of uninhabited forest.
To cross the stupendous barrier seemed impossible to Arthur. There was a tangled chaos of interlaced and withering boughs and trunks; such achevaux de frisemight stop a regiment until some slow sap cut a path through, and he was without axe, or even a large knife. He must work his way round; and yet he was most unwilling to part company with the blaze.
While hesitating, and rather ruefully contemplating the obstacle, a sound at a considerable distance struck his ear. It was—oh, joy!—the blows of an axe. Instantly he went in the direction. When near enough to be heard, he shouted. An answering hail came from the other side of the windfall; but presently he saw that an attempt had been made to log up the fallen timber in heaps, and, making his way throughthe blackened stumps of extinct fires, he reached the spot where two rough-looking men were at work with handspikes and axes.
They had built a little hut, whence a faint smoke curled, the back wall of piled logs still wearing dead branches and foliage at the ends. A reddish cur, as lawless-looking as his masters, rushed from the doorway to snap at Arthur's heels. The suspicious glances of the foresters bore hardly more welcome, till they heard that the stranger belonged to the settlers on Cedar Pond, and had simply lost his way. They informed him in return, with exceeding frankness, that they were squatters, taking possession of this strip of bush without anybody's leave, and determined to hold their own against all comers. An apparently well-used rifle lying against a log close by gave this speech considerable emphasis.
Arthur wanted nothing more from them than to be put on the surveyor's line again; and, when directed to the blaze, speedily left the sound of their axes far behind. In half an hour he reached other traces of mankind—a regularly chopped road, where the trees had been felled for the proper width, and only here and there an obstinate trunk had come down wrongly, and lay right across, to be climbed over or crept under according to the wayfarer's taste. In marshy spots he was treated to strips of corduroy; for the settled parts of the country were near.
'Holloa! Uncle Zack, is that you?'
The person addressed stood in a snake-fenced field, superintending a couple of labourers. He turned round at thehail, and stared as if he did not believe his senses.
'Wal, I guess I warn't never skeered in my life before. They're all out lookin' for you—Nim, an' the whole "Corner" bodily. Your brother's distracted ravin' mad this two days huntin' the bush; but I told him you'd be sartin sure to turn up somehow. Now, whar are you runnin' so fast? There ain't nobody to hum, an' we 'greed to fire the rifles as a signal whoever fust got tidins of you. Three shots arter another,' as young Wynn fired in the air. 'Come, quick as wink, they'll be listenin'.'
'Robert will know the report,' observed Arthur, with a smile, to think of his pleasure in the recognition, 'if he's near enough.'
'We'll make tracks for the "Corner," I guess,' said Uncle Zack with alacrity; 'that war the meetin'-place, an' you must be powerful hungry. I'd ha' been to sarch for you to-day, only them Irish fellers at the clearin' wanted lookin' arter precious bad.' ('Lucky I got in them kegs o' whisky; he'll have to stand treat for the neighbours,' thought 'cute Uncle Zack in a sort of mental parenthesis.) 'But now do tell! you must ha' gone a terrible big round, I guess. They took the Indjin out to foller your trail; them savages has noses an' eyes like hounds. We'll fire my rifle from the store; it's bigger than yourn.'
His abstraction of mind during Arthur's narrative was owing to a judicious maturing of certain plans for exacting the greatest amount of profit from the occurrence; but he contrived to interlard his listening with such appropriate interjections as, 'Now do tell! How you talk! Wal, I kinder like to know!' mentally watering his whisky the while.
Mrs. Zack, also scenting the prey afar off, was politeas that lady could be to good customers only. Arthur's impatience for the arrival of the parties from the bush hardly permitted him to do more than taste the meal she provided. Within doors he could not stay, though weary enough to want rest. The few log-cabins of the 'Corner' looked more drowsily quiet than usual; the sawmill was silent. Zack was turning over some soiled and scribbled ledgers on his counter. Suddenly a shot in the woods quite near: a detachment of the searchers had arrived.
That the rejoicing would take its usual form, an emptying of his spirit-kegs, Zack Bunting had never doubted. But the second word to the bargain, Mr. Wynn's promise to stand treat, had not been given, though it was a mere matter of form, Zack thought. Robert spoke to the neighbours, and thanked them collectively for their exertions in a most cordial manner on behalf of himself and his brother, and was turning to go home, when the Yankee storekeeper touched his elbow.
''Tain't the usual doins to let 'em away dry,' suggested he, with a meaning smile. ''Spose you stand treat now; 'twill fix the business handsome.'
That keen snaky eye of his could easily read the momentary struggle in Robert's mind between the desire not to appear singular and unfriendly, and the dislike to encouraging that whisky drinking which is the bane of working men everywhere, but most especially in the colonies. Sam Holt watched for his decision. Perhaps the knowledge of what that calm strong nature by his side would do helped to confirm Robert's wavering into bold action.
'Certainly not,' he said loudly, that all might hear.'I'll not give any whisky on any account. It ruins nine-tenths of the people. I'm quite willing to reward those who have kindly given time and trouble to help me, but it shall not be in that way.'
Zack's smoke-dried complexion became whitewashed with disappointment.
A day or two afterwards, Zack's son, Nimrod, made his appearance at the Wynns' shanty.
'I say, but you're a prime chap arter the rise you took out of the ole coon,' was his first remark. 'Uncle Zack was as sartin as I stand of five gallons gone, anyhow; and 'twar a rael balk to put him an' them off with an apology. I guess you won't mind their sayin' it's the truth of a shabby dodge, though.'
'Not a bit,' replied Robert; 'I expected something of the kind. I didn't imagine I'd please anybody but my own conscience.'
'"Conscience!"' reiterated Nim, with a sneer. 'That stock hain't a long life in the bush, I guess. A storekeeper hain't no business on it, nohow—'twould starve him out; so Uncle Zack don't keep it.' And his unpleasant little eyes twinkled again at the idea of such unwonted connection as his father and a conscience.
'That Indjin war hoppin' mad, I can tell you; for they be the greatest brutes at gettin' drunk in the univarsal world. They'll do 'most anythin' for whisky.'
'The greater the cruelty of giving it to them,' said Robert.
'What are you doin'?' asked Nimrod, after a moment's survey of the other's work.
'Shingling,' was the reply. 'Learning to make shingles.'
'An' you callthemshingles?' kicking aside, with a gesture of contempt, the uneven slices of pinewood which had fallen from Robert's tool. 'You hain't dressed the sapwood off them blocks, and the grain eats into one another besides. True for Uncle Zack that gentry from the old country warn't never born to be handlin' axes an' frows. It don't come kinder nateral. They shouldn't be no thicker than four to an inch to be rael handsome shingles,' added he, 'such as sell for seven-an'-sixpence a thousand.'
Nimrod's pertinacious supervision could not be got rid of until dinner; not even though Mr. Wynn asked him his errand in no conciliatory tone.
'Thought I'd kinder like to see how ye were gettin' on,' was the answer. 'New settlers is so precious awk'ard. Thought I'd loaf about awhile, an' see. It's sorter amusin'.'
He was so ignorantly unconscious of doing anything offensive by such gratification of his curiosity, that Robert hardly knew whether to laugh or be angry. Nimrod's thick-skinned sensibilities would have cared little for either. He lounged about, whittling sticks, chewing tobacco, and asking questions, until Andy's stentorian call resounded through the woods near.
'I guessed I'd dine with you to-day,' said Nim, marching on before his host. With equal coolness, as soon as the dish of trout appeared, he transfixed the largest with his case-knife.
'Not so fast, my friend,' interrupted Mr. Holt, bringing back the captive. 'We divide fair here, though it's not Yankee law, I'm aware.'
'Ah, you warn't born yesterday,' rejoined Nim,showing his yellow teeth, which seemed individually made and set after the pattern of his father's. 'You're a smart man, I guess—raised in Amerikay, an' no mistake.'
'But come, Andy,' said Arthur, 'tell us where you caught these fine trout? You've altogether made a brilliant effort to-day in the purveying line: the cakes are particularly good.'
'They're what them French fellers call "galettes,"' observed Nimrod, biting one. 'Flour an' water, baked in the ashes. Turnpike bread is better—what the ole gall makes to hum.'
Be it remarked that this periphrasis indicated his mother; and that the bread he alluded to is made with a species of leaven.
'So yeateturnpikes too,' remarked Andy, obliquely glancing at the speaker. 'The English language isn't much help to a man in this counthry, where everythin' manes somethin' else. Well, Misther Arthur, about the trout; you remimber I went down to the "Corner" this mornin'. Now it's been on my mind some days back, that ye'd want a few shirts washed.'
'But what has that to do with the trout'—interrupted Arthur, laughing.
'Whisht awhile, an' you'll hear. I didn't know how to set about it, no more than the child of a month old; for there's an art in it, of coorse, like in everythin' else; an' one time I thried to whiten a shirt of my own—beggin' yer honours' pardon for mintionin' the article—it kem out of the pot blacker than it wint in. So sez I to meself, "I'll look out for the clanest house, an' I'll ax the good woman to tache me how to wash a thing;" an' I walks along from the store to a nate littlecabin back from the river, that had flowers growin' in the front; an' sure enough, the floor was as clane as a dhrawin' room, an' a dacent tidy little woman kneadin' a cake on the table. "Ma'am," sez I, "I'm obliged to turn washerwoman, an' I don't know how;" but she only curtseyed, and said somethin' in a furrin tongue.'
'A French Canadian, I suppose,' said Mr. Wynn.
'Jackey Dubois lives in the log-hut with the flowers,' observed Nim, who was whittling again by way of desert.
'May be so; but at all events she was as like as two peas to the girl whose weddin' I was at since I came ashore. "Ma'am," sez I, "I want to larn to be a washerwoman:" and wid that I took off my neckerchief an' rubbed it, to show what I meant, by the rule of thumb. "Ah, to vash," sez she, smilin' like a leathercoat potato. So, afther that, she took my handkercher and washed it fornent me out; an' I'd watched before how she med the cakes, an' cleared a little space by the fire to bake 'em, an' covered them up wid hot ashes.'
'Not a word about the trout,' said Arthur.
'How can I tell everything intirely all at wanst?' replied the Irishman, with an injured tone. 'Sure I was comin' to that. I observed her lookin' partikler admirin' at the handkercher, which was a handsome yellow spot, so I up an' axed her to take a present of it, an' I settled it like an apron in front, to show how iligant 'twould look; an' she was mighty plased, an' curtseyed ever so often, an' Jackey himself gev me the trout out of a big basket he brought in. The river's fairly alive wid 'em, I'm tould: an' they risin' to a brown-bodied fly, Misther Arthur.'
'We'll have a look at them some spare day, Andy.'
'But what tuk my fancy intirely, was the iligant plan of bilin' 'em she had. There war round stones warmin' in the fire, and she dropped 'em into a pot of water till it was scalding hot; then in wid the fish, addin' more stones to keep it singin'. It's an Indjin fashion, Jackey told me; for they haven't nothin' to cook in but wooden pails; but I thried it wid them trout yer atin', an' it answered beautiful.'
Andy bid fair to be no meanchef-de-cuisine, if his experiments always resulted so favourably as in the present instance.
'An' the whole of it is, Misther Robert, that this Canada is a counthry where the very best of atin' and dhrinkin' is to be had for the throuble of pickin' it up. Don't I see the poorest cabins wid plenty of bacon hangin' to the rafthers, an' the trees is full of birds that nobody can summons you for catchin', and the sthrames is walkin' wid fish; I'm tould there's sugar to be had by bilin' the juice of a bush; an' if you scratch the ground, it'll give you bushels of praties an' whate for the axin'. I wish I had all the neighbours out here, that's a fact; for it's a grand poor man's counthry, an' there's too many of us at home, Misther Robert; an' (as if this were the climax of wonders) I never see a beggar since I left the Cove o' Cork!'
'All true, Andy, quite true,' said his master, with a little sigh. 'Hard work will get a man anything here.'
'I must be goin',' said Nimrod, raising his lank figure on its big feet. 'But I guess that be for you;' and he tossed to Robert a soiled piece of newspaper, wrapped round some square slight packet.
'Letters from home! Why, you unconscionable'—burst forth Arthur; 'loafing about here for these three hours, and never to produce them!' But Nim had made off among the trees, grinning in every long tooth.
Ah! those letters from home! How sweet, yet how saddening! Mr. Holt went off to chop alone. But first he found time to intercept Nimrod on the road, and rather lower his triumphant flush at successfully 'riling the Britishers,' by the information that he (Mr. Holt) would write to the post-office authorities, to ask whether their agent at the 'Corner' was justified in detaining letters for some hours after they might have been delivered.