CHAPTER I.

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WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS

by

L. DOUGALL

Author of "Beggars All," etc

New York

Longmans, Green, and Co.

15 East Sixteenth Street

Typography by J.S. Cushing & Co., Boston.

1893

TO MY BROTHER

JOHN REDPATH DOUGALL

THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED

WITH REVERENCE AND AFFECTION

PREFACE.

One episode of this story may need a word of explanation. It is reported

that while the "Millerite" or Adventist excitement of 1843 was agitating

certain parts of North America, in one place at least a little band of

white-robed people ascended a hill in sure expectation of the Second

Advent, and patiently returned to be the laughing stock of their

neighbours. This tradition, as I heard it in my childhood, was repeated

as if it embodied nothing but eccentricity and absurdity, yet it

naturally struck a child's mind with peculiar feelings of awe and

pathos. Such an event appeared picturesque matter for a story. It was

not easy to deal with; for in setting it, as was necessary, in close

relation to the gain-getting, marrying and giving in marriage, of the

people among whom it might occur, it was difficult to avoid either

giving it a poetic emphasis which it would not appear to have in reality

or degrading it by that superficial truth often called realism, which

belittles men. Any unworthiness in the working out of the incident is

due, not so much to lack of dignity in the subject, or to lack of

material, as to the limitations of the writer's capacity.

Lest any of my countrymen should feel that this story is wanting in

sympathy with them, I may point out that it does not happen to deal with

Canadians proper, but with immigrants, most of whom are slow to identify

themselves with their adopted Country; hence their point of view is here

necessarily set forth.

I would take this opportunity to express my obligation to my

fellow-worker, Miss M.S. Earp, for her constant and sympathetic

criticism and help in composition.

L.D.

EDINBURGH, June, 1893.

BOOK I.

"_Necessity knows no Law._"

WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

"It is not often that what we call the 'great sorrows of life' cause us

the greatest sorrow. Death, acute disease, sudden and great

losses--these are sometimes easily borne compared with those intricate

difficulties which, without name and without appearance, work themselves

into the web of our daily life, and, if not rightly met, corrode and

tarnish all its brightness."

So spoke Robert Trenholme, Principal of the New College and Rector of

the English church at Chellaston, in the Province of Quebec. He sat in

his comfortable library. The light of a centre lamp glowed with shaded

ray on books in their shelves, but shone strongly on the faces near it.

As Trenholme spoke his words had all the charm lent by modulated voice

and manner, and a face that, though strong, could light itself easily

with a winning smile. He was a tall, rather muscular man; his face had

that look of battle that indicates the nervous temperament. He was

talking to a member of his congregation who had called to ask advice and

sympathy concerning some carking domestic care. The advice had already

been given, and the clergyman proceeded to give the sympathy in the form

above.

His listener was a sickly-looking man, who held by the hand a little boy

of five or six years. The child, pale and sober, regarded with

incessant interest the prosperous and energetic man who was talking to

its father.

"Yes, yes," replied the troubled visitor, "yes, there's some help for

the big troubles, but none for the small--you're right there."

"No," said the other, "I did not say there was no help. It is just those

complex difficulties for which we feel the help of our fellow-men is

inadequate that ought to teach us to find out how adequate is the help

of the Divine Man, our Saviour, to all our needs."

"Yes, yes," said the poor man again, "yes, I suppose what you say is

true."

But he evidently did not suppose so. He sidled to the door, cap in hand.

The clergyman said no more. He was one of those sensitive men who often

know instinctively whether or not their words find response in the heart

of the hearer, and to whom it is always a pain to say anything, even the

most trivial, which awakes no feeling common to both.

Trenholme himself showed the visitors out of his house with a genial,

kindly manner, and when the departing footsteps had ceased to crunch the

garden path he still stood on his verandah, looking after the retreating

figures and feeling somewhat depressed--not as we might suppose St. Paul

would have felt depressed, had he, in like manner, taken the Name for

which he lived upon his lips in vain--and to render that name futile by

reason of our spiritual insignificance is surely the worst form of

profanity--but he felt depressed in the way that a gentleman might who,

having various interests at heart, had failed in a slight attempt to

promote one of them.

It was the evening of one of the balmy days of a late Indian summer. The

stars of the Canadian sky had faded and become invisible in the light of

a moon that hung low and glorious, giving light to the dry,

sweet-scented haze of autumn air. Trenholme looked out on a neat garden

plot, and beyond, in the same enclosure, upon lawns of ragged,

dry-looking grass, in the centre of which stood an ugly brick house,

built apparently for some public purpose. This was the immediate

outlook. Around, the land was undulating; trees were abundant, and were

more apparent in the moonlight than the flat field spaces between them.

The graceful lines of leafless elms at the side of the main road were

clearly seen. About half a mile away the lights of a large village were

visible, but bits of walls and gable ends of white houses stood out

brighter in the moonlight than, the yellow lights within the windows.

Where the houses stretched themselves up on a low hill, a little white

church showed clear against the broken shadow of low-growing pines.

As Trenholme was surveying the place dreamily in the wonderful light,

that light fell also, upon him and his habitation. He was apparently

intellectual, and had in him something of the idealist. For the rest, he

was a good-sized, good-looking man, between thirty and forty years of

age, and even by the moonlight one might see, from the form of his

clothes, that he was dressed with fastidious care. The walls and

verandah, of his house, which were of wood, glistened almost as brightly

with white paint as the knocker and doorplate did with brass lacquer.

After a few minutes Trenholme's housekeeper, a wiry, sad-eyed woman,

came to see why the door was left open. When she saw the master of the

house she retired in abrupt, angular fashion, but the suggestion of her

errand recalled him from his brief relaxation.

In his study he again sat down before the table where he had been

talking to his visitors. From the leaves of his blotting-paper he took a

letter which he had apparently been interrupted in writing. He took it

out in a quick, business-like way, and dipped his pen in the ink as

though, to finish rapidly; but then he sat still until the pen dried,

and no further word had been added. Again he dipped his pen, and again

let it dry. If the first sentence of the letter had taken as long to

compose as the second, it was no wonder that a caller had caused an

interruption.

The letter, as it lay before him, had about a third of its page written

in a neat, forcible hand. The arms of his young college were printed at

the top. He had written:--

My dear brother,--I am very much concerned not to have heard

from you for so long. I have written to your old address in Montreal,

but received no answer.

Here came the stop. At last he put pen to paper and went on:--

Even though we have disagreed as to what occupation is best for

you to follow, and also as to the degree of reserve that is desirable

as to what our father did, you must surely know that there is nothing

I desire more than your highest welfare.

After looking at this sentence for a little while he struck his pen

through the word "highest," and then, offended with the appearance of

the obliteration, he copied this much of the letter on a fresh sheet and

again stopped.

When he continued, it was on the old sheet. He made a rough copy of the

letter--writing, crossing out, and rewriting. It seemed that the task to

which he had set himself was almost harder than could appear possible,

for, as he became more absorbed in it, there was evidence of discomfort

in his attitude, and although the room was not warm, the moisture on his

forehead became visible in the strong light of the lamp above him. At

length, after preliminary pauses had been followed by a lengthened

period of vigorous writing, the letter was copied, and the writer sealed

it with an air of obvious relief.

That done, he wrote another letter, the composition of which, although

it engaged his care, was apparently so much pleasanter, that perhaps the

doing of it was chosen on the same principle as one hears a farce after

a tragedy, in order to sleep the more easily.

This second letter was to a lady. When it was written, Trenholme pulled

an album from a private drawer, and looked long and with interested

attention at the face of the lady to whom he had written. It was the

face of a young, handsome girl, who bore herself proudly. The fashion of

the dress would have suggested to a calculating mind that the portrait

had been taken some years before; but what man who imagines himself a

lover, in regarding the face of the absent dear one in the well-known

picture, adds in thought the marks of time? If he had been impartial he

would have asked the portrait if the face from which it was taken had

grown more proud and cold as the years went by, or more sad and

gentle--for, surely, in this work-a-day world of ours, fate would not be

likely to have gifts in store that would wholly satisfy those eager,

ambitious eyes; but, being a man no wiser than many other men, he looked

at the rather faded phonograph with considerable pleasure, and asked no

questions.

It grew late as he contemplated the lady's picture, and, moreover, he

was not one, under any excuse, to spend much time in idleness. He put

away his album, and then, having personally locked up his house and said

good-night to his housekeeper, he went upstairs.

Yet, in spite of all that Trenholme's pleasure in the letter and the

possession of the photograph might betoken, the missive, addressed to a

lady named Miss Rexford, was not a love-letter. It ran thus:--

I cannot even feign anger against "Dame Fortune," that, by so

unexpected a turn of her wheel, she should be even now bringing you

to the remote village where for some time I have been forced to make

my home, and where it is very probable I shall remain for some years

longer. I do, of course, unfeignedly regret the financial misfortune

which, as I understand, has made it necessary for Captain Rexford

to bring you all out to this young country; yet to me the pleasure of

expecting such neighbours must far exceed any other feeling with

which I regard your advent.

I am exceedingly glad if I have been able to be of service to Captain

Rexford in making his business arrangements here, and hope all

will prove satisfactory. I have only to add that, although you must

be prepared for much that you will find different from English life,

much that is rough and ungainly and uncomfortable, you may feel

confident that, with a little patience, the worst roughness of

colonial life will soon be overcome, and that you will find compensation

a thousand times over in the glorious climate and cheerful prospects of

this new land.

As I have never had the pleasure of meeting Captain and Mrs. Rexford, I

trust you will excuse me for addressing this note of welcome to you,

whom I trust I may still look upon as a friend. I have not forgotten the

winter when I received encouragement and counsel from you, who had so

many to admire and occupy you that, looking back now, I feel it strange

that you should have found time to bestow in mere kindness.

Here there followed courteous salutations to the lady's father and

mother, brothers and sisters. The letter was signed in friendly style

and addressed to an hotel in Halifax, where apparently it was to await

the arrival of the fair stranger from some other shore.

It is probable that, in the interfacings of human lives, events are

happening every moment which, although bearing according to present

knowledge no possible relation to our own lives, are yet to have an

influence on our future and make havoc with our expectations. The train

is laid, the fuse is lit, long before we know it.

That night, as Robert Trenholme sealed his letters, an event took place

that was to test by a strange influence the lives of these three

people--Robert Trenholme, the lady of whom he thought so pleasantly, and

the young brother to whom he had written so laboriously. And the event

was that an old settler, who dwelt in a remote part of the country, went

out of his cabin in the delusive moonlight, slipped on a steep place,

and fell, thereby receiving an inward hurt that was to bring him death.

CHAPTER II.

The Indian summer, that lingers in the Canadian forest after the fall of

the leaves, had passed away. The earth lay frozen, ready to bear the

snow. The rivers, with edge of thin ice upon their quiet places,

rolled, gathering into the surface of their waters the cold that would

so soon create their crystal prison.

The bright sun of a late November day was shining upon a small lake that

lay in the lonely region to the west of the Gaspé Peninsula near the

Matapediac Valley. There was one farm clearing on a slope of the wild

hills that encircled the lake. The place was very lonely. An eagle that

rose from the fir-clad ridge above the clearing might from its eminence,

have seen other human habitations, but such sight was denied to the

dwellers in the rude log-house on the clearing. The eagle wheeled in the

air and flew southward. A girl standing near the log-house watched it

with discontented eyes.

The blue water of the lake, with ceaseless lapping, cast up glinting

reflections of the cold sunlight. Down the hillside a stream ran to join

the lake, and it was on the more sheltered slope by this stream, where

grey-limbed maple trees grew, that the cabin stood. Above and around,

the steeper slopes bore only fir trees, whose cone-shaped or spiky

forms, sometimes burnt and charred, sometimes dead and grey, but for the

most part green and glossy, from shore and slope and ridge pointed

always to the blue zenith.

The log-house, with its rougher sheds, was hard by the stream's ravine.

About the other sides of it stretched a few acres of tilled land. Round

this land the maple wood closed, and under its grey trees there was a

tawny brown carpet of fallen leaves from which the brighter autumn

colours had already faded. Up the hillside in the fir wood there were

gaps where the trees had been felled for lumber, and about a quarter of

a mile from the house a rudely built lumber slide descended to the lake.

It was about an hour before sundown when the eagle had risen and fled,

and the sunset light found the girl who had watched it still standing in

the same place. All that time a man had been talking to her; but she

herself had not been talking, she had given him little reply. The two

were not close to the house; large, square-built piles of logs, sawn

and split for winter fuel, separated them from it. The man leaned

against the wood now; the girl stood upright, leaning on nothing.

Her face, which was healthy, was at the same time pale. Her hair was

very red, and she had much of it. She was a large, strong young woman.

She looked larger and stronger than the man with whom she was

conversing. He was a thin, haggard fellow, not at first noticeable in

the landscape, for his clothes and beard were faded and worn into

colours of earth and wood, so that Nature seemed to have dealt with him

as she deals with her most defenceless creatures, causing them to grow

so like their surroundings that even their enemies do not easily observe

them. This man, however, was not lacking in a certain wiry physical

strength, nor in power of thought or of will. And these latter powers,

if the girl possessed them, were as yet only latent in her, for she had

the heavy and undeveloped appearance of backward youth.

The man was speaking earnestly. At last he said:--

"Come now, Sissy, be a good lassie and say that ye're content to stay.

Ye've always been a good lassie and done what I told ye before."

His accent was Scotch, but not the broad Scotch of an entirely

uneducated man. There was sobriety written in the traits of his face,

and more--a certain quality of intellectual virtue of the higher stamp.

He was not young, but he was not yet old.

"I haven't," said the girl sullenly.

He sighed at her perverseness. "That's not the way I remember it. I'm

sure, from the time ye were quite a wee one, ye have always tried to

please me.--We all come short sometimes; the thing is, what we are

trying to do."

He spoke as if her antagonism to what he had been saying, to what he was

yet saying, had had a painful effect upon him which he was endeavouring

to hide.

The girl looked over his head at the smoke that was proceeding from the

log-house chimney. She saw it curl and wreathe itself against the cold

blue east. It was white wood smoke, and as she watched it began to turn

yellow in the light from the sunset. She did not turn to see whence the

yellow ray came.

"Now that father's dead, I won't stay here, Mr. Bates." She said "I

won't" just as a sullen, naughty girl would speak. "'Twas hateful enough

to stay while he lived, but now you and Miss Bates are nothing to me."

"Nothing to ye, Sissy?" The words seemed to come out of him in pained

surprise.

"I know you've brought me up, and taught me, and been far kinder to me

than father ever was; but I'm not to stay here all my life because of

_that_."

"Bairn, I have just been telling ye there is nothing else ye can do just

now. I have no ready money. Your father had nothing to leave ye but his

share of this place; and, so far, we've just got along year by year, and

that's all. I'll work it as well as I can, and, if ye like, ye're

welcome to live free and lay by your share year by year till ye have

something to take with ye and are old enough to go away. But if ye go

off now ye'll have to live as a servant, and ye couldn't thole that, and

I couldn't for ye. Ye have no one to protect ye now but me. I've no

friends to send ye to. What do ye know of the world? It's unkind--ay,

and it's wicked too."

"How's it so wicked? You're not wicked, nor father, nor me, nor the

men--how's people outside so much wickeder?"

Bates's mouth--it was a rather broad, powerful mouth--began to grow hard

at her continued contention, perhaps also at the thought of the evils of

which he dreamed. "It's a very _evil_ world," he said, just as he would

have said that two and two made four to a child who had dared to

question that fact. "Ye're too young to understand it now: ye must take

my word for it."

She made no sort of answer; she gave no sign of yielding; but, because

she had made no answer, he, self-willed and opinionated man that he was,

felt assured that she had no answer to give, and went on to talk as if

that one point were settled.

"Ye can be happy here if ye will only think so. If we seem hard on ye in

the house about the meals and that, I'll try to be better tempered. Ye

haven't read all the books we have yet, but I'll get more the first

chance if ye like. Come, Sissy, think how lonesome I'd be without ye!"

He moved his shoulders nervously while he spoke, as if the effort to

coax was a greater strain than the effort to teach or command. His

manner might have been that of a father who wheedled a child to do

right, or a lover who sued on his own behalf; the better love, for that

matter, is much the same in all relations of life.

This last plea evidently moved her just a little. "I'm sorry, Mr.

Bates," she said.

"What are ye sorry for, Sissy?"

"That I'm to leave you."

"But ye're not going. Can't ye get that out of your head? How will ye

go?"

"In the boat, when they take father."

At that the first flash of anger came from him. "Ye won't go, if I have

to hold ye by main force. I can't go to bury your father. I have to stay

here and earn bread and butter for you and me, or we'll come short of

it. If ye think I'm going to let ye go with a man I know little about--"

His voice broke off in indignation, and as for the girl, whether from

sudden anger at being thus spoken to, or from the conviction of

disappointment which had been slowly forcing itself upon her, she began

to cry. His anger vanished, leaving an evident discomfort behind. He

stood before her with a weary look of effort on his face, as if he were

casting all things in heaven and earth about in his mind to find which

of them would be most likely to afford her comfort, or at least, to put

an end to tears which, perhaps for a reason unknown to himself, gave

him excessive annoyance.

"Come, Sissy"--feebly--"give over."

But the girl went on crying, not loudly or passionately, but with no

sign of discontinuance, as she stood there, large and miserable, before

him. He settled his shoulders obstinately against the wood pile,

thinking to wait till she should speak or make some further sign.

Nothing but strength of will kept him in his place, for he would gladly

have fled from her. He had now less guidance than before to what was

passing in her mind, for her face was more hidden from his sight as the

light of the sinking sun focussed more exclusively in the fields of

western sky behind her.

Then the sun went down behind the rugged hills of the lake's other

shore; and, as it sank below their sharp outlines, their sides, which

had been clear and green, became dim and purple; the blue went out of

the waters of the lake, they became the hue of steel touched with

iridescence of gold; and above the hills, vapour that had before been

almost invisible in the sky, now hung in upright layers of purple mist,

blossoming into primrose yellow on the lower edges. A few moments more

and grey bloom, such as one sees on purple fruit, was on these vast

hangings of cloud that grouped themselves more largely, and gold flames

burned on their fringes. Behind them there were great empty reaches of

lambent blue, and on the sharp edge of the shadowed hills there was a

line of fire.

It produced in Bates unthinking irritation that Nature should quietly go

on outspreading her evening magnificence in face of his discomfort. In

ordinal light or darkness one accepts the annoyances of life as coming

all in the day's work; but Nature has her sublime moments in which, if

the sensitive mind may not yield itself to her delight, it is forced

into extreme antagonism, either to her or to that which withholds from

joining in her ecstasy. Bates was a man sensitive to many forces, the

response to which within him was not openly acknowledged to himself. He

was familiar with the magnificence of sunsets in this region, but his

mind was not dulled to the marvel of the coloured glory in which the

daylight so often culminated.

He looked off at the western sky, at first chiefly conscious of the

unhappy girl who stood in front of him and irritated by that intervening

shape; but, as his vision wandered along the vast reaches of illimitable

clouds and the glorious gulfs of sky, his mind yielded itself the rather

to the beauty and light. More dusky grew the purple of the upper mists

whose upright layers, like league-long wings of softest feather held

edge downward to the earth, ever changed in form without apparent

movement. More sparkling glowed the gold upon their edges. The sky

beneath the cloud was now like emerald. The soft darkness of purple

slate was on the hills. The lake took on a darker shade, and daylight

began to fade from the upper blue.

It was only perhaps a moment--one of those moments for which time has no

measurement--that the soul of this man had gone out of him, as it were,

into the vastness of the sunset; and when he recalled it his situation

took on for him a somewhat different aspect. He experienced something of

that temporary relief from personal responsibility that moments of

religious sentiment often give to minds that are unaccustomed to

religion. He had been free for the time to disport himself in something

infinitely larger and wider than his little world, and he took up his

duty at the point at which he had left it with something of this sense

of freedom lingering with him.

He was a good man--that is, a man whose face would have made it clear to

any true observer that he habitually did the right in contradistinction

to the wrong. He was, moreover, religious, and would not have been

likely to fall into any delusion of mere sentiment in the region of

religious emotion. But that which deludes a man commonly comes through a

safe channel. As a matter of fact, the excitement which the delight of

the eye had produced in him was a perfectly wholesome feeling, but the

largeness of heart it gave him at that moment was unfortunate.

The girl stood just as before, ungainly and without power of expression

because undeveloped, but excitation of thought made what she might

become apparent to him in that which she was. He became more generous

towards her, more loving.

"Don't greet, that's a good lassie," he said soothingly. "There's truth

in what ye have said--that it's dull for ye here because ye have nothing

to look ahead to. Well, I'll tell ye what I didn't mean to tell ye while

ye are so young--when ye're older, if ye're a good lassie and go on

learning your lessons as ye have been doing, I will ask ye to marry me,

and then (we hope of course to get more beforehand wi' money as years

go) ye will have more interest and--"

"Marry!" interrupted the girl, not strongly, but speaking in faint

wonder, as if echoing a word she did not quite understand.

"Yes," he went on with great kindliness, "I talked it over with your

father before he went, and he was pleased. I told him that, in a year or

two, if he liked it, I would marry ye--it's only if ye _like_, of

course; and ye'd better not think about it now, for ye're too young."

"Marry me!" This time the exclamation came from her with a force that

was appalling to him. The coarse handkerchief which she had been holding

to her eyes was withdrawn, and with lips and eyes open she exclaimed

again: "Marry me! _You_!"

It was remarkable how this man, who so far was using, and through long

years had always used, only the tone of mentor, now suddenly began to

try to justify himself with almost childlike timidity.

"Your father and I didn't know of any one else hereabouts that would

suit, and of course we knew ye would naturally be disappointed if ye

didn't marry." He went on muttering various things about the convenience

of such an arrangement.

She listened to nothing more than his first sentence, and began to move

away from him slowly a few steps backwards; then, perceiving that she

had come to the brink of the level ground, she turned and suddenly

stretched out her arm with almost frantic longing toward the cold, grey

lake and the dark hills behind, where the fires of the west still

struggled with the encroaching November night.

As she turned there was light enough for him to see how bright the

burning colour of her hair was--bright as the burning copper glow on the

lower feathers of those great shadowy wings of cloud--the wings of night

that were enfolding the dying day. Some idea, gathered indefinitely from

both the fierceness of her gesture and his transient observation of the

colour of her hair, suggested to him that he had trodden on the sacred

ground of a passionate heart.

Poor man! He would have been only too glad just then to have effaced his

foot-prints if he had had the least idea how to do it. The small shawl

she wore fell from her unnoticed as she went quickly into the house. He

picked it up, and folded it awkwardly, but with meditative care. It was

a square of orange-coloured merino, such as pedlars who deal with the

squaws always carry, an ordinary thing for a settler's child to possess.

As he held it, Bates felt compunction that it was not something finer

and to his idea prettier, for he did not like the colour. He decided

that he would purchase something better for her as soon as possible. He

followed her into the house.

CHAPTER III.

Night, black and cold, settled over the house that had that day for the

first time been visited by death. Besides the dead man, there were now

three people to sleep in it: an old woman, whose failing brain had

little of intelligence left, except such as showed itself in the

everyday habits of a long and orderly life; the young girl, whose mind

slow by nature in reaching maturity and retarded by the monotony of her

life, had not yet gained the power of realising its own deeper

thoughts, still less of explaining them to another; and this man, Bates,

who, being by natural constitution peculiarly susceptible to the strain

of the sight of illness and death which he had just undergone, was not

in the best condition to resist the morbid influences of unhappy

companionship.

The girl shed tears as she moved about sullenly. She would not speak to

Bates, and he did not in the least understand that, sullen as she was,

her speechlessness did not result from that, but from inability to

reduce to any form the chaotic emotions within her, or to find any

expression which might represent her distress. He could not realise that

the childish mind that had power to converse for trivial things had, as

yet, no word for the not-trivial; that the blind womanly emotion on

which he had trodden had as yet no counterpart in womanly thought, which

might have formed excuses for his conduct, or at least have comprehended

its simplicity. He only felt uneasily that her former cause of

contention with him, her determination, sudden as her father's death, to

leave the only home she possessed, was now enforced by her antagonism to

the suggestion he had made of a future marriage, and he felt increasing

annoyance that it should be so. Naturally enough, a deep undercurrent of

vexation was settling in his mind towards her for feeling that

antagonism, but he was vexed also with himself for having suggested the

fresh source of contest just now to complicate the issue between them as

to whether she should remain where she was, at any rate for the present.

Remain she must; he was clear upon that point. The form of his religious

theories, long held in comparative isolation from mankind, convinced

him, whether truly or not, that humanity was a very bad thing; she

should not leave his protection, and he was considerate enough to desire

that, when the time came for launching the boat which was to take her

father's body to burial, he should not need to detain her by force.

The girl set an ill-cooked supper before Bates and the hired man, and

would not herself eat. As Bates sat at his supper he felt drearily that

his position was hard; and, being a man whose training disposed him to

vaguely look for the cause of trial in sin, wondered what he had done

that it had thus befallen him. His memory reverted to the time when, on

an emigrant ship, he had made friends with the man Cameron who that day

had died, and they had agreed to choose their place and cast in their

lot together. It had been part of the agreement that the aunt who

accompanied Bates should do the woman's work of the new home until she

was too old, and that Cameron's child should do it when she was old

enough.

The girl was a little fat thing then, wearing a red hood. Bates, uneasy

in his mind both as to his offer of marriage and her resentment, asked

himself if he was to blame that he had begun by being kind to her then,

that he had played with her upon the ship's deck, that on their land

journey he had often carried her in his arms, or that, in the years of

the hard isolated life which since then they had all lived, he had

taught and trained the girl with far more care than her father had

bestowed on her. Or was he to blame that he had so often been strict and

severe with her? Or was he unjust in feeling now that he had a righteous

claim to respect and consideration from her to an almost greater extent

than the dead father whose hard, silent life had showed forth little of

the proper attributes of fatherhood? Or did the sin for which he was now

being punished lie in the fact that, in spite of her constant wilfulness

and frequent stupidity, he still felt such affection for his pupil as

made him unwilling, as he phrased it, to seek a wife elsewhere and thus

thrust her from her place in the household. Bates had a certain latent

contempt for women; wives he thought were easily found and not

altogether desirable; and with that inconsistency common to men, he

looked upon his proposal to the girl now as the result of a much more

unselfish impulse than he had done an hour ago, before she exclaimed at

it so scornfully. He did not know how to answer himself. In all honesty

he could not accuse himself of not having done his duty by the girl or

of any desire to shirk it in the future; and that being the case, he

grew every minute more inclined to believe that the fact that his duty

was now being made so disagreeable to him was owing, not to any fault of

his, but to the naughtiness of her disposition.

The hired man slept in an outer shed. When he had gone, and Bates went

up to his own bed in the loft of the log-house, the last sound that he

heard was the girl sobbing where she lay beside the old woman in the

room below. The sound was not cheering.

The next day was sunless and colder. Twice that morning Sissy Cameron

stopped Bates at his work to urge her determination to leave the place,

and twice he again set his reasons for refusal before her with what

patience he could command. He told her, what she knew without telling,

that the winter was close upon them, that the winter's work at the

lumber was necessary for their livelihood, that it was not in his power

to find her an escort for a journey at this season or to seek another

home for her. Then, when she came to him again a third time, his anger

broke out, and he treated her with neither patience nor good sense.

It was in the afternoon, and a chill north breeze ruffled the leaden

surface of the lake and seemed to curdle the water with its breath;

patches of soft ice already mottled it. The sky was white, and leafless

maple and evergreen seemed almost alike colourless in the dull, cold

air. Bates had turned from his work to stand for a few moments on the

hard trodden level in front of the house and survey the weather. He had

reason to survey it with anxiety. He was anxious to send the dead man's

body to the nearest graveyard for decent burial, and the messenger and

cart sent on this errand were to bring back another man to work with him

at felling the timber that was to be sold next spring. The only way

between his house and other houses lay across the lake and through a gap

in the hills, a way that was passable now, and passable in calm days

when winter had fully come, but impassable at the time of forming ice

and of falling and drifting snow. He hoped that the snow and ice would

hold off until his plan could be carried out, but he held his face to

the keen cold breeze and looked at the mottled surface of the lake with

irritable anxiety. It was not his way to confide his anxiety to any one;

he was bearing it alone when the girl, who had been sauntering aimlessly

about, came to him.

"If I don't go with the boat to-morrow," she said, "I'll walk across as

soon as the ice'll bear."

With that he turned upon her. "And if I was a worse man than I am I'd

let ye. It would be a comfort to me to be rid of ye. Where would ye go,

or what would ye do? Ye ought to be only too thankful to have a

comfortable home where ye're kept from harm. It's a cruel and bad world,

I tell ye; it's going to destruction as fast as it can, and ye'd go

with it."

The girl shook with passion. "I'd do nothing of the sort," she choked.

All the anger and dignity of her being were aroused, but it did not

follow that she had any power to give them adequate utterance. She

turned from him, and, as she stood, the attitude of her whole figure

spoke such incredulity, scorn, and anger, that the flow of hot-tempered

arguments with which he was still ready to seek to persuade her reason,

died on his lips. He lost all self-control in increasing ill-temper.

"Ye may prance and ye may dance"--he jerked the phrase between his

teeth, using words wholly inapplicable to her attitude because he could

not analyse its offensiveness sufficiently to find words that applied to

it. "Yes, prance and dance as much as ye like, but ye'll not go in the

boat to-morrow if ye'd six fathers to bury instead of one, and ye'll not

set foot out of this clearing, where I can look after ye. I said to the

dead I'd take care of ye, and I'll do it--ungrateful lass though ye

are."

He hurled the last words at her as he turned and went into a shed at

the side of the house in which he had before been working.

The girl stood quite still as long as he was within sight. She seemed

conscious of his presence though she was not looking towards him, for as

soon as he had stepped within the low opening of the shed, she moved

away, walking in a wavering track across the tilled land, walking as if

movement was the end of her purpose, not as if she had destination.

The frozen furrows of the ploughed land crumbled beneath her heavy

tread. The north wind grew stronger. When she reached the edge of the

maple wood and looked up with swollen, tear-blurred eyes, she saw the

grey branches moved by the wind, and the red squirrels leaped from

branch to branch and tree to tree as if blown by the same air. She

wandered up one side of the clearing and down the other, sometimes

wading knee-deep in loud rustling maple leaves gathered in dry hollows

within the wood, sometimes stumbling over frozen furrows as she crossed

corners of the ploughed land, walking all the time in helpless, hopeless

anger.

When, however, she came back behind the house to that part of the

clearing bounded by the narrow and not very deep ravine which running

water had cut into the side of the hill, she seemed to gather some

reviving sensations from the variety which the bed of the brook

presented to her view. Here, on some dozen feet of steeply sloping rock

and earth, which on either side formed the trough of the brook,

vegetable life was evidently more delicate and luxuriant than elsewhere,

in the season when it had sway. Even now, when the reign of the frost

held all such life in abeyance, this grave of the dead summer lacked

neither fretted tomb nor wreathing garland; for above, the bittersweet

hung out heavy festoons of coral berries over the pall of its faded

leaves, and beneath, on frond of fern and stalk of aster, and on rough

surface of lichen-covered rock, the frost had turned the spray of water

to white crystals, and the stream, with imprisoned far-off murmur, made

its little leaps within fairy palaces of icicles, and spread itself in

pools whose leafy contents gave colours of mottled marble to the ice

that had grown upon them. It was on the nearer bank of this stream,

where, a little below, it curved closer to the house, that her father,

falling with a frost-loosened rock, had received his fatal injury. Out

of the pure idleness of despondency it occurred to the girl that, from

the point at which she had now arrived, she might obtain a new view of

the small landslip which had caused the calamity.

She cast her arms round a lithe young birch whose silver trunk bent from

the top of the bank, and thus bridging the tangle of shrub and vine she

hung over the short precipice to examine the spot with sad curiosity.

She herself could hardly have told what thoughts passed through her mind

as, childlike, she thus lapsed from hard anger into temporary amusement.

But greater activity of mind did come with the cessation of movement and

the examination of objects which stimulated such fancy as she possessed.

She looked at the beauty in the ravine beneath her, and at the rude

destruction that falling earth and rock had wrought in it a few yards

further down. She began to wonder whether, if the roots of the tree on

which she was at full length stretched should give way in the same

manner, and such a fall prove fatal to her also, Mr. Bates would be

sorry. It gave her a sensation of pleasure to know that such a mishap

would annoy and distress him very much; and, at the very moment of this

sensation, she drew back and tested the firmness of the ground about its

roots before resigning herself unreservedly to the tree again. When she

had resumed her former position with a feeling of perfect safety, she

continued for a few minutes to dilate in fancy upon the suffering that

would be caused by the death her whim had suggested. She was not a cruel

girl, not on the whole ill-natured, yet such is human nature that this

idea was actually the first that had given her satisfaction for many

hours. How sorry Mr. Bates would be, when he found her dead, that he had

dared to speak so angrily to her! It was, in a way, luxurious to

contemplate the pathos of such an artistic death for herself, and its

fine effect, by way of revenge, upon the guardian who had made himself

intolerable to her.

From her post of observation she now saw, what had not before been

observed by any one, that where rock and earth had fallen treacherously

under her father's tread, another portion of the bank was loosened ready

to fall. Where this loosening--the work no doubt of the frost--had taken

place, there was but a narrow passage between the ravine and the house,

and she was startled to be the first to discover what was so essential

for all in the house to know. For many days the myriad leaves of the

forest had lain everywhere in the dry atmosphere peculiar to a Canadian

autumn, till it seemed now that all weight and moisture had left them.

They were curled and puckered into half balloons, ready for the wind to

toss and drift into every available gap. So strewn was this passage with

such dry leaves, which even now the wind was drifting upon it more

thickly, that the danger might easily have remained unseen. Then, as

fancy is fickle, her mind darted from the pleasurable idea of her own

death to consider how it would be if she did not make known her

discovery and allowed her enemy to walk into the snare. This idea was

not quite as attractive as the former, for it is sweeter to think of

oneself as innocently dead and mourned, than as guilty and performing

the office of mourner for another; and it was of herself only, whether

as pictured in Bates's sufferings or as left liberated by his death,

that the girl was thinking. Still it afforded relaxation to imagine what

she might do if she were thus left mistress of the situation; and she

devised a scheme of action for these circumstances that, in its clever

adaptation to what would be required, would have greatly amazed the man

who looked upon her as an unthinking child.

The difference between a strong and a weak mind is not that the strong

mind does not indulge itself in wild fancies, but that it never gives to

such fancy the power of capricious sway over the centres of purpose.

This young woman was strong in mind as in body. No flickering intention

of actually performing that which she had imagined had place within her.

She played with the idea of death as she might have played with a toy,

while resting herself from the angry question into which her whole being

had for two days concentrated itself, as to how she could thwart the

will of the man who had assumed authority over her, and gain the freedom

that she felt was necessary to life itself.

She had not lain many minutes upon the out-growing birch before she had

again forgotten her gust of revengeful fancy, and yielded herself to her

former serious mood with a reaction of greater earnestness. The winter

beauty of the brook, the grey, silent trees above, and the waste of dry

curled leaves all round--these faded from her observation because the

eye of her mind was again turned inwards to confront the circumstances

of her difficulty.

As she leaned thus in childlike attitude and womanly size, her arms

twined round the tree and her cheek resting on its smooth surface, that

clumsiness which in all young animals seems inseparable from the period

when recent physical growth is not yet entirely permeated by the

character-life which gives it individual expression, was not apparent

and any intelligent eye seeing her would have seen large beauty in her

figure, which, like a Venus in the years when art was young, had no

cramped proportions. Her rough, grey dress hung heavily about her; the

moccasins that encased her feet were half hidden in the loose pile of

dry leaves which had drifted high against the root of the tree. There

was, however, no visible eye there to observe her youthful comeliness or

her youthful distress. If some angel was near, regarding her, she did

not know it, and if she had, she would not have been much interested;

there was nothing in her mood to respond to angelic pity or

appreciation. As it was, the strong tree was impotent to return her

embrace; its cold bark had no response for the caress of her cheek; the

north wind that howled, the trees that swayed, the dead leaves that

rustling fled, and the stream that murmured under its ice, gave but

drear companionship. Had she yielded her mind to their influence, the

desires of her heart might have been numbed to a transient despair more

nearly akin to a virtuous resignation to circumstance than the revolt

that was now rampant within her. She did not yield; she was not now

observing them; they only effected upon her inattentive senses an

impression of misery which fed the strength of revolt.

A minute or two more and the recumbent position had become unendurable

as too passive to correspond with the inward energy. She clambered back,

and, standing upon level ground, turned, facing the width of the bare

clearing and the rough buildings on it, and looked toward the downward

slope and the wild lake, whose cold breath of water was agitated by the

wind. The sky was full of cloud.

She stood up with folded arms, strength and energy in the stillness of

her attitude. She heard the sound of carpenter's tools coming from the

shed into which Bates had retired. No other hint of humanity was in the

world to which she listened, which she surveyed. As she folded her arms

she folded her bright coloured old shawl about her, and seemed to gather

within its folds all warmth of colour, all warmth of feeling, that was

in that wild, desolate place.

A flake of snow fell on the shawl; she did not notice it. Another rested

upon her cheek; then she started. She did not move much, but her face

lifted itself slightly; her tear-swollen eyes were wide open; her lips

were parted, as if her breath could hardly pass to and fro quickly

enough to keep pace with agitated thought. The snow had begun to come.

She knew well that it would go on falling, not to-day perhaps, nor

to-morrow, but as certainly as time would bring the following days, so

certainly the snow would fall, covering the frozen surface of the earth

and water with foot above foot of powdery whiteness. Far as she now was

from the gay, active throng of fellow-creatures which she conceived as

existing in the outer world, and with whom she longed to be, the snow

would make that distance not only great, but impassable to her, unaided.

It was true that she had threatened Bates with flight by foot across the

frozen lake; but she knew in truth that such departure was as dependent

on the submission of his will to hers as was her going in the more

natural way by boat the next day, for the track of her snow-shoes and

the slowness of her journey upon them would always keep her within his

power.

The girl contemplated the falling flakes and her own immediate future at

the same moment. The one notion clear to her mind was, that she must get

away from that place before the cold had time to enchain the lake, or

these flakes to turn the earth into a frozen sea. Her one hope was in

the boat that would be launched to carry her dead father. She must go.

_She must go!_

Youth would not be strong if it did not seek for happiness with all its

strength, if it did not spurn pain with violence. All the notions that

went to make up this girl's idea of pain were gathered from her present

life of monotony and loneliness. All the notions that went to make up

her idea of happiness were culled from what she had heard and dreamed of

life beyond her wilderness. Added to this there was the fact that the

man who had presumed to stand between her and the accomplishment of the

first strong volition of her life had become intolerable to her--whether

more by his severity or by his kindliness she could not tell. She folded

her shawl-draped arms more strongly across her breast, and hugged to

herself all the dreams and desires, hopes and dislikes, that had grown

within her as she had grown in mind and stature in that isolated place.

How could she accomplish her will?

The flakes fell upon the copper gloss of her uncombed hair, on face and

hands that reddened to the cold, and gathered in the folds of the shawl.

She stood as still as a waxen figure, if waxen figure could ever be true

to the power of will which her pose betrayed. When the ground was white

with small dry flakes she moved again. Her reverie, for lack of

material, seemed to have come to nothing fresh. She determined to prefer

her request again to Bates.

She walked round the house and came to the shed door. In this shed large

kettles and other vessels for potash-making were set up, but in front of

these Bates and his man were at work making a rude pinewood coffin. The

servant was the elder of the two. He had a giant-like, sinewy frame and

a grotesquely small head; his cheeks were round and red like apples, and

his long whiskers evidently received some attention from his vanity; it

seemed an odd freak for vanity to take, for all the rest of him was

rough and dirty. He wriggled when the girl darkened the doorway, but did

not look straight at her.

"There's more of the bank going to slip where father fell--it's loose,"

she said.

They both heard. The servant answered her, commenting on the

information. These were the only words that were said for some time. The

girl stood and pressed herself against the side of the door. Bates did

not look at her. At last she addressed him again. Her voice was low and

gentle, perhaps from fear, perhaps from desire to persuade, perhaps

merely from repression of feeling.

"Mr. Bates," she said, "you'll let me go in the boat with that?"--she

made a gesture toward the unfinished coffin.

His anger had cooled since he had last seen her, not lessening but

hardening, as molten metal loses malleability as it cools. Much had been

needed to fan his rage to flame, but now the will fused by it had taken

the mould of a hard decision that nothing but the blowing of another

fire would melt.

"Ye'll not go unless you go _in_ a coffin instead of along-side of it."

The coarse humour of his refusal was analogous to the laugh of a chidden

child; it expressed not amusement, but an attempt to conceal nervous

discomposure. The other man laughed; his mind was low enough to be

amused.

"It's no place for me here," she urged, "and I ought by rights to go to

the burying of my father."

"There's no place for ye neither where he'll be buried; and as to ye

being at the funeral, it's only because I'm a long sight better than

other men about the country that I don't shovel him in where he fell.

I'm getting out the boat, and sending Saul here and the ox-cart two

days' journey, to have him put decently in a churchyard. I don't

b'lieve, if I'd died, you and your father would have done as much by

me."

As he lauded his own righteousness his voice was less hard for the

moment, and, like a child, she caught some hope.

"Yes, it's good of you, and in the end you'll be good and let me go too,

Mr. Bates."

"Oh yes." There was no assent in his voice. "And I'll go too, to see

that ye're not murdered when Saul gets drunk at the first house; and

we'll take my aunt too, as we can't leave her behind; and we'll take the

cow that has to be milked, and the pigs and hens that have to be fed;

and when we get there, we'll settle down without any house to live in,

and feed on air."

His sarcasm came from him like the sweat of anger; he did not seem to

take any voluntary interest in the play of his words. His manner was

cool, but it was noticeable that he had stopped his work and was merely

cutting a piece of wood with his jack-knife. As she looked at him

steadily he whittled the more savagely.

The other man laughed again, and wriggled as he laughed.

"No," she replied, "you can't come, I know; but I can take care of

myself."

"It's a thieving, drunken lot of fellows Saul will fall in with. Ye may

prefer their society to mine, but I'll not risk it."

"I can go to the minister."

"And his wife would make a kitchen-girl of ye, and ye'd run off from her

in a week. If ye'd not stay here, where ye have it all your own way,

it's not long that ye'd put up wi' my lady's fault-finding; and

ministers and their wives isn't much better than other folks--I've told

ye before what I think of that sort of truck."

There was a glitter in her eyes that would have startled him, but he did

not see it. He was looking only at the wood he was cutting, but he never

observed that he was cutting it. After a minute he uttered his

conclusion.

"Ye'll stay wi' me."

"_Stay_ with you," she cried, her breath catching at her words--"for how

long?"

"I don't know." Complete indifference was in his tone. "Till ye're old,

I suppose; for I'm not likely to find a better place for ye."

All the force of her nature was in the words she cast at him.

"_I'll not stay_."

"No?" he sneered in heavy, even irony. "Will ye cry on the neighbours to

fetch ye away?"

She did not need to turn her head to see the wild loneliness of hill and

lake. It was present to her mind as she leaned on the rough wooden

lintel, looking into the shed.

"Or," continued he, "will ye go a-visiting. There's the Indians camping

other side o' the mountain here "--he jerked his head backward to denote

the direction--"and one that came down to the tree-cutting two weeks ago

said there were a couple of wolves on the other hill. I dare say either

Indians or wolves would be quite glad of the _pleasure_ o' your

company."

She raised herself up and seemed suddenly to fill the doorway, so that

both men looked up because much of their light was withdrawn.

"You'd not have dared to speak to me like this while father was alive."

As a matter of fact the accusation was not true. The father's presence

or absence would have made no difference to Bates had he been wrought up

to the same pitch of anger; but neither he nor the girl was in a

condition to know this. He only replied:

"That's the reason I waited till he was dead."

"If he hadn't been hurt so sudden he wouldn't have left me _here."_

"But he _was_ hurt sudden, and he _did_ leave ye here."

She made as if to answer, but did not. Both men were looking at her now.

The snow was white on her hair. Her tears had so long been dry that the

swollen look was passing from her face. It had been until now at best a

heavy face, but feeling that is strong enough works like a master's

swift chisel to make the features the vehicle of the soul. Both men were

relieved when she suddenly took her eyes from them and her shadow from

their work and went away.

Saul stretched his head and looked after her. There was no pity in his

little apple face and beady eyes, only a sort of cunning curiosity, and

the rest was dulness and weakness.

Bates did not look after her. He shut his knife and fell to joining the

coffin.

CHAPTER IV.

The girl lifted the latch of the house-door, and went in. She was in the

living-room. The old woman sat in a chair that was built of wood against

the log wall. She was looking discontentedly before her at an iron

stove, which had grown nearly cold for lack of attention. Some chairs, a

table, a bed, and a ladder which led to the room above, made the chief

part of the furniture. A large mongrel dog, which looked as if he had

some blood of the grey southern sheep dog in him rose from before the

stove and greeted the in-comer silently.

The dog had blue eyes, and he held up his face wistfully, as if he knew

something was the matter. The old woman complained of cold. It was plain

that she did not remember anything concerning death or tears.

There was one other door in the side of the room which led to the only

inner chamber. The girl went into this chamber, and the heed she gave to

the dog's sympathy was to hold the door and let him follow her. Then she

bolted it. There were two narrow beds built against the wall; in one of

these the corpse of a grey-haired man was lying. The dog had seen death

before, and he evidently understood what it was. He did not move quickly

or sniff about; he laid his head on the edge of the winding-sheet and

moaned a little.

The girl did not moan. She knelt down some way from the bed, with a

desire to pray. She did not pray; she whispered her anger, her

unhappiness, her desires, to the air of the cold, still room, repeating

the same phrases again and again with clenched hands and the convulsive

gestures of half-controlled passion.

The reason she did not pray was that she believed that she could only

pray when she was "good," and after falling on her knees she became

aware that goodness, as she understood it, was not in her just then, nor

did she even desire it. The giving vent to her misery in half-audible

whispers followed involuntarily on her intention to pray. She knew not

why she thus poured out her heart; she hardly realised what she said or

wished to say; yet, because some expression of her helpless need was

necessary, and because, through fear and a rugged sense of her own evil,

she sedulously averted her mind from the thought of God, her action had,

more than anything else, the semblance of an invocation to the dead man

to arise and save her, and take vengeance on her enemy.

Daylight was in the room. The girl had knelt at first upright; then, as

her passion seemed to avail nothing, but only to weary her, she sank

back, sitting on her feet, buried her locked hands deeply in her lap,

and with head bowed over them, continued to stab the air with short,

almost inaudible, complaints. The dead man lay still. The dog, after

standing long in subdued silence, came and with his tongue softly lapped

some of the snow-water from her hair.

After that, she got up and went with him back into the kitchen, and lit

the fire, and cooked food, and the day waned.

There is never in Nature that purpose to thwart which man in his

peevishness is apt to attribute to her. Just because he desired so much

that the winter should hold off a few days longer, Bates, on seeing the

snow falling from the white opaque sky, took for granted that the

downfall would continue and the ice upon the lake increase. Instead of

that, the snow stopped falling at twilight without apparent cause, and

night set in more mildly.

Darkness fell upon the place, as darkness can only fall upon solitudes,

with a lonesome dreariness that seemed to touch and press. Night is not

always dark, but with this night came darkness. There was no star nor

glimmer of light; the pine-clad hills ceased to have form; the water in

the lake was lost to all sense but that of hearing; and upon nearer

objects the thinly sprinkled snow bestowed no distinctness of outline,

but only a weird show of whitish shapes. The water gave forth fitful

sobs. At intervals there were sounds round the house, as of stealthy

feet, or of quick pattering feet, or of trailing garments--this was the

wind busy among the drifting leaves.

The two men, who had finished the coffin by the light of a lantern,

carried it into the house and set it up against the wall while they ate

their evening meal. Then they took it to a table in the next room to put

the dead man in it. The girl and the dog went with them. They had

cushioned the box with coarse sacking filled with fragrant pine

tassels, but the girl took a thickly quilted cloth from her own bed and

lined it more carefully. They did not hinder her.

"We've made it a bit too big," said Saul; "that'll stop the shaking."

The corpse, according to American custom, was dressed in its clothes--a

suit of light grey homespun, such as is to be bought everywhere from

French-Canadian weavers. When they had lifted the body and put it in the

box, they stopped involuntarily to look, before the girl laid a

handkerchief upon the face. There lay a stalwart, grey-haired man--dead.

Perhaps he had sinned deeply in his life; perhaps he had lived as nobly

as his place and knowledge would permit--they could not tell. Probably

they each estimated what they knew of his life from a different

standpoint. The face was as ashen as the grey hair about it, as the grey

clothes the body wore. They stood and looked at it--those three, who

were bound to each other by no tie except such as the accident of time

and place had wrought. The dog, who understood what death was, exhibited

no excitement, no curiosity; his tail drooped; he moaned quietly against

the coffin.

Bates made an impatient exclamation and kicked him. The kick was a

subdued one. The wind-swept solitude without and the insistent presence

of death within had its effect upon them all. Saul looked uneasily over

his shoulder at the shadows which the guttering candle cast on the wall.

Bates handled the coffin-lid with that shrinking from noise which is

peculiar to such occasions.

"Ye'd better go in the other room," said he to Sissy. "It's unfortunate

we haven't a screw left--we'll have to nail it."

Sissy did not go. They had made holes in the wood for the nails as well

as they could, but they had to be hammered in. It was very

disagreeable--the sound and the jar. With each stroke of Saul's hammer

it seemed to the two workmen that the dead man jumped.

"There, man," cried Bates angrily; "that'll do."

Only four nails had been put in their places--one in each side. With

irritation that amounted to anger against Saul, Bates took the hammer

from him and shoved it on to a high shelf.

"Ye can get screws at the village, ye know," he said, still indignantly,

as if some fault had appertained to Saul.

Then, endeavouring to calm an ill-temper which he felt to be wholly

unreasonable, he crossed his arms and sat down on a chair by the wall.

His sitting in that room at all perhaps betokened something of the same

sensation which in Saul produced those glances before and behind,

indicating that he did not like to turn his back upon any object of awe.

In Bates this motive, if it existed, was probably unconscious or

short-lived; but while he still sat there Saul spoke, with a short,

silly laugh which was by way of preface.

"Don't you think, now, Mr. Bates, it 'ud be better to have a prayer, or

a hymn, or something of that sort? We'd go to bed easier."

To look at the man it would not have been easy to attribute any just

notion of the claims of religion to him. He looked as if all his

motions, except those of physical strength, were vapid and paltry.

Still, this was what he said, and Bates replied stiffly:

"I've no objections."

Then, as if assuming proper position for the ceremony that was to ease

his mind, the big lumberman sat down. The girl also sat down.

Bates, wiry, intelligent Scot that he was, sat, his arms crossed and his

broad jaw firmly set, regarding them both with contempt in his mind.

What did they either of them know about the religion they seemed at this

juncture to feel after as vaguely as animals feel after something they

want and have not? But as for him, he understood religion; he was quite

capable of being priest of his household, and he felt that its weak

demand for a form of worship at this time was legitimate. In a minute,

therefore, he got up, and fetching a large Bible from the living-room he

sat down again and turned over its leaves with great precision and

reverence.

He read one of the more trenchant of the Psalms, a long psalm that had

much in it about enemies and slaughter. It had a very strong meaning for

him, for he put himself in the place of the writer. The enemies

mentioned were, in the first place, sins--by which he denoted the more

open forms of evil; and, in the second place, wicked men who might

interfere with him; and under the head of wicked men he classed all whom

he knew to be wicked, and most other men, whom he supposed to be so. He

was not a self-righteous man--at least, not more self-righteous than

most men, for he read with as great fervour the adjurations against sins

into which he might fall as against those which seemed to him pointed

more especially at other sinners who might persecute him for his

innocence. He was only a suspicious man made narrower by isolation, and

the highest idea he had of what God required of him was a life of

innocence. There was better in him than this--much of impulse and action

that was positively good; but he did not conceive that it was of the

workings of good that seemed so natural that God took account.

Upon Saul also the psalm had adequate effect, for it sounded to him

pious, and that was all he desired.

The girl, however, could not listen to a word of it. She fidgeted, not

with movement of hands or feet, but with the restlessness of mind and

eyes. She gazed at the boards of the ceiling, at the boards of the

floor, at the log walls on which each shadow had a scalloped edge

because of the form of tree-trunks laid one above another. At length her

eyes rested on the lid of the coffin, and, with nervous strain, she made

them follow the grain of the wood up and down, up and down. There was an

irregular knothole in the lid, and on this her eyes fixed themselves,

and the focus of her sight seemed to eddy round and round its darkened

edge till, with an effort, she turned from it.

The boards used for making the coffin had been by no means perfect.

They were merely the best that could be chosen from among the bits of

sawn lumber at hand. There was a tiny hole in one side, at the foot, and

this larger one in the lid above the dead man's breast, where knots had

fallen out with rough handling, leaving oval apertures. The temptation

Sissy felt to let her eyes labour painfully over every marking in the

wood and round these two holes--playing a sort of sad mechanical game

therewith--and her efforts to resist the impulse, made up the only

memory she had of the time the reading occupied.

There was a printed prayer upon a piece of paper kept inside the lid of

the Bible, and when Bates had read the psalm, he read this also. He

knelt while he did so, and the others did the same. Then that was

finished.

"I'll move your bed into the kitchen, Sissy," said Bates.

He had made the same offer the night before, and she had accepted it

then, but now she replied that she would sooner sleep in that room than

near the stove. He was in no mood to contest such a point with her. Saul

went out to his shed. Bates shut the house door, and went up the ladder

to his loft. Both were soon in the sound slumber that is the lot of men

who do much outdoor labour.

The girl helped the old woman to bed in the kitchen. Then she went back

and sat in the chamber of death.

Outside, the wind hustled the fallen leaves.

CHAPTER V.

At dawn Bates came down the ladder again, and went out quietly. The new

day was fair, and calm; none of his fears were fulfilled. The dead man

might start upon his journey, and Bates knew that the start must be an

early one.

He and Saul, taking long-handled oars and poles, went down to the

water's edge, where a big, flat-bottomed boat was lying drawn up on the

shore to avoid the autumn storms. The stones of the beach looked black:

here and there were bits of bright green moss upon them: both stones and

moss had a coating of thin ice that glistened in the morning light.

It was by dint of great exertion that they got the clumsy vessel into

the water and fastened her to a small wooden landing. They used more

strength than time in their work. There was none of that care and skill

required in the handling of the scow that a well-built craft would have

needed. When she was afloat and tied, they went up the hill again, and

harnessed a yoke of oxen to a rough wooden cart. Neither did this take

them long. Bates worked with a nervousness that almost amounted to

trembling. He had in his mind the dispute with the girl which he felt

sure awaited him.

In this fear also he was destined to be disappointed. When he went to

the inner room the coffin lay as he had left it, ready for its journey,

and on the girl's bed in the corner the thick quilts were heaped as

though the sleeper, had tossed restlessly. But now there was no

restlessness; he only saw her night-cap beyond the quills; it seemed

that, having perhaps turned her face to the wall to weep, she had at

last fallen into exhausted and dreamless slumber.

Bates and Saul carried out the coffin eagerly, quietly. Even to the

callous and shallow mind of Saul it was a relief to escape a contest

with an angry woman. They set the coffin on the cart, and steadied it

with a barrel of potash and sacks of buckwheat, which went to make up

the load. By a winding way, where the slope was easiest, they drove the

oxen between the trees, using the goad more and their voices as little

as might be, till they were a distance from the house. Some trees had

been felled, and cut off close to the ground, so that a cart might pass

through the wood; this was the only sign of an artificial road. The fine

powdered snow of the night before had blown away.

When they reached the beach again, the eastern sky, which had been

grey, was all dappled with cold pink, and the grey water reflected it

somewhat. There was clearer light on the dark green of the pine-covered

hills, and the fine ice coating on stone and weed at the waterside had

sharper glints of brilliancy.

Bates observed the change in light and colour; Saul did not; neither was

disposed to dally for a moment. They were obliged to give forth their

voices now in hoarse ejaculations, to make the patient beasts understand

that they were to step off the rough log landing-place into the boat.

The boat was almost rectangular in shape, but slightly narrower at the

ends than in the middle, and deeper in the middle than at the ends; it

was of rough wood, unpainted. The men disposed the oxen in the middle of

the boat; the cart they unloaded, and distributed its contents as they

best might. With long stout poles they then pushed off from the shore.

Men and oxen were reflected in the quiet water.

They were not bound on a long or perilous voyage. The boat was merely to

act as a ferry round a precipitous cliff where the shore was impassable,

and across the head of the gushing river that formed the lake's outlet,

for the only road through the hills lay along the further shore of this

stream.

The men kept the boat in shallow water, poling and rowing by turns.

There was a thin coating of ice, like white silk, forming on the water.

As they went, Bates often looked anxiously where the log house stood on

the slope above him, fearing to see the girl come running frantic to the

water's edge, but he did not see her. The door of the house remained

shut, and no smoke rose from its chimney. They had left the childish old

woman sitting on the edge of her bed; Bates knew that she would be in

need of fire and food, yet he could not wish that the girl should wake

yet. "Let her sleep," he muttered to himself. "It will do her good."

Yet it was not for her good he wished her to sleep, but for his own

peace.

The pink faded from the sky, but the sun did not shine forth brightly.

It remained wan and cold, like a moon behind grey vapours.

"I'll not get back in a week, or on wheels," said Saul. He spoke more

cheerfully than was pleasing to his employer.

"If it snows ye'll have to hire a sleigh and get back the first minute

you can." The reply was stern.

The elder and bigger man made no further comment. However much he might

desire to be kept in the gay world by the weather, the stronger will and

intellect, for the hour at least, dominated his intention.

They rowed their boat past the head of the river. In an hour they had

reached that part of the shore from which the inland road might be

gained. They again loaded the cart. It, like the boat, was of the

roughest description; its two wheels were broad and heavy; a long pole

was mortised into their axle. The coffin and the potash barrel filled

the cart's breadth; the sacks of buckwheat steadied the barrel before

and behind. The meek red oxen were once more fastened to it on either

side of the long pole. The men parted without farewells.

Saul turned his back on the water. The large, cold morning rang to his

voice--"Gee. Yo-hoi-ist. Yo-hoi-eest. Gee." The oxen, answering to his

voice and his goad, laboured onward over the sandy strip that bound the

beach, up the hill among the maple trees that grew thickly in the vale

of the small river. Bates watched till he saw the cattle, the cart, and

Saul's stalwart form only indistinctly through the numerous grey

tree-stems that broke the view in something the way that ripples in

water break a reflection. When the monotonous shouting of Saul's

voice--"Gee, gee, there. Haw, wo, haw. Yo-hoi-eest," was somewhat

mellowed by the widening space, Bates stepped into the boat, and,

pushing off, laboured alone to propel her back across the lake.

It took him longer to get back now that he was single-handed. The

current of the lake towards its outlet tended to push the great clumsy

scow against the shore. He worked his craft with one oar near the stern,

but very often he was obliged to drop it and push out from shore with

his pole. It was arduous, but all sense of the cold, bleak weather was

lost, and the interest and excitement of the task were refreshing. To

many men, as to many dogs, there is an inexplicable and unreasoning

pleasure in dealing with water that no operation upon land can yield.

Bates was one of these; he would hardly have chosen his present lot if

it had not been so; but, like many a dry character of his stamp, he did

not give his more agreeable sensations the name of pleasure, and

therefore could afford to look upon pleasure as an element unnecessary

to a sober life. Mid pushings and splashings, from the management of his

scow, from air and sky, hill and water, he was in reality, deriving as

great pleasure as any millionaire might from the sailing of a choice

yacht; but he was aware only that, as he neared the end of his double

journey, he felt in better trim in mind and body to face his lugubrious

and rebellious ward.

When, however, he had toiled round the black rock cliff which hid the

clearing from the river's head, and was again in full sight of his own

house, all remembrance of the girl and his dread of meeting her passed

from him in his excessive surprise at seeing several men near his

dwelling. His dog was barking and leaping in great excitement. He heard

the voices of other dogs. It took but the first glance to show him that

the men were not Indians. Full of excited astonishment he pushed his

boat to the shore.

His dog, having darted with noisy scatter of dry leaves down the hill to

meet him, stood on the shore expectant with mouth open, excitement in

his eyes and tail, saying as clearly as aught can be said without

words--"This is a very agreeable event in our lives. Visitors have

come." The moment Bates put his foot on land the dog bounded barking up

the hill, then turned again to Bates, then again bounded off toward the

visitors. Even a watchdog may be glad to see strangers if the pleasure

is only rare enough.

Bates mounted the slope as a man may mount stairs--two steps at a time.

Had he seen the strangers, as the saying is, dropping from the clouds,

he could hardly have been more surprised than he was to see civilised

people had reached his place otherwise than by the lake, for the rugged

hills afforded nothing but a much longer and more arduous way to any

settlement within reach. When he got up, however, he saw that these men

carried with them implements of camp-life and also surveying

instruments, by which he judged, and rightly, that his guests were

ranging the lonely hills upon some tour of official survey.

That the travellers _were_ his guests neither he nor they had the

slightest doubt. They had set down their traps close to his door, and,

in the calm confidence that it would soon be hospitably opened by

rightful hands, they had made no attempt to open it for themselves.

There were eight men in the party, two of whom, apparently its more

important members, sauntered to meet Bates, with pipes in their mouths.

These told him what district they were surveying, by what track they had

just come over the hill, where they had camped the past night, where

they wanted to get to by nightfall. They remarked on the situation of

his house and the extent of his land. They said to him, in fact, more

than was immediately necessary, but not more than was pleasant for him

to hear or for them to tell. It is a very taciturn man who, meeting a

stranger in a wilderness, does not treat him with more or less of

friendly loquacity.

Under the right circumstances Bates was a genial man. He liked the look

of these men; he liked the tone of their talk; and had he liked them

much less, the rarity of the occasion and the fact that he was their

host would have expanded his spirits. He asked astute questions about

the region they had traversed, and, as they talked, he motioned them

towards the house. He had it distinctly in his mind that he was glad

they had come across his place, and that he would give them a hot

breakfast; but he did not say so in words--just as they had not troubled

to begin their conversation with him by formal greetings.

The house door was still shut; there was still no smoke from the

chimney, although it was now full three hours since Bates had left the

place. Saying that he would see if the women were up, he went alone into

the house. The living-room was deserted, and, passing through the inner

door, which was open, he saw his aunt, who, according to custom was

neatly dressed, sitting on the foot of Sissy's empty bed. The old woman

was evidently cold, and frightened at the unusual sounds outside;

greatly fretted, she held the girl's night-cap in her hand, and the

moment he appeared demanded of him where Sissy was, for she must have

her breakfast. The girl he did not see.

The dog had followed him. He looked up and wagged his tail; he made no

sign of feeling concern that the girl was not there. Bates could have

cursed his dumbness; he would fain have asked where she had gone. The

dog probably knew, but as for Bates, he not only did not know, but no

conjecture rose in his mind as to her probable whereabouts.

He took his aunt to her big chair, piled the stove from the well-stored

wood-box, and lit it. Then, shutting the door of the room where the

disordered bed lay and throwing the house-door open, he bid the visitors

enter. He went out himself to search the surroundings of the house, but

Sissy was not to be found.

The dog did not follow Bates on this search. He sat down before the

stove in an upright position, breathed with his mouth open, and bestowed

on the visitors such cheerful and animated looks that they talked to and

patted him. Their own dogs had been shut into the empty ox-shed for the

sake of peace, and the house-dog was very much master of the situation.

Of the party, the two surveyors--one older and one younger--were men of

refinement and education. British they were, or of such Canadian birth

and training as makes a good imitation. Five of the others were

evidently of humbler position--axe-men and carriers. The eighth man, who

completed the party, was a young American, a singularly handsome young

fellow--tall and lithe. He did not stay in the room with the others, but

lounged outside by himself, leaning against the front of the house in

the white cold sunlight.

In the meantime Bates, having searched the sheds and inspected with

careful eyes the naked woods above the clearing, came back

disconsolately by the edge of the ravine, peering into it suspiciously

to see if the girl could, by some wild freak, be hiding there. When he

came to the narrow strip of ground between the wall of the house and the

broken bank he found himself walking knee-deep in the leaves that the

last night's gale had drifted there, and because the edge of the ravine

was thus entirely concealed, he, remembering Sissy's warning, kicked

about the leaves cautiously to find the crack of which she had spoken,

and discovered that the loose portion had already fallen. It suddenly

occurred to him to wonder if the girl could possibly have fallen with

it. Instantly he sprang down the ravine, feeling among the drifted

leaves on all sides, but nothing except rock and earth was to be found

under their light heaps. It took only a few minutes to assure him of the

needlessness of his fear. The low window of the room in which Sissy had

slept looked out immediately upon this drift of leaves, and, as Bates

passed it, he glanced through the uncurtained glass, as if the fact that

it was really empty was so hard for him to believe that it needed this

additional evidence. Then the stacks of fire-wood in front of the house

were all that remained to be searched, and Bates walked round, looking

into the narrow aisles between them, looking at the same time down the

hill, as if it might be possible that she had been on the shore and he

had missed her.

"What are you looking for?" asked the young American. The question was

not put rudely. There was a serenity about the youth's expectation of an

answer which, proving that he had no thought of over-stepping good

manners, made it, at the same time, very difficult to withhold an

answer.

Bates turned annoyed. He had supposed everybody was within.

"What have you lost?" repeated the youth.

"Oh--" said Bates, prolonging the sound indefinitely. He was not

deceitful or quick at invention, and it seemed to him a manifest

absurdity to reply--"a girl." He approached the house, words hesitating

on his lips.

"My late partner's daughter," he observed, keeping wide of the mark,

"usually does the cooking."

"Married?" asked the young man rapidly.

"She?--No," said Bates, taken by surprise.

_"Young_ lady?" asked the other, with more interest. Bates was not

accustomed to consider his ward under his head.

"She is just a young girl about seventeen," he replied stiffly.

"Oh, halibaloo!" cried the youth joyously. "Why, stranger, I haven't set

eyes on a young lady these two months. I'd give a five dollar-bill this

minute, if I had it, to set eyes on her right here and now." He took his

pipe from his lips and clapped his hand upon his side with animation as

he spoke.

Bates regarded him with dull disfavour. He would himself have given more

than the sum mentioned to have compassed the same end, but for different

reasons, and his own reasons were so grave that the youth's frivolity

seemed to him doubly frivolous.

"I hope," he said coldly, "that she will come in soon." His eyes

wandered involuntarily up the hill as he spoke.

"Gone out walking, has she?" The youth's eyes followed in the same

direction. "Which way has she gone?"

"I don't know exactly which path she may have taken." Bates's words grew

more formal the harder he felt himself pressed.

"Path!" burst out the young man--_"Macadamised road,_ don't you mean?

There's about as much of one as the other on this here hill."

"I meant," said Bates, "that I didn't know where she was."

His trouble escaped somewhat with his voice as he said this with

irritation.

The youth looked at him curiously, and with some incipient sympathy.

After a minute's reflection he asked, touching his forehead:

"She ain't weak here, is she--like the _old_ lady?"

"Nothing of the sort," exclaimed Bates, indignantly. The bare idea cost

him a pang. Until this moment he had been angry with the girl; he was

still angry, but a slight modification took place. He felt with her

against all possible imputations.

"All right in the headpiece, is she?" reiterated the other more lightly.

"Very intelligent," replied Bates. "I have taught her myself. She is

remarkably intelligent." The young man's sensitive spirits, which had

suffered slight depression from contact with Bates's perturbation, now

recovered entirely.

"Oh, Glorianna!" he cried in irrepressible anticipation. "Let this very

intelligent young lady come on! Why"--in an explanatory way--"if I saw

as much as a female dress hanging on a clothes-line out to dry, I'm in

that state of mind I'd adore it properly."

If Bates had been sure that the girl would return safely he would

perhaps have been as well pleased that she should not return in time to

meet the proposed adoration; as it was, he was far too ill at ease

concerning her not to desire her advent as ardently as did the naïve

youth. The first feeling made his manner severe; the second constrained

him to say he supposed she would shortly appear.

His mind was a good deal confounded, but if he supposed anything it was

that, having wakened to find herself left behind by the boat, she had

walked away from the house in an access of anger and disappointment, and

he expected her to return soon, because he did not think she had courage

or resolution to go very far alone. Underneath this was the uneasy fear

that her courage and resolution might take her farther into danger than

was at all desirable, but he stifled the fear.

When he went in he told the company, in a few matter-of-fact words of

his partner's death, and the object of the excursion from which they had

seen him return. He also mentioned that his aunt's companion, the dead

man's child, had, it appeared, gone off into the woods that

morning--this was by way of apology that she was not there to cook for

them, but he took occasion to ask if they had seen her on the hill. As

they had come down the least difficult way and had not met her, he

concluded that she had not endeavoured to go far afield, and tried to

dismiss his anxiety and enjoy his guests in his own way.

Hospitality, even in its simplest form, is more often a matter of

amiable pride than of sincere unselfishness, but it is not a form of

pride with which people are apt to quarrel. Bates, when he found himself

conversing with scientific men of gentle manners, was resolved to show

himself above the ordinary farmer of that locality. He went to the

barrel where the summer's eggs had been packed in soft sand, and took

out one apiece for the assembled company. He packed the oven with large

potatoes. He put on an excellent supply of tea to boil. The travellers,

who, in fact, had had their ordinary breakfast some hours before, made

but feeble remonstrances against these preparations, remonstrances which

only caused Bates to make more ample provision. He brought out a large

paper bag labelled, "patent self-raising pancake meal," and a small

piece of fat pork. Here he was obliged to stop and confess himself in

need of culinary skill; he looked at the men, not doubting that he could

obtain it from them.

"The Philadelphian can do it better," said one. This was corroborated by

the others. "Call Harkness," they cried, and at the same time they

called Harkness themselves.

The young American opened the door and came in in a very leisurely, not

to say languid, manner. He took in the situation at a glance without

asking a question. "But," said he, "are we not to wait for the

intelligent young lady? Female intelligence can make the finer pancake."

The surveyors manifested some curiosity. "What do you know about a young

lady?" they asked.

"The young lady of the house," replied Harkness. "Hasn't

_he"_--referring to Bates--"told you all about her? The domestic

divinity who has just happened to get mislaid this morning. I saw him

looking over the wood pile to see if she had fallen behind it, but she

hadn't."

"It is only a few days since her father died," said the senior of the

party gravely.

"And so," went on the young man, "she has very properly given these few

days to inconsolable grief. But now our visit is just timed to comfort

and enliven her, _why_ is she not here to be comforted and enlivened?"

No-one answered, and, as the speaker was slowly making his way toward

the frying-pan, no one seemed really apprehensive that he would keep

them waiting. The youth had an oval, almost childish face; his skin was

dark, clear, and softly coloured as any girl's; his hair fell in black,

loose curls over his forehead. He was tall, slender without being thin,

very supple; but his languid attitudes fell short of grace, and were

only tolerable because they were comic. When he reached out his hand for

the handle of the frying-pan he held the attention of the whole company

by virtue of his office, and his mind, to Bates's annoyance, was still

running on the girl.

"Is she fond of going out walking alone?" he asked.

"How could she be fond of walking when there's no place to walk?" Bates

spoke roughly. "Besides, she has too much work to do."

"Ever lost her before?"

"No," said Bates. It would have been perfectly unbearable to his pride

that these strangers should guess his real uneasiness or its cause, so

he talked as if the fact of the girl's long absence was not in any way

remarkable.

Having mixed a batter the American sliced pork fat into the hot pan and

was instantly obscured from view by the smoke thereof. In a minute his

face appeared above it like the face of a genius.

"You will observe, gentlemen," he cried without bashfulness, "that I now

perform the eminently interesting operation of dropping cakes--one, two,

three. May the intelligent young lady return to eat them!"

No one laughed, but his companions smiled patiently at his antics--a

patience born of sitting in a very hot, steamy room after weeks in the

open air.

"You are a cook," remarked Bates.

The youth bent his long body towards him at a sudden angle. "Born a

cook--dentist by profession--by choice a vagabond."

"Dentist?" said Bates curiously.

"At your service, sir."

"He is really a dentist," said one of the surveyors with sleepy

amusement. "He carries his forceps round in his vest pocket."

"I lost them when I scrambled head first down this gentleman's

macadamised road this morning, but if you want a tooth out I can use the

tongs."

"My teeth are all sound," said Bates.

"Thank the Lord for that!" the young man answered with an emphatic piety

which, for all that appeared, might have been perfectly sincere.

"And the young lady?" he asked after a minute.

"What?"

"The young lady's teeth--the teeth of the intelligent young lady--the

intelligent teeth of the young lady--are they sound?"

"Yes."

He sighed deeply. "And to think," he mourned, "that he should have

casually lost her _just_ this morning!"

He spoke exactly as if the girl were a penknife or a marble that had

rolled from Bates's pocket, and the latter, irritated by an inward fear,

grew to hate the jester.

When the meal, which consisted of fried eggs, pancakes, and potatoes,

was eaten, the surveyors spent an hour or two about the clearing,

examining the nature of the soil and rock. They had something to say to

Bates concerning the value of his land which interested him exceedingly.

Considering how rare it was for him to see any one, and how fitted he

was to appreciate intercourse with men who were manifestly in a higher

rank of life than he, it would not have been surprising if he had

forgotten Sissy for a time, even if they had had nothing to relate of

personal interest to himself. As it was, even in the excitement of

hearing what was of importance concerning his own property, he did not

wholly forget her; but while his visitors remained his anxiety was in

abeyance.

When they were packing their instruments to depart, the young American,

who had not been with them during the morning, came and took Bates aside

in a friendly way.

"See here," he said, "were you gassing about that young lady? There

ain't no young lady now, is there?"

"I told you"--with some superiority of manner--"she is not a young lady;

she is a working girl, an emigrant's----"

"Oh, Glorianna!" he broke out, "girl or lady, what does it matter to me?

Do you mean to say you've really lost her?"

The question was appalling to Bates. All the morning he had not dared to

face such a possibility and now to have the question hurled at him with

such imperative force by another was like a terrible blow. But when a

blow is thus dealt from the outside, a man like Bates rallies all the

opposition of his nature to repel it.

"Not at all"--his manner was as stiff as ever--"she is lurking somewhere

near."

"Look here--I've been up the hill that way, and that way, and that

way"--he indicated the directions with his hand--"and I've been down

round the shore as far as I could get, and I've had our two dogs with

me, who'd either of them have mentioned it if there'd been a stranger

anywheres near; and she ain't here. An' if she's climbed _over_ the

hill, _she's_ a spunky one--somewhat spunkier than _I_ should think

natural." He looked at Bates very suspiciously as he spoke.

"Well?"

"Well, _my_ belief is that there ain't no young lady, and that you're

gassing me."

"Very well," said Bates, and he turned away. It was offensive to him to

be accused of telling lies--he was not a man to give any other name than

"lie" to the trick attributed to him, or to perceive any humour in the

idea of it--but it was a thousand times more offensive that this youth

should have presumed to search for Sissy and to tell him that the search

had been vain.

Horrible as the information just given was, he did not more than half

believe it, and something just said gave him a definite idea of

hope--the strange dogs had not found Sissy, but the house-dog, if

encouraged to seek, would certainly find her. He had felt a sort of

grudge against the animal all day, because he must know which way she

had gone and could not tell. Now he resolved as soon as the strangers

were gone to set the dog to seek her. Upon this he stayed his mind.

The surveyors hoped to get a few days' more work done before the winter

put an end to their march; they determined when thus stopped to turn

down the river valley and take the train for Quebec. The way they now

wished to take lay, not in the direction in which the ox-cart had gone,

but over the hills directly across the lake. The scow belonging to this

clearing, on which they had counted, was called into requisition.

The day was still calm; Bates had no objection to take them across. At

any other time he would have had some one to leave in charge of the

place, but especially as he would be in sight of the house all the time,

he made no difficulty of leaving as it was. He could produce four oars,

such as they were, and the way across was traversed rapidly.

"And there ain't really a female belonging to the place, except the old

lady," said the dentist, addressing the assembled party upon the scow.

"It was all a tale, and--my eye;--he took me in completely."

Probably he did not give entire credence to his own words, and wished to

provoke the others to question Bates further; but they were not now in

the same idle mood that had enthralled them when, in the morning, they

had listened to him indulgently. Their loins were girded; they were

intent upon what they were doing and what they were going to do. No one

but Bates paid heed to him.

Bates heard him clearly enough, but, so stubbornly had he set himself to

rebuff this young man, and so closely was he wrapped in that pride of

reserve that makes a merit of obstinate self-reliance, that it never

even occurred to him to answer or to accept this last offer of a

fellow-man's interest in the search he was just about to undertake.

He had some hope that, if Sissy were skulking round, she would find it

easier to go back to the house when he was absent, and that he should

find her as usual on his return; but, as he wrought at his oar in

returning across the leaden water, looking up occasionally to make the

log house his aim, and staring for the most part at the lone hills,

under the pine woods of which his late companions had disappeared, his

heart gradually grew more heavy; all the more because the cheerfulness

of their society had buoyed up his spirit in their presence, did it now

suffer depression. The awful presentiment began to haunt him that he

would not find the girl that night, that he had in grim reality "lost

her." If this were the case, what a fool, what a madman, he had been to

let go the only aid within his reach! He stopped his rowing for a

minute, and almost thought of turning to call the surveying party back

again. But no, Sissy might be--in all probability was--already in the

house; in that case what folly to have brought them back, delaying their

work and incurring their anger! So he reasoned, and went on towards

home; but, in truth, it was not their delay or displeasure that deterred

him so much as his own pride, which loathed the thought of laying bare

his cause for fear and distress.

CHAPTER VI.

The day was duller now. The sun, in passing into the western sky, had

entered under thicker veils of white. The film of ice on the bay, which

had melted in the pale sunbeams of noon, would soon form again. The air

was growing bitterly cold.

When Bates had moored his boat, he went up the hill heavily. The dog,

which had been shut in the house to guard it, leaped out when he opened

the door. Sissy was not there.

Bates went in and found one of her frocks, and, bringing it out, tried

to put the animal on the scent of her track. He stooped, and held the

garment under the dog's nose. The dog sniffed it, laid his nose

contentedly on Bates's arm, looked up in his face, and wagged his tail

with most annoying cheerfulness.

"Where is she?" jerked Bates. "Where is she? Seek her, good dog."

The dog, all alert, bounded off a little way and returned again with an

inconsequent lightness in tail and eye. One of his ears had been torn in

a battle with the strange dogs, but he was more elated by the conflict

than depressed by the wound. When he came back, he seemed to Bates

almost to smile as if he said: "It pleases me that you should pay me so

much attention, but as for the girl, I know her to be satisfactorily

disposed of." Bates did not swear at the animal; he was a Scotchman, and

he would have considered it a sin to swear: he did not strike the dog

either, which he would not have considered a sin at all. He was actually

afraid to offend the only living creature who could befriend and help

him in his search. Very patiently he bent the dog's nose to the frock

and to the ground, begging and commanding him to seek. At length the dog

trotted off by a circuitous route up the clearing, and Bates followed.

He hoped the dog was really seeking, but feared he was merely following

some fancy that by thus running he would be rid of his master's

solicitude.

Bates felt it an odd thing that he should be wandering about with a

girl's frock in his hands. It was old, but he did not remember that he

had ever touched it before or noticed its material or pattern. He looked

at it fondly now, as he held it ready to renew the dog's memory if his

purpose should falter.

The dog went on steadily enough until he got to the edge of the woods,

where his footsteps made a great noise on the brittle leaves. He kicked

about in them as if he liked the noise they made, but offered to go no

farther. Bates looked at them and knew that the dog was not likely to

keep the scent among them if the girl had gone that way. He stood erect,

looking up the drear expanse of the hill, and the desperate nature of

his situation came upon him. He had been slow--slow to take it in,

repelling it with all the obstinacy of an obstinate mind. Now he saw

clearly that the girl had fled, and he was powerless to pursue at the

distance she might now have reached, the more so as he could not tell

which way she had taken. He would have left his live stock, but the

helpless old woman, whose life depended on his care, he dared not leave.

He stood and considered, his mind working rapidly under a stress of

emotion such as perhaps it had never known before--certainly not since

the first strong impulses of his youth had died within his cautious

heart.

Then he remembered that Sissy had walked about the previous day, and

perhaps the dog was only on the scent of yesterday's meanderings. He

took the animal along the top of the open space, urging him to find

another track, and at last the dog ran down again by the side of the

stream. Bates followed to the vicinity of the house, no wiser than he

had been at first.

The dog stopped under the end window of the house where old Cameron

fell, and scratched among the leaves on the fresh fallen earth. Bates

was reminded of the associations of the fatal spot. He thought of his

old friend's deathbed, of the trust that had there been confided to him.

Had he been unfaithful to that trust? With the impatience of sharp pain,

he called the dog again to the door of the house, and again from that

starting-point tried to make him seek the missing one. He did this, not

because he had much hope in the dog now, but because he had no other

hope.

This time the dog stood by, sobered by his master's soberness, but

looking with teasing expectancy, ready to do whatever was required if he

might only know what that was. To Bates, who was only anxious to act at

the dumb thing's direction, this expectancy was galling. He tore off a

part of the dress and fastened it to the dog's collar. He commanded him

to carry it to her in such excited tones that the old woman heard, and

fumbled her way out of the door to see what was going on. And Bates

stood between the dumb animal and the aged wreck of womanhood, and felt

horribly alone.

Clearly the sagacious creature not only did not know where to find the

girl, but knew that she was gone where he could not find her, for he

made no effort to carry his burden a step. Bates took it from him at

last, and the dog, whose feelings had apparently been much perturbed,

went down to the water's edge, and, standing looking over the lake,

barked there till darkness fell.

The night came, but the girl did not come. Bates made a great torch of

pine boughs and resin, and this he lit and hoisted on a pole fixed in

the ground, so that if she was seeking to return to her home in the

darkness she might be guided by it. He hoped also that, by some chance,

the surveying party might see it and know that it was a signal of

distress; but he looked for their camp-fire on the opposite hills, and,

not seeing it, felt only too sure that they had gone out of sight of

his. He fed and watched his torch all night. Snow began to fall; as he

looked up it seemed that the flame made a globe of light in the thick

atmosphere, around which closed a low vault of visible darkness. From

out of this darkness the flakes were falling thickly. When the day broke

he was still alone.

CHAPTER VII.

When Saul and the oxen were once fairly started, they plodded on

steadily. The track lay some way from the river and above it, through

the gap in the hills. Little of the hills did Saul see for he was moving

under trees all the way, and when, before noon, he descended into the

plain on the other side, he was still for a short time under a canopy of

interlacing boughs. There was no road; the trees were notched to show

the track. In such forests there is little obstruction of brushwood, and

over knoll and hollow, between the trunks, the oxen laboured on. Saul

sat on the front ledge of the cart to balance it the better. The coffin,

wedged in with the potash barrel, lay pretty still as long as they kept

on the soft soil of the forest, but when, about one o'clock, the team

emerged upon a corduroy road, made of logs lying side by side across the

path, the jolting often jerked the barrel out of place, and then Saul

would go to the back of the cart and jerk it and the coffin into

position again.

The forest was behind them now. This log road was constructed across a

large tract which sometime since had been cleared by a forest fire, but

was now covered again by thick brush standing eight or ten feet high.

One could see little on either side the road except the brown and grey

twigs of the saplings that grew by the million, packed close together.

The way had been cut among them, yet they were forcing their sharp

shoots up again between the seams of the corduroy, and where, here and

there, a log had rotted they came up thickly. The ground was low, and

would have been wet about the bushes had it not been frozen. Above, the

sky was white. Saul could see nothing but his straight road before and

behind, the impenetrable thicket and the white sky. It was a lonely

thing thus to journey.

While he had been under the forest, with an occasional squirrel or

chipmunk to arrest his gaze, and with all things as familiar to sight as

the environments of the house in which he was accustomed to live, Saul

had felt the vigour of the morning, and eaten his cold fat bacon,

sitting on the cart, without discontent. But now it was

afternoon--which, we all know, brings a somewhat more depressing

air--and the budless thickets stood so close, so still, Saul became

conscious that his load was a corpse. He had hoped, in a dull way, to

fall in with a companion on this made road; the chances were against it,

and the chances prevailed. Saul ate more bread and bacon. He had to walk

now, and often to give the cart a push, so that the way was laborious;

but, curiously enough, it was not the labour he objected to, but the

sound of his own voice. All the way the silent thicket was listening to

his "Gee-e, gee; haw then";--"yo-hoi-eest"; yet, as he and his oxen

progressed further into the quiet afternoon, he gradually grew more and

more timid at the shouts he must raise. It seemed to him that the dead

man was listening, or that unknown shapes or essences might be disturbed

by his voice and rush out from the thicket upon him. Such fears he

had--wordless fears, such as men never repeat and soon forget. Rough,

dull, hardy woodman as he was, he felt now as a child feels in the dark,

afraid of he knew not what.

The way was very weary. He trudged on beside the cart. Something went

wrong with one of his boots, and he stopped the oxen in order to take it

off. The animals, thus checked, stood absolutely still, hanging down

their heads in an attitude of rest. The man went behind the cart and sat

on its edge. He leaned on the end of the coffin as he examined the boot.

When that was put right he could not deny himself the luxury of a few

minutes' rest. The oxen, with hanging heads, looked as if they had gone

to sleep. The man hung his head also, and might have been dozing from

his appearance. He was not asleep, however. What mental machinery he had

began to work more freely, and he actually did something that might be

called thinking on the one subject that had lain as a dormant matter of

curiosity in his head all day--namely, how the girl would act when she

woke to find the cart was actually gone and she left behind. He had seen

old Cameron die, and heard Bates promise to do his best for his

daughter; he remembered her tears and pleading on the preceding day; the

situation came to him now, as perceptions come to dull minds, with force

that had gathered with the lapse of time. He had not the refinement and

acuteness of mind necessary to make him understand the disinterested

element in Bates's tyranny, and while he sympathised cunningly with the

selfishness of which, in his mind, he accused Bates, it seemed to him

that the promise to the dead was broken, and he thought upon such

calamities as might befall in token of the dead man's revenge.

How awfully silent it was! There was no breath in the chill, still air;

there was no sound of life in all the dark, close brushwood; the oxen

slept; and Saul, appalled by the silence that had come with his silence,

appalled to realise more vividly than ever that he, and he alone, had

been the instigator of voice in all that region, was cowed into thinking

that, if the dead could rise from the grave for purposes of revenge, how

much more easily could he rise now from so crude a coffin as he himself

had helped to construct for him!

It was in this absolute silence that he heard a sound. He heard the dead

man turn in his coffin! He heard, and did not doubt his hearing; it was

not a thing that he could easily be deceived about as he sat with his

elbow on the coffin. He sat there not one instant longer; the next

moment he was twenty feet away, standing half-hidden in the edge of the

brushwood, staring at the cart and the coffin, ready to plunge into the

icy swamp and hide farther among the young trees if occasion required.

Occasion did not require. The oxen dozed on; the cart, the barrel, and

the coffin stood just as he had left them.

Perhaps for five minutes the frightened man was still. Gradually his

muscles relaxed, and he ceased to stand with limbs and features all

drawn in horror away from the coffin. He next pulled back his foot from

the icy marsh; but even then, having regained his equilibrium on the

road, he had not decided what to do, and it took him some time longer to

turn over the situation in his mind. He had heard the dead man move; he

was terribly frightened; still, it might have been a mistake, and, any

way, the most disagreeable course, clearly, was to remain there till

nightfall. He had run backward in his first alarm; so, to get to the

nearest habitation, it would be necessary to pass the cart on the road,

even if he left it there. Had any further manifestation of vitality

appeared on the part of the corpse he would have felt justified in

running back into the forest, but this was an extreme measure. He did

not wish to go near the cart, but to turn his back upon it seemed almost

as fearsome. He stood facing it, as a man faces a fierce dog, knowing

that if he turns and runs the dog will pursue. He supposed that as long

as he stared at the coffin and saw nothing he could be sure that the

deceased remained inside, but that if he gave the ghost opportunity to

get out on the sly it might afterwards come at him from any point of the

compass. He was an ignorant man, with a vulgar mind; he had some

reverence for a corpse, but none whatever for a ghost. His mind had

undergone a change concerning the dead the moment he had heard him move,

and he looked upon his charge now as equally despicable and gruesome.

After some further delay he discovered that the course least

disagreeable would be to drive the oxen with his voice and walk as far

behind the cart as he now was, keeping the pine box with four nails on

its lid well in view. Accordingly, making a great effort to encourage

himself to break the silence, he raised his shout in the accustomed

command to the oxen, and after it had been repeated once or twice, they

strained at the cart and set themselves to the road again. They did not

go as fast as when the goad was within reach of their flanks; or rather;

they went more slowly than then, for "fast" was not a word that could

have been applied to their progress before. Yet they went on the whole

steadily, and the "Gee" and "Haw" of the gruff voice behind guided them

straight as surely as bit and rein.

At length it could be seen in the distance that the road turned; and

round this turning another human figure came in sight. Perhaps in all

his life Saul never experienced greater pleasure in meeting another man

than he did now, yet his exterior remained gruff and unperturbed. The

only notice that he appeared to take of his fellow-man was to adjust his

pace so that, as the other came nearer the cart in front, Saul caught up

with it in the rear. At last they met close behind it, and then, as

nature prompted, they both stopped.

The last comer upon the desolate scene was a large, hulking boy. He had

been plodding heavily with a sack upon his back. As he stopped, he set

this upon the ground and wiped his brow.

The boy was French; but Saul, as a native of the province, talked

French about as well as he did English--that is to say, very badly. He

could not have written a word of either.--The conversation went on in

the _patois_ of the district.

"What is in the box?" asked the boy, observing that the carter's eyes

rested uneasily upon it.

"Old Cameron died at our place the day before yesterday," answered Saul,

not with desire to evade, but because it did not seem necessary to

answer more directly.

"What of?" The boy looked at the box with more interest now.

"He died of a fall"--briefly.

The questioner looked at the pinewood box now with considerable

solicitude. "Did his feet swell?" he asked. As Saul did not immediately

assent, he added--"When the old M. Didier died, his feet swelled."

"What do you think of the coffin?" Saul said this eyeing it as if he

were critically considering it as a piece of workmanship.

"M. Didier made a much better one for his little child," replied the

boy.

"If he did, neither Mr. Bates nor me is handy at this sort of work. We

haven't been used to it. It's a rough thing. Touch it. You will see it's

badly made."

He gained his object. The boy fingered the coffin, and although he did

not praise the handiwork, it seemed to Saul that some horrid spell was

broken when human hands had again touched the box and no evil had

resulted.

"Why didn't you bury him at home?" asked the boy. "He was English."

"Mr. Bates has strict ideas, though he is English. He wanted it done

proper, in a graveyard, by a minister. He has wrote to the minister at

St. Hennon's and sent money for the burying--Mr. Bates, he is always

particular."

"You are not going to St. Hennon's?" said the boy incredulously. "I'll

stay to-night at Turrifs, and go on in the morning. It's four days' walk

for me and the cattle to go and come, but I shall take back a man to cut

the trees."

"Why not send him by the new railroad?"

"It does not stop at Turrifs."

"Yes; they stop at the cross-roads now, not more than three miles from

Turrifs, There's a new station, and an Englishman set to keep it. I've

just brought this sack of flour from there. M. Didier had it come by the

cars."

"When do they pass to St. Hennon's?" asked Saul meditatively,--"But

anyway, the Englishman wouldn't like to take in a coffin."

"They pass some time in the night; and he must take it in if you write

on it where it's going. It's not his business to say what the cars will

take, if you pay."

"Well," said Saul. "Good-day. Yo-hoist! Yo, yo, ho-hoist!"

It did not seem to him necessary to state whether he was, or was not,

going to take the advice offered. The straining and creaking of the

cart, his shouts to the oxen, would have obliterated any further query

the boy might have made. He had fairly moved off when the boy also took

up his burden and trudged on the other way.

CHAPTER VIII.

When the blueberry bushes are dry, all the life in them, sucked into

their roots against another summer, the tops turn a rich, brownish red;

at this time, also, wild bramble thickets have many a crimson stalk that

gives colour to their mass, and the twigs that rise above the white

trunks of birch trees are not grey, but brown.

Round the new railway station at the cross-roads near Turrifs

Settlement, the low-lying land, for miles and miles, was covered with,

blueberry bushes; bramble thickets were here and there; and where the

land rose a little, in irregular places, young birch woods stood. If the

snow had sprinkled here, as it had upon the hills the night before,

there was no sign of it now. The warm colour of the land seemed to glow

against the dulness of the afternoon, not with the sparkle and

brightness which colour has in sunshine, but with the glow of a sleeping

ember among its ashes. Round the west there was metallic blue colouring

upon the cloud vault. This colouring was not like a light upon the

cloud, it was like a shadow upon it; yet it was not grey, but blue.

Where the long straight road from Turrifs and the long straight road

from the hills crossed each other, and were crossed by the unprotected

railway track with its endless rows of tree-trunks serving as telegraph

poles, the new station stood.

It was merely a small barn, newly built of pinewood, divided into two

rooms--one serving as a store-room for goods, the other as waiting-room,

ticket office, and living-room of the station-master. The

station-master, who was, in fact, master, clerk, and porter in one, was

as new to his surroundings as the little fresh-smelling pinewood house.

He was a young Englishman, and at the first glance it could be seen he

had not long been living in his present place. He had, indeed, not yet

given up shaving himself, and his clothes, although rough, warm, and

suited to his occupation, still suggested, not homespun, but an outfit

bought of a tailor.

It was about four o'clock on that November afternoon when the new

official of the new station looked out at the dark red land and the

bright-tinted cloud. It was intensely cold. The ruts of the roads, which

were not made of logs here, were frozen stiff. The young man stood a

minute at his door with his hands in his pockets, sniffed the frost, and

turned in with an air of distaste. A letter that had been brought him by

the morning train lay on his table, addressed to "Alec Trenholme, Esq."

It had seen vicissitudes, and been to several addresses in different

cities, before it had been finally readdressed to this new station.

Perhaps its owner had not found the path to fortune which he sought in

the New World as easily accessible as he had expected. Whether he had

now found it or not, he set himself to that which he had found in manly

fashion.

Coming in from the cold without, and shutting himself in, as he

supposed, for the evening, he wisely determined to alleviate the

peculiar feeling of cold and desolation which the weather was fitted to

induce by having an early tea. He set his pan upon a somewhat rusty

stove and put generous slices of ham therein to fry. He made tea, and

then set forth his store of bread, his plates and cup, upon the table,

with some apparent effort to make the meal look attractive. The frying

ham soon smelt delicious, and while it was growing brown, Alec Trenholme

read his letter for the fifth time that day. It was not a letter that he

liked, but, since the morning train, only two human beings had passed by

the station, and the young station-master would have read and re-read a

more disagreeable epistle than the one which had fallen to his lot. It

was dated from a place called Chellaston, and was from his brother. It

was couched in terms of affection, and contained a long, closely

reasoned argument, with the tenor of which it would seem the reader did

not agree, for he smiled at it scornfully!

He had not re-read his letter and dished his ham before sounds on the

road assured him an ox-cart was approaching, and, with an eagerness to

see who it might be which cannot be comprehended by those who have not

lived in isolation, he went out to see Saul and his cattle coming at an

even pace down the road from the hills. The cart ran more easily now

that the road was of the better sort, and the spirits of both man and

beasts were so raised by the sight of a house that they all seemed in

better form for work than when in the middle of their journey.

Alec Trenholme waited till the cart drew up between his door and the

railway track, and regarded the giant stature of the lumberman, his

small, round head, red cheeks, and luxuriant whiskers, with that

intense but unreflecting interest which the lonely bestow upon

unexpected company. He looked also, with an eye to his own business, at

the contents of the cart, and gave the man a civil "good evening."

As he spoke, his voice and accent fell upon the air of this wilderness

as a rarely pleasant thing to hear. Saul hastily dressed his whiskers

with his horny left-hand before he answered, but even then, he omitted

to return the greeting.

"I want to know," he said, sidling up, "how much it would cost to send

that by the cars to St. Hennon's." He nudged his elbow towards the

coffin as he spoke.

"That box?" asked the station-master. "How much does it weigh?"

"We might weigh it if I'd some notion first about how much I'd need to

pay."

"What's in it?"

Saul smoothed his whiskers again. "Well," he said--then, after a slight

pause--"it's a dead man."

"Oh!" said Trenholme. Some habit of politeness, unnecessary here, kept

his exclamation from expressing the interest he instantly felt. In a

country where there are few men to die, even death assumes the form of

an almost agreeable change as a matter of lively concern. Then, after a

pause which both men felt to be suitable, "I suppose there is a special

rate for--that sort of thing, you know. I really haven't been here very

long. I will look it up. I suppose you have a certificate of death,

haven't you?"

Again Saul dressed his whiskers. His attention to them was his

recognition of the fact that Trenholme impressed him as a superior.

"I don't know about a certificate. You've heard of the Bates and Cameron

clearin', I s'pose; it's old Cameron that's dead"--again he nudged his

elbow coffinward--"and Mr. Bates he wrote a letter to the minister at

St. Hennon's."

He took the letter from his pocket as he spoke, and Trenholme perceived

that it was addressed in a legible hand and sealed.

"I fancy it's all right," said he doubtfully. He really had not any idea

what the railway might require before he took the thing in charge.

Saul did not make answer. He was not quite sure it was all right, but

the sort of wrongness he feared was not to be confided to the man into

whose care he desired to shove the objectionable burden.

"What did he die of?" asked the young man.

"He fell down, and he seemed for some days as if he'd get over it; then

he was took sudden. We put his feet into a hot pot of water and made him

drink lye."

"Lye?"

"Ash water--but we gave it him weak."

"Oh."

"But--he died."

"Well, that was sad. Does he leave a wife and family?"

"No," said Saul briefly. "But how much must I pay to have the cars take

it the rest of the way?"

Trenholme stepped into his room and lit his lamp that he might better

examine his list of rates. Saul came inside to warm himself at the

stove. The lamp in that little room was the one spot of yellow light in

the whole world that lay in sight, yet outside it was not yet dark, only

dull and bitterly cold.

Trenholme stood near the lamp, reading fine print upon a large card. The

railway was only just opened and its tariff incomplete as yet. He found

no particular provision made for the carriage of coffins. It took him

some minutes to consider under what class of freight to reckon this, but

he decided not to weigh it. Saul looked at the room, the ham and tea,

and at Trenholme, with quiet curiosity in his beady eyes. Outside, the

oxen hung their heads and dozed again.

"You see," said Saul, "I'll get there myself with the potash to-morrow

night; then I can arrange with the minister."

He had so much difficulty in producing the requisite number of coins for

the carriage that it was evident the potash could not be sent by train

too; but Trenholme was familiar now with the mode of life that could

give time of man and beast so easily, and find such difficulty in

producing a little money of far less value. He did remark that, as the

cart was to complete the journey, the coffin might as well travel the

second day as it had done the first; but, Saul showed reluctance to hear

this expostulation, and certainly it was not the station-master's

business to insist. The whole discussion did not take long. Saul was

evidently in a haste not usual to such as he, and Trenholme felt a

natural desire to sit down to his tea, the cooking of which filled the

place with grateful perfume. Saul's haste showed itself more in nervous

demeanour than in capacity to get through the interview quickly. Even

when the money was paid, he loitered awkwardly. Trenholme went into his

store-room, and threw open its double doors to the outside air.

"Help me in with it, will you?"

It was the pleasant authority of his tone that roused the other to

alacrity. They shouldered the coffin between them. The store-room was

fairly large and contained little. Trenholme placed the coffin

reverently by itself in an empty corner. He brought a pot of black paint

and a brush, and printed on it the necessary address. Then he thought a

moment, and added in another place the inscription--"Box containing

coffin--to be handled with care."

It is to be remarked how dependent we are for the simplest actions on

the teaching we have had. Never having received the smallest instruction

as to how to deal with such a charge, it cost him effort of thought and

some courage to put on this inscription. Saul watched, divided between

curious interest and his desire to be away.

"You've got another coffin inside this case, of course?" said the

station-master, struck with a sudden doubt.

To him, polished wood and silver plating seemed such a natural accessory

of death that he had, without thought, always associated the one idea

with the other.

"No, that's all there is. We made it too large by mistake, but we put a

bed quilt in for stuffing."

"But, my man, it isn't very well put together; the lid isn't tight."

"No--neither it is." Saul had already sidled to the door.

Trenholme felt it with his thumb and fingers.

"It's perfectly loose," he cried. "It's only got a few nails in the lid.

You ought to have put in screws, you know."

"Yes, but we hadn't got any; we had used the last screws we had for the

hinge of a door. I'm going to buy some to put in at St. Hennon's.

Good-day."

As they spoke, Saul had been going to his cart, and Trenholme following,

with authoritative displeasure in his mien.

"It's exceedingly careless--upon my word. Come back and nail it up

firmer," cried he.

But Saul drove off.

The young station-master went back to the store-room. He looked at the

box for a moment, with annoyance still in his mind. The air that he had

would have sat well upon a man with servants under him, but was somewhat

futile in the keeper of a desolate railway-station. He had not been able

to command the man, and he certainly could not command the coffin to

nail itself more firmly together. After all, his tea waited. Somewhat

sullenly he barred the double door on the inside, and went back to his

own room and his evening meal.

The room was filled with the steam of the boiling tea as he poured it

out, and the smoke of the ham gravy. With the strength of youth and

health he thrust aside the annoyance of his official position from his

present mind, and set himself to his supper with considerable

satisfaction.

He had not, however, eaten a single morsel before he heard a sound in

the next room which caused him to sit erect and almost rigid, forgetting

his food. He had been so pre-occupied a minute before with the

carelessness of those who constructed the coffin that he had left the

inner door between the two rooms ajar. It was through this that the

sound came, and it seemed to his quickened sense to proceed from the

corner in which the pinewood box reposed, but he hastily went over all

the contents of the room to think if any of them could be falling or

shifting among themselves. The sound still continued; it seemed as if

something was being gently worked to and fro, as in a soft socket. His

imagination was not very quick to represent impossible dangers, nor had

he in him more cowardice than dwells in most brave men. He did not allow

himself to conclude that he heard the coffin-lid being opened from the

inside. He took his lamp and went to see what was wrong.

The sound ceased as he moved. When the light of the lamp was in the next

room all was perfectly silent. For almost half a minute he stood still,

shading his eyes from the lamp, while, with every disagreeable sensation

crowding upon him, he observed distinctly that, although the nails were

still holding it loosely in place, the lid of the coffin was raised half

an inch, more than that indeed, at the top.

"Now, look here, you know--this won't do," said Trenholme, in loud

authoritative tones; so transported was he by the disagreeableness of

his situation that, for the moment, he supposed himself speaking to the

man with whom he had just spoken. Then, realising that that man,

although gone, was yet probably within call, he set down the lamp

hastily and ran out.

It seemed to him remarkable that Saul and the oxen could have gone so

far along the road, although of course they were still plainly in

sight. He shouted, but received no answer. He raised his voice and

shouted again and again, with force and authority. He ran, as he

shouted, about twenty paces. In return he only heard Saul's own commands

to his oxen. Whether the man was making so much noise himself that he

could not hear, or whether he heard and would not attend, Trenholme

could not tell, but he felt at the moment too angry to run after him

farther. It was not his place to wait upon this carter and run his

errands! Upon this impulse he turned again.

However, as he walked back, the chill frost striking his bare head, he

felt more diffidence and perplexity about his next action than was at

all usual to him. He knew that he had no inclination to investigate the

contents of the box. All the curiosity stirred within him still failed

to create the least desire to pry further; but, on the other hand, he

could not think it right to leave the matter as it was. A strong feeling

of duty commanding him to open the coffin and see that all was right,

and a stout aversion to performing this duty, were the main elements of

his consciousness during the minutes in which he retraced his steps to

the house.

He had set down the lamp on a package just within the baggage-room door,

so that his own room, by which he entered, was pretty dark, save for the

fire showing through the damper of the stove. Trenholme stopped in it

just one moment to listen; then, unwilling to encourage hesitation in

himself, went through the next door. His hand was outstretched to take

the lamp, his purpose was clearly defined--to go to the far corner and

examine the coffin-lid. Hand and thought arrested, he stopped on the

threshold, for the lid was thrown off the coffin, and beside it stood a

figure.

The lamp, which did not throw very much light across the comparatively

large empty room, was so placed that what light there was came directly

in Trenholme's eyes. Afterwards he remembered this, and wondered whether

all that he thought he saw had, in fact, been clearly seen; but at the

moment he thought nothing of the inadequacy of light or of the glare in

his eyes; he only knew that there, in the far corner beside the empty

coffin, stood a white figure--very tall to his vision, very lank, with

white drapery that clothed it round the head like a cowl and spread upon

the floor around its feet. But all that was not what arrested his

attention and chilled his strong courage, it was the eyes of the figure,

which were clearly to be seen--large, frightened, fierce eyes, that met

his own with a courage and terror in them which seemed to quell his own

courage and impart terror to him. Above them he saw the form of a pallid

brow clearly moulded. He did not remember the rest of the face--perhaps

the white clothes wrapped it around. While the eyes struck him with awe,

he had a curious idea that the thing had been interrupted in arranging

its own winding sheet, and was waiting until he retired again to finish

its toilet. This was merely a grotesque side-current of thought. He was

held and awed by the surprise of the face, for those eyes seemed to him

to belong to no earthly part of the old man who, he had been told, lay

there dead. Drawn by death or exhaustion as the face around them looked,

the eyes themselves appeared unearthly in their large brightness.

He never knew whether his next action was urged more by fear, or by the

strong sense of justice that had first prompted him to call back the

carter as the proper person to deal with the contents of the coffin.

Whatever the motive, it acted quickly. He drew back; closed the door;

locked it on the side of his own room; and set out again to bring back

the man. This time he should hear and should return. Trenholme did not

spare his voice, and the wide lonely land resounded to his shout. And

this time he was not too proud to run, but went at full speed and

shouted too.

Saul undoubtedly saw and heard him, for he faced about and looked.

Perhaps something in the very way in which Trenholme ran suggested why

he ran. Instead of responding to the command to return, he himself

began to run away and madly to goad his oxen. There are those who

suppose oxen yoked to a cart cannot run, but on occasion they can plunge

into a wild heavy gallop that man is powerless to curb. The great

strength latent in these animals was apparent now, for, after their long

day's draught, they seemed to become imbued with their driver's panic,

and changed from walking to dashing madly down the road. It was a long

straight incline of three miles from the station to the settlement

called Turrifs. Saul, unable to keep up with the cattle, flung himself

upon the cart, and, with great rattling, was borne swiftly away from his

pursuer. Young Trenholme stopped when he had run a mile. So far he had

gone, determined that, if the man would not stop for his commands, he

should be collared and dragged back by main force to face the thing

which he had brought, but by degrees even the angry young man perceived

the futility of chasing mad cattle. He drew up panting, and, turning,

walked back once more. He did not walk slowly; he was in no frame to

loiter and his run had brought such a flush of heat upon him that it

would have been madness to linger in the bitter cold. At the same time,

while his legs moved rapidly, his mind certainly hesitated--in fact, it

almost halted, unable to foresee in the least what its next opinion or

decision would be. He was not a man to pause in order to make up his

mind. He had a strong feeling of responsibility towards his little

station and its inexplicable tenant, therefore he hurried back against

his will. His only consolation in this backward walk was the key of the

door he had locked, which in haste he had taken out and still held in

his hand. Without attempting to decide whether the thing he had seen was

of common clay or of some lighter substance, he still did not lend his

mind with sufficient readiness to ghostly theory to imagine that his

unwelcome guest could pass through locked doors.

Nor did the ghost, if ghost it was, pass through unopened doors. The

flaw in Trenholme's comfortable theory was that he had forgotten that

the large double door, which opened from the baggage room to the railway

track, was barred on the inside. When he got back to his place he found

this door ajar, and neither in his own room, nor in the baggage room,

nor in the coffin, was there sign of human presence, living or dead.

All the world about lay in the clear white twilight. The blueberry

flats, the bramble-holts, were red. The clouded sky was white, except

for that metallic blue tinge in the west, through which, in some thin

places, a pale glow of yellower light was now visible, the last rays of

the day that had set. It was this world on which the young Englishman

looked as, amazed and somewhat affrighted, he walked round the building,

searching on all sides for the creature that could hardly yet, had it

run away in such a level land, be wholly out of sight.

He went indoors again to make sure that nothing was there, and this time

he made a discovery--his tea was gone from his cup. He gave a shudder of

disgust, and, leaving his food untouched, put on coat and cap, and went

out shutting his door behind him. His spirits sank. It seemed to him

that, had it been midnight instead of this blank, even daylight, had his

unearthly-looking visitant acted in more unearthly fashion, the

circumstances would have had less weird force to impress his mind.

We can, after all, only form conjectures regarding inexplicable

incidents from the successive impressions that have been made upon us.

This man was not at all given to love of romance or superstition, yet

the easy explanation that some man, for purpose of trick or crime, had

hidden in the box, did not seem to him to fit the circumstances. He

could not make himself believe that the eyes he had seen belonged to a

living man; on the other hand, he found it impossible to conceive of a

tea-drinking ghost.

About a quarter of a mile away there was a long grove of birch trees,

the projecting spur of a second growth of forest that covered the

distant rising ground. Towards this Trenholme strode, for it was the

only covert near in which a human being could travel unseen. It was more

by the impulse of energy, however, than by reasonable hope that he came

there, for by the time he had reached the edge of the trees, it was

beginning to grow dark, even in the open plain.

No one who has not seen birch trees in their undisturbed native haunts

can know how purely white, unmarred by stain or tear, their trunks can

be. Trenholme looked in among them. They grew thickly. White--white--it

seemed in the gathering gloom that each was whiter than the other; and

Trenholme, remembering that his only knowledge of the figure he sought

was that it was wrapped in white, recognised the uselessness, the

absurdity even, of hoping to find it here, of all places.

Then he went back to the road and started for Turrifs Settlement.

CHAPTER IX.

The settlement called "Turrifs" was not a village; it was only a

locality, in which there were a good many houses within the radius of a

few square miles.

When Alec Trenholme started off the third time to reproach the recreant

driver of the ox-cart, he had no intention of again dealing with him

directly. He bent his steps to the largest house in the neighbourhood,

the house of the family called Turrifs; whose present head, being the

second of his generation on the same farm, held a position of loosely

acknowledged pre-eminence. Turrif was a Frenchman, who had had one

Scotch forefather through whom his name had come. This, indeed, was the

case with many of his neighbours.

Trenholme had had various negotiations with this Turrif and his

neighbours, but he had only once been to the house he was now seeking

and in the darkness, which had fallen completely during his three-mile

walk, he was a little puzzled to find it quickly. Its wooden and

weather-greyed walls glimmered but faintly in the night; it was only by

following the line of log fences through the flat treeless fields that

he found himself at last full in the feeble rays of the candle-light

that peeped from its largest window. Trenholme knocked.

Turrif himself opened the door. He was a man of middle age, thick-set

but thin, with that curious grey shade on a healthy skin that so often

pertains to Frenchmen. For a moment his shrewd but mild countenance

peered into the darkness; then, holding wide the door and making welcome

motion with his hand, he bade Trenholme enter.

Trenholme could not speak French, but he knew that Turrif could

understand enough English to comprehend his errand if he told it slowly

and distinctly. Slowly and distinctly, therefore, he recounted all that

had befallen him since Saul arrived at the station; but such telling of

such a story could not be without some embarrassment, caused by the

growing perception, on the part of both men, of its extraordinary

nature.

"Eh--h!" said the Frenchman during the telling. It was a prolonged

syllable, denoting meditative astonishment, and it brought another

listener, for the wife came and stood by her husband, who interpreted

the story to her, and shortly a girl of thirteen also drew near and

stood listening to her father's interpretation. Trenholme began to

wonder whether the elder listeners were placing any confidence in his

word; but the doubt was probably in his mind only, for an honest man

does not estimate the subtle force of his own honesty.

Turrif and his wife listened to all that was said, and looked at each

other, and looked at him, and asked him a good many questions. They were

neither of them hasty, but, as the woman's manner was the more

vivacious, so her questions, when translated, showed a somewhat quicker

wit. When all was said, like wise people, they pronounced no sentence,

either upon Trenholme's actions or upon those of the creature that had

inhabited the coffin; but they remarked that if the carter had committed

no evil he would not have run away. They said that they had some

knowledge of this man, whom they called "Monsieur Saul," and that he was

a fellow of little worth. They agreed that Turrif should go with

Trenholme, as requested, to bring the man to book.

On crossing the threshold of the house Trenholme had come at once into a

large, long room, which composed the whole lower flat of the dwelling,

as appeared from the windows on both sides and from the fact that the

staircase went up from one end of it. It was a comfortable, well-warmed

room, containing evidences of all the various industries of the family,

from the harness that hung on the wall and the basket of carded wool by

the spinning-wheel, to the bucket of cow's mash that stood warming by

the stove at the foot of the baby's cradle. At the far end a large

table, that held the candle, had a meal spread upon it, and also some

open dog's-eared primers, at which small children were spelling audibly.

When the conference, which had taken place near the door, was over, the

wife went back to her children and her lighted table, and Trenholme made

as if to open the door, supposing that Turrif would walk away with him.

"Eh--_non,"_ said the older man, with a kindly smile. _"Pas encore,"_

and taking Trenholme by the arm, he pushed him gently towards the table.

"I weel get out my 'orse," said he, in slow, broken English. "You have

had enough walking to-day, and I have had enough work. _À

présent"_--with a gesture toward the table.

He made Trenholme sit down at the table. There was a very large pan of

thick sour milk on it, and a loaf of grey bread. Bits of this bread were

set round the edge of the table, near the children, who munched at them.

Turrif gave Trenholme a bit of bread, cutting into the loaf as men only

do in whose lives bread is not scarce. With a large spoon he took a

quantity of the thick rich cream from the top of the milk and put a

saucer of it before the visitor. Trenholme ate it with his bread, and

found it not as sour as he expected, and on the whole very good. Turrif,

eating bread as he went, carried the harness out of the house.

As there was no one left for him to talk to, Trenholme grew more

observant. He remarked the sweetness and sense in the face of the

house-mother as she bestowed their suppers upon the children. She was

still comparatively young, but there was no beauty of youth about her,

only the appearance of strength that is produced by toil and endurance

before these two have worn the strength away. But, in spite of this look

of strength, the face was not hard--no, nor sad; and there was a certain

latent poetry, too, about the gesture and look with which she gave food

to the little ones, as if the giving and receiving were a free thing,

and not the mere necessity of life. Her manner of giving them supper was

to push the large pan of curded milk close to the edge of the table,

where the little ones were clustered, and let them, four of them at

once, lap out of the side of it with their little spoons. At the same

time she pushed the creasy yellow cover of cream to the farther side,

with a watchful glance at Trenholme's saucer, evidently meaning that it

was kept for him. She and the elder boy and girl waited to sup till the

little ones had finished.

Trenholme endeavoured to say that he should not want any more cream, but

she did not understand his words. He would have felt more concerned at

the partiality shown him if the youngsters had looked more in need of

cream; but they were, in truth, so round-faced and chubby, and so

evidently more pleased to stare at him with their big, black eyes than

grieved to lose the richest part of their milk, that he felt distress

would have been thrown way. All four little ones wore round knitted

caps, and their little heads, at uneven heights, their serious eyes

rolling upon him, and their greedy little mouths supping in the milk the

while, formed such an odd picture round the white disk of the milk-pan

that Trenholme could not help laughing. The greedy little feeders,

without dropping their spoons, looked to their mother to see whether

they ought to be frightened or not at such conduct on the stranger's

part, but seeing her smile, they concluded that they were safe.

Upon Trenholme's making further overtures of friendship, one or two of

them began to smile: the smile was infectious, it spread to all four,

and they began to laugh, and laughed in baby fashion quite immoderately.

Their mother considered this a sign that they had had enough, and took

their spoons from them. As they scattered from the table Trenholme

perceived that, though their heads were covered, their feet were not.

Their whole costume consisted of a short blue cotton nightgown and the

little knitted cap.

When Turrif came in to say that the horse was ready, Trenholme made an

effort to present his thanks in saying good-bye to the mistress of the

house, but she did not seem to expect or take much notice of these

manners. As he went out of the door he looked back to see her bending

over the baby in the cradle, and he noticed for the first time that

above the cradle there was a little shrine fastened to the wall. It was

decked with a crucifix and paper flowers; above was a coloured picture

of the Virgin.

Trenholme, whose nerves were perhaps more susceptible than usual by

reason of the creature set at large by the opening of the coffin,

wondered that Turrif should leave his wife and children alone so

willingly, without any effort to bar the house and without objection on

their part. He knew there was no other house within half a mile, and the

darkness that lay on the flat land appeared to give room for a thousand

dangers.

He expressed this surprise to Turrif, who replied placidly that the good

saints took care of women and children--a reply which probably did not

go to prove the man's piety so much as the habitual peace of the

neighbourhood.

The vehicle to which Turrif had harnessed his pony was a small hay

cart--that is to say, a cart consisting of a platform on two wheels, and

a slight paling along each side intended to give some support to its

contents. It was much more lightly made than Saul's ox-cart. The wheels

went over the frozen ruts at a good pace, and the inmates were badly

jolted. Trenholme would rather have walked, but he had already observed

that the Canadian rustic never walked if he could possibly avoid it, and

he supposed there must be some reason for this in the nature of the

country. The jolting made talking disagreeable; indeed, when he

attempted conversation he found his words reminded him forcibly of times

when, in the nursery of his childhood, he had noticed the cries of baby

companions gradually grow less by reason of the rapid vibrations of the

nurse's knee. He kept silence therefore, and wondered whether Turrif or

the pony was guiding, so carelessly did they go forth into the darkness,

turning corners and avoiding ghostly fences with slovenly ease.

It soon appeared that Turrif knew no more than Trenholme where to find

Saul; his only method of seeking was to inquire at each house. It was

not, however, necessary to go into each house; the cart was only brought

sufficiently near upon the road for a lusty shout to reach the family

inside. The first house Trenholme hardly saw in the darkness; at one or

two others he had a good view of the interior through an open door or

window. From each door men and boys, sometimes women and children,

sallied forth eagerly into the cold night to see what was wanted, and to

each inquiry the phlegmatic Turrif repeated Trenholme's tale. Trenholme

would have given a good deal to be able fully to understand what was

said. There was much conversation. From each house one or two men joined

them, and in one case, from a squalid-looking doorway, a loud-speaking

and wilful girl came out and insisted on getting into the cart. She

talked to the men and shrieked loudly when any object, such as a barn or

a tree, loomed dimly at the side of the road. Two of the men brought a

lantern and walked behind. When they came to the house whose roof was

found to cover Saul, a party of eight entered to hear and pronounce upon

his explanation. Certainly, if Trenholme had had the management of the

business, he would not have proceeded in this fashion, but he had no

choice.

The carter had been drinking whisky--not much as yet, but enough to give

him a greater command of words than he ordinarily possessed. When he saw

Trenholme among the band who were inquiring for him, he manifested

distinct signs of terror, but not at his visitors; his ghastly glances

were at door and window, and he drew nearer to the company for

protection. It was plainly what they had to tell, not what they had to

demand, that excited him to trembling; the assembled neighbourhood

seemed to strike him in the light of a safeguard. When, however, he

found the incomers were inclined to accuse him of trick or knavery, he

spoke out bravely enough.

Old Cameron had died--they knew old Cameron?

Yes, the men assented to this knowledge.

And after he had been dead two days and one night, Mr. Bates--they knew

Mr. Bates?--

Assent again.

--Had put him in the coffin with his own hands and nailed down the lid.

He was quite dead--perfectly dead.

On hearing this the bold girl who had come with them shrieked again, and

two of the younger men took her aside, and, holding her head over a

bucket in the corner poured water on it, a process which silenced her.

"And," said Turrif, quietly speaking in French, "what then?"

"What then?" said Saul; "Then to-day I brought him in the cart."

"And buried him on the road, because he was heavy and useless, and let

some friend of yours play with the box?" continued Turrif, with an

insinuating smile.

Saul swore loudly that this was not the case, at which the men shrugged

their shoulders and looked at Trenholme.

To him the scene and the circumstances were very curious. The house into

which they had come was much smaller than Turrif's. The room was a

dismal one, with no sign of woman or child about it. Its atmosphere was

thick with the smoke of tobacco and the fumes of hot whisky, in which

Saul and his host had been indulging. A soft, homemade candle, guttering

on the table, shed a yellow smoky light upon the faces of the bearded

men who stood around it. Saul, perhaps from an awkward feeling of

trembling in his long legs, had resumed his seat, his little eyes more

beady, his little round cheeks more ruddy, than ever, his whiskers now

entirely disregarded in the importance of his self-vindication.

Too proud for asseveration, Trenholme had not much more to say. He

stated briefly that he could not be responsible for the contents of a

box when the contents had run away, nor for any harm that the runaway

might do to the neighbourhood, adding that the man who had consigned the

box to his care must now come and take it away.

He spoke with a fine edge of authority in his voice, as a man speaks who

feels himself superior to his circumstances and companions. He did not

look at the men as he spoke, for he was not yet sure whether they gave

him the credence for which he would not sue, and he did not care to see

if they derided him.

"I sink," said Turriff, speaking slowly in English now,--"I sink we

cannot make that mee-rácle be done."

"What miracle?" asked Trenholme.

Those of the men who understood any English laughed.

"Se mirácle to make dis genteel-man, M. Saul, fetch se box."

Trenholme then saw that Saul's shudderings had come, upon him again at

the mere suggestion.

"What am I to do, then?" he asked.

At this the men had a good deal of talk, and Turrif interpreted the

decision.

"We sink it is for M. Bates to say what shall be done wit se box. We

sink we take se liberté to say to sis man--'Stay here till some one go

to-morrow and fetch M. Bates.'"

This struck Trenholme as just, and any objection he felt to spending the

night under the same roof with the mysterious coffin did not seem worth

remark.

As for Saul, he professed himself satisfied with the arrangement. He was

only too glad to have some one brought who would share his

responsibility and attest, in part at least, his tale.

"Well," said Trenholme, "I'll go then."

He felt for the key of the station in his pocket, and would have thanked

the men and bid them "good evening," had they not, rather clamorously,

deprecated his intention. Living, as they did, far from all organised

justice, there was in them a rough sense of responsibility for each

other which is not found in townsmen.

Trenholme shortly made out that they had decided that two of them should

help him to guard the station that night, and were only disputing as to

who should be allotted for the purpose.

"It isn't at all necessary," said Trenholme.

"We sink," said Turrif, with his deliberate smile, "it will be best; for

if you have not been wandering in your mind, some one else's body has

been wandering."

Trenholme went back to his station in the not unpleasant company of two

sturdy farmers, one young and vivacious, the other old and slow. They

found the place just as he had left it. The coffin was empty, save for

the sweet-scented cushion of roughly covered pine tassels on which the

body of the gaunt old Cameron had been laid to rest.

The three men sat by the stove in the other room. The smoke from their

pipes dimmed the light of the lamp. The quiet sounds of their talk and

movements never entirely took from them the consciousness of the large

dark silence that lay without. No footfall broke it. When they heard the

distant rush of the night train, they all three went out to see its

great yellow eye come nearer and nearer.

Trenholme had one or two packages to put in the van. He and his

companions exchanged greetings with the men of the train.

Just as he was handing in his last package, a gentlemanly voice accosted

him.

"Station-master!" said a grey-haired, military-looking traveller,

"Station-master! Is there any way of getting milk here?"

A lady stood behind the gentleman. They were both on the platform at the

front of a passenger car.

"It's for a child, you know," explained the gentleman.

Trenholme remembered his untouched tea, and confessed to the possession

of a little milk.

"Oh, hasten, hasten!" cried the lady, "for the guard says the train will

move on in a moment."

As Trenholme knew that the little French conductor thus grandly quoted

did not know when the train would start, and as in his experience the

train, whatever else it did, never hastened, he did not move with the

sudden agility that was desired. Before he turned he heard a

loud-whispered aside from the lady: "Tell him we'll pay him

double--treble, for it; I have heard they are avaricious."

When Trenholme had started the train he jumped upon it with the milk. He

found himself in a long car. The double seats on either side were filled

with sleepy people. There was a passage down the middle, and the lamps

above shone dimly through dirty glasses. Trenholme could not immediately

see any one like the man who had spoken to him outside, but he did spy

out a baby, and, jug in hand, he went and stood a moment near it.

The lady who held the baby sat upright, with her head leaning against

the side of the car. She was dozing, and the baby was also asleep. It

was a rosy, healthy child, about a year old. The lady's handsome face

suggested she was about seven-and-twenty. Among all the shawl-wrapped

heaps of restless humanity around them, this pair looked very lovely

together. The dusty lamplight fell upon them. They seemed to Trenholme

like a beautiful picture of mother and child, such as one sometimes

comes upon among the evil surroundings of old frames and hideous prints.

Said Trenholme aloud: "I don't know who asked me for the milk."

The lady stirred and looked at him indifferently. She seemed very

beautiful. Men see with different eyes in these matters, but in

Trenholme's eyes this lady was faultless, and her face and air touched

some answering mood of reverence in his heart. It rarely happens,

however, that we can linger gazing at the faces which possess for us the

most beauty. The train was getting up speed, and Trenholme, just then

catching sight of the couple who had asked for the milk, had no choice

but to pass down the car and pour it into the jar they held.

The gentleman put his hand in his pocket. "Oh no," said Trenholme, and

went out. But the more lively lady reopened the door behind him, and

threw a coin on the ground as he was descending.

By the sound it had made Trenholme found it, and saw by the light of the

passing car that it was an English shilling. When the train was gone he

stood a minute where it had carried him, some hundred feet from the

station, and watched it going on into the darkness.

Afterwards, when his companions had composed themselves to sleep, and he

lay sleepless, listening to all that could be heard in the silent night,

curiously enough it was not upon the exciting circumstances of the early

evening that he mused chiefly, but upon the people he had seen in the

night train.

A seemingly little thing has sometimes the power to change those

currents that set one way and another within a man, making him satisfied

or dissatisfied with this or that. By chance, as it seems, a song is

sung, a touch is given, a sight revealed, and man, like a harp hung to

the winds, is played upon, and the music is not that which he devises.

So it was that Trenholme's encounter in the dusty car with the beautiful

woman who had looked upon him so indifferently had struck a chord which

was like a plaintive sigh for some better purpose in life than he was

beating out of this rough existence. It was not a desire for greater

pleasure that her beauty had aroused in him, but a desire for nobler

action--such was the power of her face.

The night passed on; no footfall broke the silence. The passing train

was the only episode of his vigil.

In the morning when Trenholme looked out, the land was covered deep in

snow.

CHAPTER X.

When the night train left Turrifs Station it thundered on into the

darkness slowly enough, but, what with bumping over its rough rails and

rattling its big cars, it seemed anxious to deceive its passengers into

the idea that it was going at great speed. A good number of its cars

were long vans for the carriage of freight; behind these came two for

the carriage of passengers. These were both labelled "First Class." One

was devoted to a few men, who were smoking; the other was the one from

which Trenholme had descended. Its seats, upholstered in red velvet,

were dusty from the smoke and dirt of the way; its atmosphere, heated by

a stove at one end, was dry and oppressive. It would have been

impossible, looking at the motley company lounging in the lamplight, to

have told their relations one to another; but it was evident that an

uncertain number of young people, placed near the lady who held the

baby, were of the same party; they slept in twos and threes, leaning on

one another's shoulders and covered by the same wraps. It was to seats

left vacant near this group that the man and his wife who had procured

the milk returned. The man, who was past middle life, betook himself to

his seat wearily, and pulled his cap over his eyes without speaking. His

wife deposited the mug of milk in a basket, speaking in low but brisk

tones to the lady who held the baby.

"There, Sophia; I've had to pay a shilling for a cupful, but I've got

some milk."

"I should have thought you would have been surer to get good milk at a

larger station, mamma." She did not turn as she spoke, perhaps for fear

of waking the sleeping baby.

The other, who was the infant's mother, was rapidly tying a shawl round

her head and shoulders. She was a little stout woman, who in middle age

had retained her brightness of eye and complexion. Her features were

regular, and her little nose had enough suggestion of the eagle's beak

in its form to preserve her countenance from insignificance.

"Oh, my dear," she returned, "as to the milk--the young man looked quite

clean, I assure you; and then such a large country as the cows have to

roam in!"

Having delivered herself of this energetic whisper, she subsided below

the level of the seat back, leaving Sophia to sit and wonder in a drowsy

muse whether the mother supposed that the value of a cow's milk would be

increased if, like Io, she could prance across a continent.

Sophia Rexford sat upright, with the large baby in her arms and a bigger

child leaning on her shoulder. Both children were more or less restless;

but their sister was not restless, she sat quite still. The attitude of

her tall figure had the composure and strength in it which do not belong

to first youth. Hers was a fine face; it might even be called beautiful;

but no one now would call it pretty--the skin was too colourless, the

expression too earnest.

Her eyes took on the look that tells of inward, rather than outward,

vision. Her thoughts were such as she would not have told to any one,

but not because of evil in them.

This was the lady to whom Robert Trenholme, the master of the college at

Chellaston, had written his letter; and she was thinking of that letter

now, and of him, pondering much that, by some phantasy of dreams, she

should have been suddenly reminded of him by the voice of the man who

had passed through the car with the milk.

Her mind flitted lightly to the past; to a season she had once spent in

a fashionable part of London, and to her acquaintance with the young

curate, who was receiving some patronage from the family with whom she

was visiting. She had been a beauty then; every one danced to the tune

she piped, and this curate--a mere fledgeling--had danced also. That was

nothing. No, it was nothing that he had, for a time, followed lovesick

in her train--she never doubted that he had had that sickness, although

he had not spoken of it--all that had been notable in the acquaintance

was that she, who at that time had played with the higher aims and

impulses of life, had thought, in her youthful arrogance, that she

discerned in this man something higher and finer than she saw in other

men. She had been pleased to make something of a friend of him,

condescending to advise and encourage him, pronouncing upon his desire

to seek a wider field in a new country, and calling it good. Later, when

he was gone, and life for her had grown more quiet for lack of

circumstances to feed excitement, she had wondered sometimes if this man

had recovered as perfectly from that love-sickness as others had done.

That was all--absolutely all. Her life had lately come again into

indirect relations with him through circumstances over which neither he

nor she had had any control; and now, when she was about to see him, he

had taken upon him to write and pick up the thread of personal

friendship again and remind her of the past.

In what mood had he written this reminder? Sophia Rexford would surely

not have been a woman of the world if she had not asked herself this

question. Did he think that on seeing her again he would care for her as

before? Did he imagine that intervening years, which had brought

misfortune to her family, would bring her more within his grasp? Or was

his intention in writing still less pleasing to her than this? Had he

written, speaking so guardedly of past friendship, with the desire to

ward off any hope she might cherish that he had remained unmarried for

her sake? Sophia's lips did not curl in scorn over this last suggestion,

because she was holding her little court of inquiry in a mental region

quite apart from her emotions.

This woman's character was, however, revealed in this, that she passed

easily from her queries as to what the man in question did, or would be

likely to, think of her. A matter of real, possibly of paramount,

interest to her was to wonder whether his life had really expanded into

the flower of which she had thought the bud gave promise. She tried to

look back and estimate the truth of her youthful instinct, which had

told her he was a man above other men. And if that had been so, was he

less or more now than he had been then? Had he been a benefit to the new

country to which he had come? Had the move from the Old World to

this--the decision in which she had rashly aided with youthful

advice--been a good or a bad thing for him and for the people to whom he

had come?

From this she fell a-thinking upon her own life as, in the light of

Trenholme's letter, the contrast of her present womanly self with the

bright, audacious girl of that past time was set strongly before her. It

is probably as rare for any one really to wish to be the self of any

former time--to wish to be younger--as it is really to wish to be any

one else. Sophia certainly did not dream of wishing to be younger. We

are seldom just to ourselves--either past or present: Sophia had a fine

scorn for what she remembered herself to have been; she had greater

respect for her present self, because there was less of outward show,

and more of reality.

It might have been a quarter of an hour, it might have been more, since

the train had last started, but now it stopped rather suddenly. Sophia's

father murmured sleepily against the proximity of the stations. He was

reclining in the seat just behind her.

Sophia looked out of her window. She saw no light. By-and-by some men

came up the side of the track with lanterns. She saw by the light they

held that they were officials of the train, and that the bank on which

they walked looked perfectly wild and untrodden. She turned her head

toward her father.

"We are not at any station," she remarked.

"Ay!" He got up with cumbrous haste, as a horse might rise. He, too,

looked out of the window, then round at his women and children, and clad

himself in an immense coat.

"I'll just go out," he whispered, "and see how things are. If there's

anything wrong I'll let you know."

He intended his whisper to be something akin to silence; he intended to

exercise the utmost consideration for those around him; but his long

remark was of the piercing quality that often appertains to whispers,

and, as he turned his back, two of the children woke, and a young girl

in the seat in front of Sophia sat up, her grey eyes dilated with alarm.

"Sophia," she said, with a low sob, "oh, Sophia, is there something

_wrong_?"

"Be quiet!" said Sophia, tartly.

The snoring mother now shut her mouth with a snap. In a twinkling she

was up and lively.

"Has your father got on his overcoat, Sophia? Is there danger?" She

darted from one side of the carriage to another, rubbing the moisture

off each window with a bit of her shawl and speaking with rapidity.

Then she ran out of the car. Two of the children followed her. The

others, reassured by Sophia's stillness, huddled together at the

windows, shivering in the draught of cold air that came from the open

door.

After some minutes Sophia's father came in again, leading his wife and

children with an old-world gallantry that was apparent even in these

unsatisfactory circumstances. He had a slow impressive way of speaking

that made even his unimportant words appear important. In the present

case, as soon as he began to speak most of the people in the car came

near to hear.

Some obstruction, he said, had fallen across the line. It was not much;

the men would soon remove it. An Indian woman, who lived near, had

heroically lit a fire, and thus stopped the train in time. There was no

other train due upon the road for many hours. There was no danger. There

_might_ have been a bad accident, but they had been providentially

preserved.

His utterance greatly impressed the bystanders, for he was an

important-looking gentleman; but long before he had finished speaking,

the bright-eyed little mother had set her children into their various

seats again, pulled their jackets close in front, rolled up their feet,

patted their caps down on their heads, and, in fact, by a series of

pokes and pulls, composed her family to sleep, or, at least, started

them as far on the way to sleep as a family can be sent by such a

method.

Quiet settled on the car again. Soon the train went on. Sophia Rexford,

looking out, could dimly discern the black outline of wood and river. At

length the window grew thicker and opaque. There was no sound of rain or

hail, and yet something from without muffled the glass. Sophia slept

again.

When the dawn of day at length stole upon them she found that snow had

been upon the glass and had melted. Snow lay thick on the ledges of the

windows outside. Yet in that part of the country in which they now were

there was none on the ground. They seemed to have run a race with a

snowstorm in the night, and to have gained it for the nonce. But the

sight struck her sadly. The winter, which she dreaded, was evidently on

their track.

It was in the first grey hour of dawn that the train steamed into the

station, which was the junction for Quebec, and passengers bound for the

English settlements south of that city were obliged to change.

For a few minutes before the train stopped the Rexford family had been

booted and spurred, so to speak, ready for the transfer. Each young

person was warmly buttoned up and tied into a warlike-looking muffler.

Each had several packages in charge. A youth came in from the

smoking-car and attached himself to them. When the train had come to a

standstill the little French conductor was energetic in helping them to

descend.

The family was very large, and, moreover, it was lively; its members

were as hard to count as chickens of a brood. Sophia, holding the

youngest child and the tickets, endeavoured to explain their number to

the conductor.

"There are three children that go free," she said. "Then two little boys

at half fare--that makes one ticket. Myself and three young ladies--make

five tickets; my brother and father and mother--eight."

The sharp Frenchman looked dubious. "Three children free; two at half

fare," he repeated. He was trying to see them all as he spoke.

Sophia repeated her count with terse severity.

"There was not another young lady?"

"Certainly not."

And Sophia was not a woman to be trifled with, so he punched the tickets

and went back into his car.

Wooden platforms, a station hotel built of wood, innumerable lines of

black rails on which freight trains stood idle, the whole place shut in

by a high wooden fence--this was the prospect which met the eyes of the

English travellers, and seen in the first struggling light of morning,

in the bitter cold of a black frost, it was not a cheerful one. The

Rexford family, however, were not considering the prospect; they were

intent only on finding the warm passenger-car of the train that was to

take them the rest of their journey, and which they had been assured

would be waiting here to receive them.

This train, however, was not immediately to be seen, and, in the

meantime, the broad platform, which was dusted over with dry frost

crystals, was the scene of varied activities.

From the baggage-car of the train they had left, a great number of boxes

and bags, labelled "Rexford," were being thrown down in a violent

manner, which greatly distressed some of the girls and their father.

"Not that way. That is not the way. Don't you know that is not the way

boxes should be handled?" shouted Captain Rexford sternly, and then,

seeing that no one paid the slightest attention to his words, he was

fain to turn away from the cause of his agitation. He took a brisk turn

down the empty end of the platform, and stood there as a man might who

felt that the many irritations of life were growing too much for his

self-control.

The little boys found occupation because they observed that the white

condensed vapour which came from their mouths with each breath bore

great resemblance to the white steam a slowly moving engine was hissing

forth. They therefore strutted in imitation of the great machine,

emitting large puffs from their little warm mouths, and making the sound

which a groom makes when he plies the curry-comb. The big brother was

assisting in the unloading of a large carriage from an open van in the

rear of the train, and Mrs. Rexford, neat, quick-moving, and excitable,

after watching this operation for a few minutes and issuing several

orders as to how it was to be done, moved off in lively search of the

next train. She ran about, a few steps in each direction, looking at the

various railway lines, and then accosted a tall, thin man who was

standing still, doing nothing.

"Is the train for the Eastern Townships here? We were told it would be

here waiting to receive us at daybreak. Is it here? Is it ready?"

Seeing from the man's face, as she had already seen from the empty

tracks, that no such train was in readiness, she ran at one of the

puffing and strutting children whose muffler was loose, and tied it up

again. Then, struck by another thought, she returned to the impassive

man whom she had before addressed.

"This is really the _actual_ dawn, I suppose?" she asked, with an air of

importance. "I have read that in some countries there is what is called

a 'false dawn' that comes before the real one, you know."

Compelled now to speak, the man, who was a New Englander, took a small

stick from between his teeth and said: "As far as I know, marm, this

morning is genuine."

"Oh really"--with abatement of interest in her tone--"I thought perhaps

there might be that sort of thing in Canada, you know--we certainly read

of Northern Lights. Very strange that our train isn't here!"

The Yankee took the trouble to reply again, hardly moving a muscle of

his face. "Keep a good heart, marm; it may come along yet, a-ridin' on

these same Northern Lights."

"Riding on--? I beg your pardon--on what, did you say?" she asked

eagerly.

At this the grey-eyed girl who had been frightened in the night plucked

her by the sleeve and pulled her away. "Don't you see he's making fun of

you, mamma?"

Besides the grey-eyed girl, who wore short frocks, there were two other

girls in the first bloom of young-womanhood. One of these, having

overheard the conversation, ran and told the other.

"Just because we happened to read of such a thing in that book of

Asiatic travel! Isn't it absurd? And there's papa fuming at the other

end of the station."

Both girls giggled.

"I know _quite_ well that people will think us all crazy," urged the

first speaker. Then they laughed again, not unhappily.

"There's not a doubt of it," gasped the other.

These two girls were very much alike, but one wore a red cloak and the

other a blue one. In spite of the fact that they were somewhat bloused

and a little grimy, and their pretty little noses were now nipped red by

the icy morning, they looked attractive as they stood, pressing their

handkerchiefs to their mouths and bending with laughter. The extent of

their mirth was proportioned to their youth and excitement, not to the

circumstances which called it forth.

The train they had left now moved off. Most of the other passengers who

had alighted with them had taken themselves away in various directions,

as travellers are apt to do, without any one else noticing exactly what

had become of them.

Sophia, with the child in her arms, made her way to a mean waiting-room,

and thither the children followed her. The mother, having at last

ascertained the train would be ready in the course of time, soon came in

also, and the father and brother, hearing it would not be ready for at

least a quarter of an hour, went away to see the town.

There was a stove burning hotly in the small waiting-room. The only

other furniture was a bench all round the wall. The family, that had

entered somewhat tumultuously, almost filled it. There was only one

other traveller there, a big girl with a shawl over her head and a

bundle under her arm. When Sophia had come into the room alone with the

baby, she had asked the girl one or two questions, and been answered

civilly enough; but when the rest of the family followed, the girl

relapsed into silence, and, after regarding them for a little while, she

edged her way out of the room.

Mrs. Rexford, who in the excitement of change and bustle was always

subject to being struck with ideas which would not have occurred to her

mind at other times, suddenly remembered now that they were dependent

upon the resources of the new country for domestic service, and that

she had heard that no chance of securing a good servant must be lost, as

they were very rare. Stating her thought hastily to Sophia, and darting

to the narrow door without waiting for a reply, she stretched out her

head with an ebullition of registry-office questions.

"My good girl!" she cried, "my good girl!"

The girl came back nearer the door and stood still.

"Do you happen to know of a girl about your age who can do kitchen

work?"

"I don't know any one here. I'm travelling."

"But perhaps you would do for me yourself"--this half aside--"Can you

make a fire, keep pots clean, and scour floors?"

"Yes." She did not express any interest in her assent.

"Where are you going? Would you not like to come with me and enter my

service? I happen to be in need of just such a girl as you."

No answer.

"She doesn't understand, mamma," whispered the grey-eyed girl in a short

frock, who, having wedged herself beside her mother in the narrow

doorway, was the only one who could see or hear the colloquy. "Speak

slower to the poor thing."

"Looks very stupid," commented Mrs. Rexford, hastily pulling in her head

and speaking within the room. "But still, one must not lose a chance."

Then with head again outside, she continued, "Do you understand me, my

good girl? What is your name?"

"Eliza White."

"That is a very good name"--encouragingly. "Where do you live?"

"I used to live a good bit over there, in the French country." She

pointed with her arm in a certain direction, but as the points of the

compass had no existence for Mrs. Rexford's newly immigrated

intelligence, and as all parts of Canada, near and remote, seemed very

much in the same place in her nebulous vision of geography, the little

information the girl had given was of no interest to her and she took

little note of it.

"Did you come from Quebec just now?"

"Yes," replied the girl, after a moment's pause.

Then, in answer to further questions, she told a succinct tale. She said

that her father had a farm; that he had died the week before; that she

had no relatives in the place; that, having seen her father buried, she

thought it best to come to an English-speaking locality, and wait there

until she had time to write to her father's brother in Scotland.

"Sad, sad story! Lonely fate! Brave girl!" said Mrs. Rexford, shaking

her head for a minute inside the waiting-room and rapidly repeating the

tale.

"Yes, if it's true," said Sophia. But Mrs. Rexford did not hear, as she

had already turned her head out of the door again, and was commending

Eliza White for the course she had taken.

The grey-eyed Winifred, however, still turned inside to combat

reproachfully Sophia's suspicions. "You would not doubt her word,

Sophia, if you saw how cold and tired she looked."

Mrs. Rexford seemed to argue concerning the stranger's truthfulness in

very much the same way, for she was saying:--

"And now, Eliza, will you be my servant? If you will come with me to

Chellaston I will pay your fare, and I will take care of you until you

hear from your uncle."

"I do not want to be a servant." The reply was stolidly given.

"What! do you wish to be idle?"

"I will work in your house, if you like; but I can pay my own fare in

the cars, and I won't be a servant."

There was so much sullen determination in her manner that Mrs. Rexford

did not attempt to argue the point.

"Take her, mamma," whispered Winifred. "How ill she seems! And she must

be awfully lonely in this great country all alone."

Mrs. Rexford, having turned into the room, was rapidly commenting to

Sophia. "Says she will come, but won't be called a servant, and can pay

her own fare. Very peculiar--but we read, you know, in that New England

book, that that was just the independent way they felt about it. They

can only induce _slaves_ to be servants _there_, I believe." She gave

this cursory view of the condition of affairs in the neighbouring States

in an abstracted voice, and summed up her remarks by speaking out her

decision in a more lively tone. "Well, we must have some one to help

with the work. This girl looks strong, and her spirit in the matter

signifies less." Then, turning to the girl without the door: "I think

you will suit me, Eliza. You can stay with us, at any rate, till you

hear from your uncle. You look strong and clean, and I'm _sure_ you'll

do your best to please me"--this with warning emphasis. "Come in now to

the warmth beside us. We can make room in here."

The place was so small and the family so large that the last assurance

was not wholly unnecessary. Mrs. Rexford brought Eliza in and set her

near the stove. The girls and children gathered round her somewhat

curiously, but she sat erect without seeming to notice them much, an

expression of impassive, almost hardened, trouble on her pale face. She

was a very tall, strong girl, and when she dropped the shawl back a

little from her head they saw that she had red hair.

CHAPTER XI.

The village of Chellaston was, in itself, insignificant. Its chief

income was derived from summer visitors; its largest building was an

hotel, greatly frequented in summer; and its best houses were owned by

townspeople, who used them only at that season. That which gave

Chellaston a position and name above other places of the same size in

the country was an institution called "The New College," in which boys

up to the age of eighteen were given a higher education than could be

obtained at ordinary schools. The college was a square brick building,

not handsome, but commodious; and in the same enclosure with it were the

head-master's house, and a boarding-house in which the assistant-masters

lived with the pupils. With that love of grand terms which a new country

is apt to evince, the head-master was called "The Principal," and his

assistants "Professors." The New College was understood to have the

future of a university, but its present function was merely that of a

public school.

Chellaston was prettily situated by a well-wooded hill and a fair

flowing river. The college, with some fields that were cultivated for

its use, was a little apart from most of the houses, placed, both as to

physical and social position, between the commonplace village and the

farms of the undulating land around it; for, by a curious drift of

circumstances, the farms of this district were chiefly worked by English

gentlemen, whose families, in lieu of all other worldly advantage, held

the more stoutly by their family traditions. In doing so they were but

treasuring their only heirloom. And they did not expect to gain from the

near future any new source of pride; for it is not those who, as

convention terms it, are the best born who most easily gather again the

moss of prosperity when that which has been about them for generations

has once been removed. They were, indeed, a set of people who exhibited

more sweetness of nature than thrift. Elegance, even of the simplest

sort, was almost unknown in their homes, and fashion was a word that had

only its remotest echoes there; yet they prided themselves upon adhering

strictly to rules of behaviour which in their mother-country had already

fallen into the grave of outgrown ideas. Their little society was,

indeed, a curious thing, in which the mincing propriety of the Old World

had wed itself right loyally to the stern necessity of the New. How

stern such necessity might be, the Rexford family, who came rolling into

this state of things in their own family carriage, had yet to learn.

It was to the Principalship of the New College that Robert Trenholme, by

virtue of scholastic honours from Oxford, had attained. Although a young

man for the post, it was admitted by all that he filled it admirably.

The school had increased considerably in the three years of his

management. And if Trenholme adapted himself to the place, the place was

also adapted to him, for by it he held an assured standing in the

country; he could, as the saying is, mix with the best; and he valued

his position. Why should he not value it? He had won it honourably, and

he cherished it merely as the greatest of his earthly goods, which he

believed he held in due subordination to more heavenly benefits. Those

lives are no doubt the most peaceful in which self-interest and duty

coalesce, and Trenholme's life at this period was like a fine cord,

composed of these two strands twisted together with exquisite equality.

His devotion to duty was such as is frequently seen when a man of

sanguine, energetic temperament throws the force of his being into

battle for the right. He had added to his school duties voluntary

service in the small English church of Chellaston, partly because the

congregation found it hard to support a clergyman; partly because he

preferred keeping his schoolboys under the influence of his own sermons,

which were certainly superior to those of such clergymen as were likely

to come there; and partly, if not chiefly, because the activity of his

nature made such serving a delight to him. The small church, like the

school, had been greatly improved since it had come under his hand, and

the disinterestedness of his unpaid ministrations was greatly lauded. He

was a very busy, and a successful, man, much esteemed by all who knew

him. The New College was expected to become a university; Robert

Trenholme hoped for this and expected to remain at its head, but this

hope of his was by the way; he did not think of it often, for he loved

work for its own sake. Even the value he set on his present success was

not often, more actively in his mind than the value he set on the fresh

air he breathed. It was very occasionally that the pride of him came to

the surface, and then chiefly when animated by the memory of the time

when he had been at a disadvantage in worldly things. Such memories came

to him when he prepared to go to the railway station to meet the

Rexfords. He concealed it perfectly, but it gave him certain swellings

of heart to think that Miss Rexford would now gradually see all to which

he had attained.

When Captain Rexford had decided upon buying a farm at Chellaston, he

had had some correspondence with Principal Trenholme on the subject,

having been put into communication with him by the widow of the relative

at whose house Sophia and Trenholme had first met. This was the whole

extent of the acquaintance. Of Sophia's step-mother and her numerous

children Robert Trenholme knew nothing, save that a second family

existed. Nor did Captain Rexford imagine that his eldest daughter had

any distinct remembrance of a man whom she had so casually known.

Fathers are apt to assume that they know the precise extent of their

daughters' acquaintanceships, for the same reason that most people

assume that what they never heard of does not exist. Yet when Trenholme

actually repaired to the station at the hour at which Captain Rexford

had announced his arrival, it was a fact that many of his leisure

thoughts for a month back had been pointing forward, like so many

guide-posts, to the meeting that was there to take place, and it was

also true that the Rexford family--older and younger--were prepared to

hail him as a friend, simply because their knowledge of him, though

slight, was so much greater than of any other being in the place to

which they were come--and everything in this world goes by comparison.

Now the main feature of the arrival of the Rexford family in Chellaston

was that they brought their own carriage with them. It was an old, heavy

carriage, for it had come into Captain Rexford's possession in the first

place by inheritance, and it was now a great many years since he had

possessed horses to draw it. From its long and ignominious retreat in an

outhouse it had lately emerged to be varnished and furbished anew, in

order to make the handsomer appearance in the new country. It had been

one of the considerations which had reconciled Mrs. Rexford to

emigration, that on a farm this carriage could be used with little extra

expense.

Principal Trenholme had come to the station, which was a little way from

the village, in a smart gig of his own. According to Captain Rexford's

instructions, he had sent to the station a pair of horses, to be

harnessed to the aforesaid carriage, which had been carefully brought on

the same train with its owners. He had also sent of his own accord a

comfortable waggon behind the horses, and he straightway urged that the

family should repair in this at once to their new home, and leave the

carriage to be set upon its wheels at leisure. As he gave this advice he

eyed the wheelless coach with a curiosity and disfavour which was almost

apparent through his studious politeness.

His arguments, however, and Captain Rexford's, who agreed with him, were

of no avail. Mrs. Rexford, partly from sentiment, partly from a certain

pathetic vanity, had set her heart on driving to the new home in the old

carriage. Captain Rexford's eldest son had helped to get the vehicle off

the train, and was now working steadily with one of the station hands to

get it upon its wheels. It was assuredly such a carriage as that bit of

Canadian road had never seen before. The station loiterers, sometimes

helping in its arrangement, sometimes merely looking on, gazed at it

with unwavering attention. Robert Trenholme gazed at it also, and at

last felt obliged to give some more distinct warning of difficulties he

foresaw.

"We have native horses," he said, with a good-humoured smile that leaped

out of his eyes before it parted his lips; "we have horses, and we have

ponies, and I am afraid that a pair of the one would be as serviceable

in the long run as a pair of the other in drawing it on these roads.

Are you getting out carriage-horses from England, Captain Rexford?"

The gentleman addressed continued to set the cushions in their places,

but in a minute he went back into the station, where by a stove he found

his wife and Sophia warming themselves, the smallest children, and a pot

of carriage oil.

"You know, my dears, I never felt quite clear in my own mind that it was

wise of us to bring the carriage." He held his hands to the warmth as he

spoke. "Mr. Trenholme, I find, seems to think it heavy for these roads."

His wife heard him quite cheerfully. "In weather like this nothing could

be more desirable," said she, "than to have one's own comfortably

cushioned carriage; and besides, I have always told you we owe it to our

children to show the people here that, whatever misfortunes we have had,

we _have_ been people of consequence." She added after a moment in

conclusion: "Harold has brought the best grease for the wheels."

She had her way therefore, and in course of time the ladies, and as many

of the children as could be crowded into the carriage, thus commenced

the last stage of their journey. The others were driven on by Trenholme.

As for the little boys, "a good run behind," their mother said, was just

what they needed to warm them up.

They began running behind, but soon ran in front, which rather confused

Mrs. Rexford's ideas of order, but still the carriage lumbered on.

CHAPTER XII.

Captain Rexford had no fortune with his second wife; and their children

numbered seven daughters and three sons. It was natural that the

expenses of so large a family should have proved too much for a slender

income in an English town where a certain style of living had been

deemed a necessity. When, further, a mercantile disaster had swept away

the larger part of this income, the anxious parents had felt that there

was nothing left for their children but a choice between degrading

dependence on the bounty of others and emigration. From the new start in

life which the latter course would give they had large hopes.

Accordingly, they gathered together all that they had, and, with a loan

from a richer relative, purchased a house and farm in a locality where

they were told their children would not wholly lack educational

opportunities or society. This move of theirs was heroic, but whether

wise or unwise remained to be proved by the result of indefinite years.

The extent of their wealth was now this new property, an income which,

in proportion to their needs, was a mere pittance, and the debt to the

richer relative.

The men who came to call on their new neighbour, and congratulate him on

his choice of a farm, did not know how small was the income nor how big

the debt, yet even they shook their heads dubiously as they thought of

their own difficulties, and remarked to each other that such a large

family was certainly a great responsibility.

"I wonder," said one to another, "if Rexford had an idea in coming here

that he would marry his daughters easily. It's a natural thing, you

know, when one hears of the flower of British youth leaving England for

the Colonies, to imagine that, in a place like this, girls would be at a

premium. I did. When we came out I said to my wife that when our little

girls grew up they might pick and choose for themselves from among a

dozen suitors, but--well, this isn't just the locality for that, is it?"

Both men laughed a little. They knew that, however difficult it might be

to find the true explanation of the fact, the fact remained that there

were no young men in Chellaston, that boys who grew up there went as

inevitably elsewhere to make their fortunes as they would have done from

an English country town.

Among the ladies who came to see Mrs. Rexford and count her children,

the feeling concerning her was more nearly allied to kindly

commiseration than she would at all have liked had she known it. They

said that Captain Rexford might succeed if his wife and daughters--Each

would complete the conditional clause in her own way, but it was clear

to the minds of all that the success of the Rexford farm would depend to

a great extent upon the economy and good management practised in the

house.

Now the Rexfords, man, woman, and child, had come with brave hearts,

intending to work and to economise; yet they found what was actually

required of them different from all that their fancy had pictured; and

their courage, not being obliged to face those dangers to which they had

adjusted it, and being forced to face much to which it was not adjusted,

suffered shock, and took a little time to rally into moderate animation.

At the end of their weary journey they had found themselves in a large

wooden house, not new by any means, or smart in any of its appointments;

and, as convenience is very much a matter of custom, it appeared to them

inconvenient--a house in which room was set against room without vestige

of lobby or passage-way, and in which there were almost as many doors to

the outside as there were windows. They had bought it and its furniture

as a mere adjunct to a farm which they had chosen with more care, and

when they inspected it for the first time their hearts sank somewhat

within them. Captain Rexford, with impressive sadness, remarked to his

wife that there was a greater lack of varnish and upholstery and of

traces of the turning lathe than he could have supposed possible

in--"_furniture_." But his wife had bustled away before he had quite

finished his speech. Whatever she might feel, she at least expressed no

discouragement. Torture does not draw from a brave woman expressions of

dismay.

That which gave both Mrs. Rexford and Sophia much perplexity in the

first day or two of the new life was that the girl Eliza seemed to them

to prove wholly incompetent. She moved in a dazed and weary fashion

which was quite inconsistent with the intelligence and capacity

occasionally displayed in her remarks; and had they in the first three

days been able to hear of another servant, Mrs. Rexford would have

abruptly cancelled her agreement with Eliza. At the end of that time,

however, when there came a day on which Mrs. Rexford and Sophia were

both too exhausted by unpacking and housework to take their ordinary

share of responsibility, Eliza suddenly seemed to awake and shake

herself into thought and action. She cleared the house of the litter of

packing-cases, set their contents in order, and showed her knowledge of

the mysteries of the kitchen in a manner which fed the family and sent

them to bed more comfortably than since their arrival. From that day

Eliza became more cheerful; and she not only did her own work, but often

aided others in theirs, and set the household right in all its various

efforts towards becoming a model Canadian home. If the ladies had not

had quite so much to learn, or if the three little children had not been

quite so helpless, Eliza's work would have appeared more effective. As

it was, the days passed on, and no tragedy occurred.

It was a great relief to Captain and Mrs. Rexford in those days to turn

to Principal Trenholme for society and advice. He was their nearest

neighbour, and had easy opportunity for being as friendly and kind as he

evidently desired to be. Captain Rexford pronounced him a fine fellow

and a perfect gentleman. Captain Rexford had great natural courtesy of

disposition.

"I suppose, Principal Trenholme," said he blandly, as he entertained his

visitor one day in the one family sitting-room, "I suppose that you are

related to the Trenholmes of----?"

Trenholme was playing with one of the little ones who stood between his

knees. He did not instantly answer--indeed, Captain Rexford's manner was

so deliberate that it left room for pauses. Sophia, in cloak and fur

bonnet, was standing by the window, ready to take the children for

their airing. Trenholme found time to look up from his tiny playmate and

steal a glance at her handsome profile as she gazed, with thoughtful,

abstracted air, out upon the snow. "Not a very near connection, Captain

Rexford," was his reply; and it was given with that frank smile which

always leaped first to his eyes before it showed itself about his mouth.

It would have been impossible for a much closer observer than Captain

Rexford to have told on which word of this small sentence the emphasis

had been given, or whether the smile meant that Principal Trenholme

could have proved his relationship had he chosen, or that he laughed at

the notion of there being any relationship at all. Captain Rexford

accordingly interpreted it just as suited his inclination, and mentioned

to another neighbour in the course of a week that his friend, the

Principal of the College, was a distant relative, by a younger branch

probably, of the Trenholmes of--, etc. etc., an item of news of which

the whole town took account sooner or later.

To Mrs. Rexford Trenholme was chiefly useful as a person of whom she

could ask questions, and she wildly asked his advice on every possible

subject. On account of Captain Rexford's friendly approval, and his

value to Mrs. Rexford as a sort of guide to useful knowledge on the

subject of Canada in general and Chellaston in particular, Robert

Trenholme soon became intimate, in easy Canadian fashion, with the

newcomers; that is, with the heads of the household, with the romping

children and the pretty babies. The young girls were not sufficiently

forward in social arts to speak much to a visitor, and with Sophia he

did not feel at all on a sure footing.

After this little conversation with Captain Rexford about his relatives,

and when Sophia had received the other children from the hands of Eliza

and repaired with them to the house door, Trenholme also took leave, and

rose to accompany her as far as the gate.

Sophia shivered a little when she stepped out upon the narrow wooden

gallery in front of the door.

The Rexford house was not situated in the midst of the farm, but between

the main road that ran out of the village and the river that here lay

for some distance parallel with the road. On the next lot of land stood

an empty house in the centre of a large deserted garden; and on the

other side of the road, about a quarter of a mile off, stood the college

buildings, which were plainly to be seen over flat fields and low log

fences. Beyond the college grounds were woods and pastures, and beyond

again rose Chellaston Mountain. This view was what Sophia and Trenholme

looked upon as they stood on the verandah; and all that they saw--field,

road, roof, tree, and hill--was covered with sparkling snow. It was a

week since the snow came, and Sophia still shivered a little whenever

she looked at it.

"I am sorry to see you do not look upon this scene as if it rejoiced

your heart," he said. "When you know it better, you will, I hope, love

it as I do. It is a glorious climate, Miss Rexford; it is a glorious

country. The depressions and fears that grow up with one's life in the

Old World fall away from one in this wonderful air, with the stimulus of

a new world and a strong young nation all around. This snow is not cold;

it is warm. In this garden of yours it is just now acting as a blanket

for the germs of flowers that could not live through an English winter,

but will live here, and next summer will astonish you with their

richness. Nor is it cold for _you_; it is dry as dust; you can walk over

it in moccasins, and not be damp: and it has covered away all the decay

of autumn, conserving for you in the air such pure oxygen that it will

be like new life in your veins, causing you to laugh at the frost."

"I have not your enthusiasm," she replied. Together they led the

unsteady feet of the little ones down the crisp snow path which Harold's

industrious shovel had made.

Trenholme spoke briefly of the work he was trying to do in his school.

A clergyman has social licence to be serious which is not accorded to

other men. Wherefore he spoke as a clergyman might speak to a friend,

saying, in general terms, how steep is the ascent when, among mundane

affairs, human beings try to tread only where the angels of the higher

life may lead.

Sophia assented, feeling a little sharp because it seemed to her that he

was taking up the thread of his acquaintance with her just where it had

formerly parted when she had thrown before him the gauntlet of such high

resolves and heavenly aims as young girls can easily talk about when

they know as yet nothing of their fulfilment. Whether or not Sophia knew

more of their fulfilment since then, she had, at least, learned a more

humble reverence for the very thought of such struggles, and she was

quite ready to believe that the man to whom she had once called to come

onward had by this time far outstripped her in the race. She was _ready_

for this belief; but she had not accepted it, because, as yet confused

and excited by all that was new, she had formed no conclusion whatever

with regard to Trenholme. It had puzzled her somewhat from the outset to

find him such a model of elegance in the matter of clothes and manners.

She had, somehow, fancied that he would have a long beard and wear an

old coat. Instead of that, his usual manner of accosting her reminded

her more of those fashion plates in which one sees tailors' blocks

taking off their hats to one another. She did not think this was to his

disadvantage; she did not, as yet, think distinctly on the matter at

all. She certainly had no time to deliberate during this particular

conversation, for her companion, having only a few minutes to utilise,

was in a talkative humour. Having spoken of his own work, and made the

more general observations on the difficulties of what is commonly called

the "narrow road," in a quiet, honest way, he said something more

personal.

"I have always felt, Miss Rexford, that it would be a pleasure to me to

see you again, because of the strength and courage which you managed to

infuse into my youthful aspirations; but now that I have seen you, will

you permit me to say that you have been quite unknowingly a help to me

again? A week ago I was half-disheartened of my life because of the

apparent sordidness of its daily duties, and now that I have seen you

giving your life to perform small and unassuming services for others, my

own duties have appeared more sacred. I can't tell you how much I admire

your unselfish devotion to these children. Don't think me rude because I

say it. I often think we are shabby to one another because, in the

strife, we do not frankly say when we are helped by seeing the brave

fight that some one else is making."

They had stopped by the gate, for he was going one way and she and the

little ones another. Two strong young firs, with snow upon their

shelving branches, formed gateposts. The long broad road was white as

their footpath had been.

Sophia answered: "There is no virtue in what I do, for, had I the

choice, I certainly should not be their nursemaid."

"Do you know," he said, "I think when we see life in its reality,

instead of in its seeming, we shall find that the greatest deeds have

been done just because their doers believe that they could not do

otherwise."

"I don't see that. If circumstances shut us up to doing certain things,

there is no virtue in doing them. There may be a little virtue in not

repining at our fate, but not much."

He did not answer for a minute, but broke the curl of a little snowdrift

gently with his stick. Because he did not answer or say good-bye, Sophia

tarried for a moment and then looked up at him.

"Miss Rexford," he replied, "the voice of circumstances says to us just

what we interpret it to say. It is in the _needs must_ of a high nature

that true nobility lies."

CHAPTER XIII.

It is upon the anniversary of feasts that a family, if despondent at

all, feels most despondent. So it fell out that at Christmas-time the

homesickness which hitherto had found its antidote in novelty and

surprise now attacked the Rexford household. The girls wept a good deal.

Sophia chid them for it sharply. Captain Rexford carried a solemn face.

The little boys were in worse pickles of mischief than was ordinary.

Even Mrs. Rexford was caught once or twice, in odd corners, hastily

wiping away furtive tears.

This general despondency seemed to reach a climax one afternoon some

days before the end of the year. Without, the wind was blowing and snow

was descending; inside, the housework dragged monotonously. The only

lively people in the house were the little children. They were playing

quite riotously in an upper room, under the care of the Canadian girl,

Eliza; but their shouts only elicited sighs from Mrs. Rexford's elder

daughters, who were helping her to wash the dinner dishes in the

kitchen.

These two elder daughters had, since childhood, always been dressed, so

far as convenient, the one in blue, the other in red, and were nicknamed

accordingly. Their mother thought it gave them individuality which they

otherwise lacked. The red frock and the blue were anything but gay just

now, for they were splashed and dusty, and the pretty faces above them

showed a decided disposition to pout and frown, even to shed tears.

The kitchen was a long, low room. The unpainted wood of floor, walls,

and ceiling was darkened somewhat by time. Two square, four-paned

windows were as yet uncurtained, except that Nature, with the kindness

of a fairy helper, had supplied the lack of deft fingers and veiled the

glass with such devices of the frost as resembled miniature landscapes

of distant alp and nearer minaret. The large, square cooking-stove

smoked a little. Between the stove and the other door stood the table,

which held the dishes at which worked the neat, quick mother and her

rather untidy and idle daughters.

"Really, Blue and Red!" The words were jerked out to conceal a sigh

which had risen involuntarily. "This is disgraceful."

Her sharp brown eyes fell on the pile of dishes she had washed, which

the two girls, who were both drying them, failed to diminish as fast as

she increased it.

"Our cloths are wet," said Blue, looking round the ceiling vaguely, as

if a dry dish-towel might be lying somewhere on a rafter.

"I declare--" the mother began, tapping her foot. But what she was going

to declare was never known, for just then a knock at the outer door

diverted their attention.

However commonplace may be the moment after a door is opened, the moment

before the opening is apt to be full of interest, for one can never know

but that some cause of delightful excitement is on the other side.

It was Blue who opened the door. She did not at first open it very wide,

for she had learned by experience how much icy air could rush in, and

the other two, watching from behind, saw her answering some salutation

with dubious politeness. Then, after a moment, they saw her open it more

widely, and with a shy but hospitable inclination of the pretty

head--"Will you walk in?" said Blue.

The young man who immediately entered had a very smart appearance to

eyes which had grown accustomed to the working garb of father and

brother. He was, moreover, handsome to a degree that is not ordinary.

The curly hair from which he had lifted his fur cap was black and glossy

as a blackbird's plumage, and the moustache, which did not cover the

full red lips, matched the hair, save that it seemed of finer and softer

material. His brown eyes had the glow of health and good spirits in

them.

"Dear me!" Mrs. Rexford gave this involuntary exclamation of surprise;

then she turned inquiringly to the visitor. It was not in her nature to

regard him with an unfriendly eye; and as for Blue and Red, a spot of

warm colour had come into each of their sorrowful cheeks. They were too

well bred to look at each other or stare at the stranger, but there was

a flutter of pleased interest about the muscles of their rosy lips that

needed no expressive glances to interpret it.

To be sure, the next few minutes' talk rather rubbed the bloom off their

pleasure, as one rubs beauty off a plum by handling; but the plum is

still sweet; and the pleasure was still there, being composed purely of

the excitement of meeting a young human creature apparently so akin to

themselves, but different with that mysterious difference which nature

sets between masculine and feminine attributes of mind and heart.

The young man was an American. Any one experienced in American life

would have observed that the youth was a wanderer, his tricks of speech

and behaviour savouring, not of one locality, but of many. His accent

and manner showed it. He was very mannerly. He stated, without loss of

time, that, hearing that they had lately come to the country and had

some rooms in their house which they did not use, he had taken the

liberty of calling to see if they could let him a couple of rooms. He

was anxious, he said, to set up as a dentist, and had failed, so far, to

find a suitable place.

The disappointment which Blue and Red experienced in finding that the

handsome youth was a dentist by profession was made up for by the

ecstasy of amusement it caused them to think of his desiring to set up

his business in their house. They would almost have forgiven Fate if she

had withdrawn her latest novelty as suddenly as she had sent him,

because his departure would have enabled them to give vent to the mirth

the suppression of which was, at that moment a pain almost as great as

their girlish natures could bear.

Oh, no, Mrs. Rexford said, they had no rooms to let in the house.

The stranger muttered something under his breath, which to an acute ear

might have sounded like "Oh, Jemima!" but he looked so very disconsolate

they could not help being sorry for him as he immediately replied,

soberly enough, "I _am_ sorry. I can't think of any place else to go,

ma'am. I'm _real_ tired, for I've been walking this long time in the

loose snow. Will you permit me to sit and rest for a time on the

doorstep right outside here till I can think what I better do next?"

Blue fingered the back of a chair nervously.

"Take a chair by the stove and rest yourself," said Mrs. Rexford. She

had a dignity about her in dealing with a visitor that was not often

apparent in other circumstances. She added, "We have too lately been

strangers ourselves to wish to turn any one weary from our door." Then,

in whispered aside, "Dry your dishes, girls."

The dignity of bearing with which she spoke to him altered as she threw

her head backward to give this last command.

"I thank you from my heart, madam." The young man bowed--that is, he

made an angle of himself for a moment. He moved the chair to which she

had motioned him, but did not sit down. "It is impossible for me to

sit," said he, fervently, "while a lady stands."

The quaintness and novelty in his accent made them unable to test his

manners by any known standard. For all they knew, the most cultured

inhabitant of Boston, New York, or Washington might have behaved

precisely in this way.

"Sit down, mamma," whispered Blue and Red, with praiseworthy

consideration for their mother's fatigue; "we'll finish the dishes."

The girls perceived what, perhaps, the stranger had already perceived,

that if their mother consented to sit there was a chance of a more equal

conversation. And Mrs. Rexford sat down. Her mind had been

unconsciously relieved from the exercise of great dignity by the fact

that the stranger did not appear to notice her daughters, apparently

assuming that they were only children.

"It is _real_ kind of you, ma'am, to be so kind to me. I don't think

_any_ lady has seemed so kind to me since I saw my own mother last."

He looked pensively at the stove.

"Your mother lives in the United States, I suppose." He shook his head

sadly. "In heaven now."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Rexford; and then in a minute, "I am glad to see that

you feel her loss, I am sure." Here she got half off her chair to poke

the damper of the stove. "There is no loss so great as the loss of a

mother."

"No, and I _always_ feel her loss most when I am tired and hungry;

because, when I was a little chap, you know, it was always when I was

tired and hungry that I went home and found her just sitting there,

quite natural, waiting for me."

Blue and Red looked at the cupboard. They could not conceive how their

mother could refrain from an offer of tea. But, as it was, she gave the

young man a sharp glance and questioned him further. Where had he come

from? When had he arrived?

He had come, he said, from the next station on the railway. He had been

looking there, and in many other places, for an opening for his work,

and for various reasons he had now decided that Chellaston was a more

eligible place than any. He had come in the early morning, and had

called on the doctor and on Principal Trenholme of the College. They had

both agreed that there was an opening for a young dentist who would do

his work well, charge low prices, and be content to live cheaply till

the Tillage grew richer. "It's just what _I_ want," he said. "I don't

seem to care much about making money if I can live honestly among

kind-hearted folks."

"But surely," cried Mrs. Rexford, "neither Dr. Nash nor Principal

Trenholme suggested to you that Captain Rexford could give you rooms

for--" She was going to say "pulling out teeth," but she omitted that.

The young man looked at her, evidently thinking of something else.

"Would you consider it a liberty, ma'am, if I--" He stopped diffidently,

for, seeing by his manner that he meditated immediate action of some

sort, she looked at him so fiercely that her glance interrupted him for

a moment, "if I were to stop the stove smoking?" He completed the

sentence with great humility, evidently puzzled to know how he had

excited her look of offence.

She gave another excited poke at the damper herself, and, having got her

hand blacked, wiped it on her coarse grey apron. The diamond keeper

above the wedding-ring looked oddly out of place, but not more so than

the small, shapely hand that wore it. Seeing that she had done the stove

no good, she sat back in her chair with her hands crossed upon her now

dirty apron.

"You can do nothing with it. Before we came to Canada no one told us

that the kitchen stoves invariably smoked. Had they done so I should

have chosen another country. However, as I say to my children, we must

make the best of it now. There's no use crying; there's no use

lamenting. It only harasses their father."

The last words were said with a sharp glance of reproof at Blue and Red.

This mother never forgot the bringing up of her children in any one's

presence, but she readily forgot the presence of others in her remarks

to her children.

"But you aren't making the best of it," said the visitor. With that he

got up, carefully lifted an iron piece in the back of the stove, turned

a key thus disclosed in the pipe, and so materially altered the mood of

the fire that in a few moments it stopped smoking and crackled nicely.

"Did you ever, mamma!" cried the girls. A juggler's feat could not have

entertained them more.

"_If_ for a time, first off, you had someone in the house who had lived

in this country, you'd get on first class," said the youth.

"But you know, my dears," Mrs. Rexford spoke to her daughters,

forgetting the young man for a moment as before, "if I had not supposed

that Eliza understood the stove I should have inquired of Principal

Trenholme before now."

"May I enquire where you got your help?" asked the American. "If she was

from this locality she certainly ought to have comprehended the stove."

"She is a native of the country."

"As I say," he went on, with some emphasis, "if she comes from

hereabouts, or further west, she ought to have understood this sort of a

stove; but, on the other hand, if she comes from the French district,

where they use only the common box stove, she would not understand this

kind."

He seemed to be absorbed entirely in the stove, and in the benefit to

them of having a "help," as he called her, who understood it.

"I think she comes from the lumbering country somewhere near the St.

Lawrence," said Mrs. Rexford, examining the key in the stove-pipe. She

could not have said a moment before where Eliza had come from, but this

phrase seemed to sum up neatly any remarks the girl had let fall about

her father's home.

"_That_ accounts for it! Will you be kind enough to let me see her? I

could explain the mechanism of this stove to her in a few words; then

you, ma'am, need have no further trouble."

She said she should be sorry to trouble him. If the key were all, she

could explain it.

"Pardon me"--he bowed again--"it is _not_ all. There are several inner

dampers at the back here, which it is most important to keep free from

soot. If I might only explain it to the help, she'd know once for all.

I'd be real glad to do you that kindness."

Mrs. Rexford had various things to say. Her speeches were usually

complex, composed of a great variety of short sentences. She asked her

daughters if they thought Eliza would object to coming down. She said

that Eliza was invaluable, but she did not always like to do as she was

asked. She thought the girl had a high temper. She had no wish to rouse

her temper; she had never seen anything of it; she didn't wish to.

Perhaps Eliza would like to come down. Then she asked her daughters

again if they thought Eliza would come pleasantly. Her remarks showed

the track of her will as it veered round from refusal to assent, as

bubbles in muddy water show the track of a diving insect. Finally,

because the young man had a strong will, and was quite decided as to

what he thought best, the girls were sent to fetch Eliza.

Blue and Red ran out of the kitchen. When they got into the next room

they clasped one another and shook with silent laughter. As the door

between the rooms did not shut tightly, they adjured one another, by

dances and gestures, not to laugh loud. Blue danced round the table on

her toes as a means of stifling her laughter. Then they both ran to the

foot of the attic stair and gripped each other's arms very tight by way

of explaining that the situation was desperate, and that one or other

must control her voice sufficiently to call Eliza.

The dining-room they were in was built and furnished in the same style

as the kitchen, save that here the wood was painted slate-colour and a

clean rag carpet covered the floor. The upper staircase, very steep and

dark, opened off it at the further end. All the light from a square,

small-paned window fell sideways upon the faces of the girls as they

stretched their heads towards the shadowed covert of the stairs.

And they could not, _could_ not, speak, although they made gestures of

despair at each other and mauled each other's poor little arms sadly in

the endeavour to prove how hard they were trying to be sober.

If any one wants to know precisely what they were laughing at, the only

way would be to become for a time one of two girls to whom all the world

is a matter of mutual mirth except when it is a matter of mutual tears.

Although it seemed very long to them, it was, after all, only a minute

before Blue called in trembling tones, "Eliza!"

"Eliza!" called Red.

"Eliza! Eliza!" they both called, and though there was that in their

voices which made it perfectly apparent to the young man in the next

room, that they were laughing, so grand was their composure compared

with what it had been before, that they thought they had succeeded

admirably.

But when a heavy foot was heard overhead and an answering voice, and it

was necessary to explain to Eliza wherefore she was called, an audible

laugh did escape, and then Blue and Red scampered upstairs and made the

communication there.

It spoke much for the strength and calibre of character of the girl who

had so lately come into this family that a few minutes later, when the

three girls entered the kitchen, it was Eliza who walked first, with a

bearing equal to that of the other two and a dignity far greater.

The young man, who had been fidgeting with the stove, looked up gravely

to see them enter, as if anxious to give his lesson; but had any one

looked closely it would have been seen that his acute gaze covered the

foremost figure with an intensity of observation that was hardly called

for if he took no other interest in her than as a transient pupil in the

matter of stove dampers.

Perhaps any one might have looked with interest at her. She was

evidently young, but there was that in her face that put years, or at

least experience of years, between her and the pretty young things that

followed her. She was largely made, and, carrying a dimpled child of two

years upon her shoulder, she walked erect, as Southern women walk with

their burdens on their heads. It detracted little that her gown was of

the coarsest, and that her abundant red hair was tossed by the child's

restless hands. Eliza, as she entered the kitchen, was, if not a

beautiful girl, a girl on the eve of splendid womanhood; and the young

man, perceiving this almost faltered in his gaze, perhaps also in the

purpose he was pursuing. The words of the lesson he had ready seemed to

be forgotten, although his outward composure did not fail him.

Eliza came near, the child upon her shoulder, looked at him and waited.

"Eliza will hear what you have to say," said Mrs. Rexford.

"Oh," said he, and then, whatever had been the cause of his momentary

pause, he turned it off with the plea that he had not supposed this to

be "the--young lady who--wished to learn about the stove."

She received what he had to say without much appreciation, remarking

that, with the exception of the one key, she had known it before.

As for him, he took up his cap to go. "Good-day, ma'am," he said; "I'm

obliged for your hospitality. Ladies, I beg leave now to retire." He

made his bow elaborately, first to Mrs. Rexford, then in the direction

of the girls.

"My card, ma'am," he said, presenting Mrs. Rexford with the thing he

mentioned.

Then he went out.

On the card was printed, "Cyril P. Harkness, M.D.S."

It was growing so dark that Mrs. Rexford had to go to the window to read

it. As she did so, the young man's shadow passed below the frosted pane

as he made his way between snow-heaps to the main road.

CHAPTER XIV.

Next day Eliza went out with two of the little children. It was in the

early afternoon, and the sun shone brightly. Eliza had an errand down

the street, but every one knows that one does not progress very fast on

an errand with a toddler of two years at one's side. Eliza sauntered,

giving soothing answers to the little one's treble remarks, and only

occasionally exerting herself to keep the liveliness of her older charge

in check. Eliza liked the children and the sunshine and the road. Her

saunter was not an undignified one, nor did she neglect her duty in any

particular; but all the while there was an undercurrent of greater

activity in her mind, and the under-thoughts were occupied wholly and

entirely with herself and her own interests.

After walking in the open road for a little while she came under the

great elm trees that held their leafless limbs in wide arch over the

village street. Here a footpath was shovelled in the snow, on either

side of the sleigh road. The sun was throwing down the graceful lines of

elm twigs on path and snowdrift. The snow lawns in front of the village

houses were pure and bright; little children played in them with tiny

sledge and snow spade, often under the watchful eye of a mother who sat

sewing behind the window pane. Now and then sleighs passed on the

central road with a cheerful jingle of bells.

When Eliza, with the children, came to the centre of the village, it

became necessary to cross the street. She was bound for the largest

shop, that stood under part of the great hotel, and just here, opposite

the hotel, quite a number of sleighs were passing. Eliza picked up the

little one in her arms, and, taking the other child by the hand, essayed

to cross. But one reckons without one's host in counting surely on the

actions of children. Sturdy five-year-old baulked like a little horse,

and would not come. Eliza coaxed in vain. A long line of draught-horses,

dragging blue box-sleighs, came slowly up the road, each jingling a

heavy belt of bells. Five-year-old was frightened and would not come.

Eliza, without irritation, but at the same time without hesitation, took

it by the waist under her left arm and started again. She got half

across before the child seemed thoroughly to realise what was occurring,

and then, with head and arms in front and little gaitered legs behind,

it began to struggle so violently that the young woman, strong and

composed as she was, was brought for a minute to a standstill.

Two men were watching her from the smoking-room of the hotel; the one an

elderly man, the owner of the house, had his attention arrested by the

calm force of character Eliza was displaying; the other, the young

American dentist, saw in the incident an excuse for interference, and he

rushed out now to the rescue, and gallantly carried the little naughty

one safely to the right side of the road.

Eliza, recognising him, saw that he was looking at her with the pleasant

air of an old acquaintance--one, in fact, who knew her so well that any

formal greeting was unnecessary--not that she knew anything about

greetings, or what might or might not be expected, but she had an

indistinct sense that he was surprisingly friendly.

"How's the stove going?" then he asked. He escorted her into the shop,

and superintended her little purchases in a good-natured, elder-brother

fashion. That done, he carried the elder child across the road again,

and Eliza went upon her way back down the long narrow pavement, with the

children at her side.

She had shown nothing to the young man but composed appreciation of his

conduct. She was, however, conscious that he would not have been so kind

to any girl he happened to meet. "He admires me," thought Eliza to

herself. For all that, she was not satisfied with the encounter. She

felt that she had not played her part well; she had been too--had been

too--she did not know what. She thought if she had held her head higher

and shown herself less thankful--yes, there had been something amiss in

her behaviour that ought to be corrected. She could not define what she

had done, or ought to have done. How could she? An encounter of this

sort was as new to her as Mrs. Rexford's sewing machine, which she had

not yet been allowed to touch. Yet had she been shut up alone with the

machine, as she was now shut up to revise her own conduct within

herself, she would, by sheer force of determined intelligence, have

mastered its intricacy to a large degree without asking aid. And so with

this strong idea that she must learn how to act differently to this

young man; dim, indeed, as was her idea of what was lacking, or what was

to be gained, she strove with it in no fear of failure.

She raised her head as she walked, and recast the interview just past in

another form more suited to her vague ideal, and again in another. She

had a sense of power within her, that sense which powerful natures have,

without in the least knowing in what direction the power may go forth,

or when they will be as powerless--as Samson shaven. She only felt the

power and its accompanying impulses; she supposed that in all ways, at

all times, it was hers to use.

In a day or two Cyril Harkness met Eliza in the street again, and took

occasion to speak to her. This time she was much less obliging in her

manner. She threw a trifle of indifference into her air, looking in

front of her instead of at him, and made as if she wished to proceed.

Had this interview terminated as easily as the other, she would have

been able to look back upon it with complete satisfaction, as having

been carried on, on her part, according to her best knowledge of

befitting dignity; but, unfortunately for her, the young American was of

an outspoken disposition, and utterly untrammelled by those instincts of

conventionality which Eliza had, not by training, but by inheritance

from her law-abiding and custom-loving Scotch ancestry.

"Say," said he, "are you mad at anything?"

He gained at least this much, that she instantly stared at him.

"If you aren't angry with me, why should you act crusty?" he urged. "You

aren't half as pleasant as t'other day."

Eliza had not prepared herself for this free speaking, and her mind was

one that moved slowly.

"I must take the children home," she said. "I'm not angry. I wasn't

pleasant that I know of."

"You ought to be pleasant, any way; for I'm your best friend."

Eliza was not witty, and she really could not think of an answer to this

astonishing assertion. Again she looked at him in simple surprise.

"Well, yes, I am; although you don't know it. There isn't man round

Turriffs who has the least idea in the world where you are, for your

friends left you asleep when they came out with the old gentleman; when

I twigged how you got off I never told a word. Your father had been

seen" (here he winked) "near Dalhousie, wandering round! But they won't

find you unless I tell them, and I won't."

"Won't find me unless you tell them," repeated Eliza slowly, the utmost

astonishment in her tone. "Who?"

So vague and great was the wonder in her voice that he brought his eyes

to interrogate hers in sudden surprise. He saw only simple and strong

interest on the face of a simple and strong country girl. He had

expected a different response and a different expression.

He put his tongue in the side of his cheek with the air of an

uncontrolled boy who has played a trump-card in vain. "Say," said he,

"didn't you, though?"

"Didn't I?" said Eliza, and after a minute she said, "What?"

The young man looked at her and smiled. His smile suggested a cunning

recognition that she was deceiving him by pretended dulness.

At this Eliza looked excessively offended, and, with her head aloft,

began to push on the little sleigh with the baby in it.

"Beg your pardon, ma'am," he said with sudden humility, but with a

certain lingering in his voice as if he could not relinquish his former

idea as suddenly as he wished to appear to do. "I see I've made a

mistake."

Eliza hesitated in her onward movement. "But what was it you were going

to tell about me?" She spoke as if she had merely then remembered how

the conversation began.

His recantation was now complete. "Nothing; oh, nothing. T'was just my

fun, miss."

She surveyed him with earnest disapprobation.

"You're not a very sensible young man, I'm afraid."

She said this severely, and then, with great dignity, she went home.

The young man lingered for a minute or two by the snow piles in front of

the hotel where they had been standing. Then he went into the hotel with

the uncertain step that betokens an undecided mind. When he got to the

window he looked out at her retreating figure--a white street with this

grey-clad healthy-looking girl walking down it, and the little red

box-sleigh with the baby in it which she pushed before her. He was quite

alone, and he gave vent to an emphatic half-whisper to himself.

"If she did it, she's a magnificent deep one--a magnificent deep one."

There was profound admiration in his voice.

That evening it was Mrs. Rexford who happened to wipe the tea-things

while Eliza washed them.

"That young Mr. Harkness, the dentist--" began Eliza.

"Yes," said Mrs. Rexford, alert.

"Twice when I've been to the shop he's tried to make himself pleasant to

me and the children. I don't suppose he means any harm, but he's not a

sensible young man, I think."

"You're a very sensible girl, Eliza," said Mrs. Rexford, with quick

vigour and without any sense of contrast.

"It doesn't matter to me," went on Eliza, "for I don't answer him more

than I can help; but if he was to talk to the other girls when they go

out, I suppose they'd know not to notice him too much."

Mrs. Rexford was one of those people who get accustomed to

circumstances in the time that it takes others to begin to wonder at

them. She often took for granted now that Eliza would consider her

daughters as, entirely on a level with herself, but less sensible. It

might not be wholly agreeable; neither, to Mrs. Rexford's mind, was it

agreeable to have the earth covered with snow for four months of the

year; but she had ceased wondering at that phenomenon a minute after she

had first read of it in a book of travels, and all the ever-fresh marvel

of its glossy brightness had, failed to bring fresh comment to her lips,

or to make her mind more familiar with the idea. In the same way, she

had accepted Eliza's position and character as a complex fact which,

like the winter, had advantages and disadvantages. Mrs. Rexford put up

with the latter, was thankful for the former, and wasted no more

thoughts on the matter.

Eliza's last remark, however, was a subject for consideration, and with

Mrs. Rexford consideration was speech.

"Dear me!" she said. "Well!" Then she took a few paces backward,

dish-cloth and dish still in hand, till she brought herself opposite the

next room door. The long kitchen was rather dark, as the plates were

being washed by the light of one candle, but in the next room Captain

Rexford and his family were gathered round a table upon which stood

lamps giving plenty of light.

The mother addressed the family in general. "The dentist," said she,

"talks to Eliza when she goes to the shop. Blue and Red! if he should

speak to you, you must show the same sense Eliza did, and take not the

slightest notice."

Sophia had asked what the dentist said to Eliza, and Mrs. Rexford had

reproved the girls for laughing, while the head of the family prepared

himself to answer in his kindly, leisurely, and important way.

"To 'take not the slightest notice' is, perhaps, requiring more of such

young heads than might be possible. It would be difficult even for me to

take no notice whatever of a young man who accosted me in a place like

this. Severity, mild displeasure, or a determination not to speak,

might be shown."

"If necessary," said Sophia; "but--"

"If _necessary_," the father corrected himself, emphasizing his words

with a gentle tap of his fingers on the table. "I only mean if

necessary, of course."

"People have such easy-going ways here," said Sophia. "Don't you think,

mamma, a little ordinary discretion on the girls' part would be enough?

Blue and Red have too much sense, I suppose, to treat him as an equal;

but they can be polite."

Eliza, overhearing this, decided that she would never treat the young

American as an equal, although she had no idea why she should not.

Let it not be supposed that Mrs. Rexford had idled over the dish she was

wiping. The conversation was, in fact, carried on between the family in

the bright sitting-room and an intermittent appearance of Mrs. Rexford

at the door of the shady kitchen. Twice she had disappeared towards

Eliza's table to get a fresh plate and come again, rubbing it.

"Ah, girls," she now cried, "Sophia is always giving you credit for more

sense than I'm afraid you possess. No giggling, now, if this young

fellow should happen to say 'good morning.' Just 'good morning' in

return, and pass on--nothing more."

The father's leisurely speech again broke in and hushed the little

babble.

"Certainly, my dear daughters, under such circumstances as your mother

suggests; to look down modestly, and answer the young man's salutation

with a little primness, and not to hesitate in your walk--that, I should

think, is perhaps the course of conduct your mother means to indicate."

"It strikes me," said Harold, the eldest son, "a good deal depends on

what he _did_ say to Eliza. Eliza!"

This last was a shout, and the girl responded to it, so that there were

now two figures at the door, Mrs. Rexford drying the dish, and Eliza

standing quite quietly and at ease.

"Yes, my son," responded Captain Rexford, "it _does_ depend a good deal

on what he _did_ say to Eliza. Now, Eliza" (this was the beginning of a

judicial inquiry), "I understand from Mrs. Rexford that----"

"I've heard all that you have said," said Eliza. "I've been just here."

"Ah! Then without any preface" (he gave a wave of his hand, as if

putting aside the preface), "I might just ask you, Eliza, what this

young--Harkness, I believe his name is--what----"

"He's just too chatty, that's all that's the matter with him," said

Eliza. "He took off his hat and talked, and he'd have been talking yet

if I hadn't come away. There was no sense in what he said, good or bad."

The children were at last allowed to go on with their lessons.

When the dish-washing was finished and Mrs. Rexford came into the

sitting-room, Sophia took the lamp by the light of which she had been

doing the family darning into the kitchen, and she and Harold

established themselves there. Harold, a quiet fellow about nineteen, was

more like his half-sister than any other member of the family, and there

was no need that either should explain to the other why they were glad

to leave the nervous briskness of the more occupied room. It was their

habit to spend their evenings here, and Sophia arranged that Eliza

should bring her own sewing and work at it under her direction. Harold

very often read aloud to them. It was astonishing how quickly, not

imperceptibly, but determinedly, the Canadian girl took on the habits

and manners of the lady beside her; not thereby producing a poor

imitation, for Eliza was not imitative, but by careful study reproducing

in herself much of Sophia's refinement.

CHAPTER XV.

That evening Blue and Red were sent to bed rather in disgrace, because

they had professed themselves too sleepy to finish sewing a seam their

mother had given them to do.

Very sleepy, very glad to fold up their work, they made their way,

through the cold empty room which was intended to be the drawing-room

when it was furnished, to one of the several bedrooms that opened off

it. There was only one object in the empty room which they passed

through, and that was the big family carriage, for which no possible use

could be found during the long winter, and for the storing of which no

outside place was considered good enough. It stood wheelless in a

corner, with a large grey cloth over it, and the girls passing it with

their one flickering candle looked at it a little askance. They had the

feeling that something might be within or behind it which would bounce

out at them.

Once, however, within their small whitewashed bedroom, they felt quite

safe. Their spirits rose a little when they shut the door, for now there

was no exacting third person to expect anything but what they chose to

give. Theirs was that complete happiness of two persons when it has been

long proved that neither ever does anything which the other does not

like, and neither ever wants from the other what is not naturally given.

They were still sleepy when they unbuttoned each other's frocks, but

when they had come to the next stage of shaking out their curly hair

they began to make remarks which tended to dispel their drowsiness.

Said Blue, "Is it very dreadful to be a dentist?"

Said Red, "Yes; horrid. You have to put your fingers in people's mouths,

you know."

"But doctors have to _cut off legs_, and doctors are quite----"

There is another advantage in perfect union of twin souls, and that is,

that it is never necessary to finish a remark the end of which does not

immediately find expression on the tip of the tongue, for the other

always knows what is going to be said.

"Yes, I know doctors are," replied Red; "still, you know, Principal

Trenholme said Mr. Harkness is not a well-bred American."

"His first name is Cyril. I saw it on the card," replied Blue, quitting

the question of social position.

"It's a _lovely_ name," said Red, earnestly.

"And I'll tell you," said Blue, turning round with sudden earnestness

and emphasis, "I think he's the _handsomest_ young man I _ever saw_."

The rather odd plan Mrs. Rexford had hit on for lessening the likeness

between these two, clothing each habitually in a distinctive colour, had

not been carried into her choice of material for their dressing-gowns.

These garments were white; and, as a stern mood of utility had guided

their mother's shears, they were short and almost shapeless. The curly

hair which was being brushed over them had stopped its growth, as curly

hair often does, at the shoulders. In the small whitewashed room the two

girls looked as much like choristers in surplices as anything might

look, and their sweet oval faces had that perfect freshness of youth

which is strangely akin to the look of holiness, in spite of the

absolute frivolity of conduct which so often characterises young

companionship.

When Blue made her earnest little assertion, she also made an earnest

little dab at the air with her brush to emphasise it; and Red, letting

her brush linger on her curly mop, replied with equal emphasis and the

same earnest, open eyes, "Oh, so do I."

This decided, there was quiet for a minute, only the soft sound of

brushing. Then Red began that pretty little twittering which bore to

their laughter when in full force the same relation that the first faint

chit, chit, chit of a bird bears to its full song.

"Weren't papa and mamma funny when they talked about what we should do

if he spoke to us?"

She did not finish her sentence before merriment made it difficult for

her to pronounce the words; and as for Blue, she was obliged to throw

herself on the side of the bed.

Then again Blue sat up.

"You're to look down as you pass him, Red--like this, look!"

"_That_ isn't right." Red said this with a little shriek of delight.

"You're smiling all over your face--that won't do."

"Because I _can't_ keep my face straight. Oh, Red, what _shall_ we do? I

know that if we _ever_ see him after this we shall simply _die_."

"Oh, yes"--with tone of full conviction--"I know we shall."

"But we _shall_ meet him."

They became almost serious for some moments at the thought of the

inevitableness of the meeting and the hopelessness of conducting

themselves with any propriety.

"And what will he think?" continued Blue, in sympathetic distress; "he

will certainly think we are laughing at _him_, for he will never imagine

how much we have been amused."

Red, however, began to brush her hair again. "Blue," said she, "did you

ever try to see how you looked in the glass when your eyes were cast

down? You can't, you know."

Blue immediately tried, and admitted the difficulty.

"I wish I could," said Red, "for then I should know how I should look

when he had spoken to me and I was passing him."

"Well, do it, and I'll tell you."

"Then you stand there, and I'll come along past and look down just when

I meet you."

Red made the experiment rather seriously, but Blue cried out:

"Oh, you looked at me out of the corner of your eye, just as you were

looking down--that'll never do."

"I didn't mean to. Now look! I'm doing it again." The one white-gowned

figure stood with its back to the bed while the other through its little

acting down the middle of the room.

"That's better"--critically.

"Well," pursued Red, with interest, "how does it look?"

"Rather nice. I shouldn't wonder if he fell in love with you."

This was a sudden and extraordinary audacity of thought.

"Oh, Blue!"--in shocked tones--"How could you think of such a thing!" She

reproached her sister as herself. It was actually the first time such a

theme had been broached even in their private converse.

"Well," said Blue, stoutly, "he might, you know. Such things happen."

"I don't think it's quite nice to think of it," said Red, meditatively.

"It isn't nice," said Blue, agreeing perfectly, but unwilling to recant;

"still, it may be our duty to think of it. Sophia said once that a woman

was always more or less responsible if a man fell in love with her."

"Did Sophia say that?" Weighty worlds of responsibility seemed to be

settling on little Red's shoulders.

"Yes; she was talking to mamma about something. So, as it's quite

possible he might fall in love with us, we _ought_ to consider the

matter."

"You don't think he's falling in love with Eliza, do you?"

"Oh no!"--promptly--"but then Eliza isn't like us."

Red looked at her pretty face in the glass as she continued to smooth

out the brown curls. She thought of Eliza's tall figure, immobile white

face, and crown of red hair.

"No," she said, meditatively; "but, Blue"--this quite seriously--"I hope

he won't fall in love with us."

"Oh, so do I; for it would make him feel so miserable. But I think,

Red, when you looked down you did not look _prim_ enough--you know papa

said 'prim.' Now, you stand, and I'll do it."

So Blue now passed down the little narrow room, but when she came to the

critical spot, the supposed meeting ground, her desire to laugh

conflicting with the effort to pull a long face, caused such a wry

contortion of her plump visage that seriousness deserted them once more,

and they bubbled over in mirth that would have been boisterous had it

not been prudently muffled in the pillows.

After that they said their prayers. But when they had taken off the

clumsy dressing-gowns and got into the feather-bed under the big

patchwork quilt, like two little white rabbits nestling into one

another, they reverted once more to their father's instructions for

meeting the dentist, and giggled themselves to sleep.

Another pair of talkers, also with some common attributes of character,

but with less knowledge of each other, were astir after these sisters

had fallen asleep.

Most of the rooms in the house were on the ground-floor, but there were

two attic bedrooms opening off a very large room in the roof which the

former occupant had used as a granary. One of these Sophia occupied with

a child; the other had been given to Eliza. That night, when Sophia was

composing herself to sleep, she heard Eliza weeping. So smothered were

the sounds of sorrow that she could hardly hear them. She lifted her

head, listened, then, putting a long fur cloak about her, went into the

next room.

No sooner was her hand on the latch of Eliza's door than all sound

ceased. She stood for a minute in the large, dark granary. The draught

in it was almost great enough to be called a breeze, and it whispered in

the eaves which the sloping rafters made round the edges of the floor as

a wind might sigh in some rocky cave. Sophia opened the door and went

in.

"What is the matter, Eliza?"

Even in the almost darkness she could see that the girl's movement Was

an involuntary feigning of surprise.

"Nothing."

"I used to hear you crying when we first came, Eliza, and now you have

begun it again. Tell me what troubles you. Why do you pretend that

nothing is the matter?"

The cold glimmer of the light of night reflected on snow came in at the

diamond-shaped window, and the little white bed was just shadowed forth

to Sophia's sight. The girl in it might have been asleep, she remained

so quiet.

"Are you thinking about your father?"

"I don't know."

"Do you dislike being here?"

"No; but--"

"But what? What is troubling you, Eliza? You're not a girl to cry for

nothing. Since you came to us I have seen that you are a

straightforward, good girl; and you have plenty of sense, too. Come,

tell me how it is you cry like this?"

Eliza sat up. "You won't tell them downstairs?" she said slowly.

"You may trust me not to repeat anything that is not necessary."

Eliza moved nervously, and her movements suggested hopelessness of

trouble and difficulty of speech. Sophia pitied her.

"I don't know," she said restlessly, stretching out aimless hands into

the darkness, "I don't know why I cry, Miss Sophia. It isn't for one

thing more than another; everything is the reason--everything,

everything."

"You mean, for one thing, that your father has gone, and you are

homesick?"

"You said you wouldn't _tell?_"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm not sorry about _that_, because--well, I suppose I liked

father as well as he liked me, but as long as he lived I'd have had to

stay on the clearin', and I hated that. I'm glad to be here; but, oh! I

want so much--I want so much--oh, Miss Sophia, don't you know?"

In some mysterious way Sophia felt that she did know, although she could

not in any way formulate her confused feeling of kinship with this young

girl, so far removed from her in outward experience. It seemed to her

that she had at some time known such trouble as this, which was composed

of wanting "so much--so much," and hands that were stretched, not

towards any living thing, but vaguely to all possible possession outside

the longing self.

"I want to be something," said Eliza, "rich or--I don't know--I would

like to drive about in a fine way like some ladies do, or wear grander

clothes than any one. Yes, I would like to keep a shop, or do something

to make me very rich, and make everybody wish they were like me."

Sophia smiled to herself, but the darkness was about them. Then Sophia

sighed. Crude as were the notions that went to make up the ignorant idea

of what was desirable, the desire for it was without measure. There was

a silence, and when Eliza spoke again Sophia did not doubt but that she

told her whole mind.

It is a curious thing, this, that when a human being of average

experience is confided in, the natural impulse is to assume that

confidence is complete, and the adviser feels as competent to pronounce

upon the case from the statement given as if minds were as limpid as

crystal, and words as fit to represent them as a mirror is to show the

objects it reflects. Yet if the listener would but look within, he would

know that in any complicated question of life there would be much that

he would not, more than he could not, tell of himself, unless long years

of closest companionship had revealed the one heart to the other in ways

that are beyond the power of words. And that is so even if the whole

heart is set to be honest above all--and how many hearts are so set?

"You see," said Eliza, "if people knew I had lived on a very poor

clearin' and done the work, they'd despise me perhaps."

"It is no disgrace to any one to have worked hard, and it certainly

cannot be a disadvantage in this country."

"It was rough."

"You are not very rough, Eliza. It strikes me that you have been pretty

carefully trained and taught."

"Yes, I was that"--with satisfaction. "But don't you think, if I got on,

grand people would always look down at me if they knew I'd lived so

common? And besides, I'm sometimes afraid the man that went shares at

the land with father will want to find me."

"But you said you told him you were coming away."

"I told him, plain and honest; but I had a long way to walk till I got

to the train, and I just went off. But he won't find it so easy to fill

my place, and get some one to do the housework! He'd have kept me, if he

could; and if he heard where I was he might come and try to get me back

by saying father said I was to obey him till I was twenty-one."

"If your father said--that--"

"No," cried the girl, vehemently, "he never did."

"You will hear from your uncle in Scotland?" said Sophia.

"I don't believe he'll write to me. I don't believe he lives any more

where I sent the letter. It's years and years since father heard from

him. I said I'd write because I thought it would look more respectable

to Mrs. Rexford to have an uncle. And I did write; but he won't answer."

This was certainly frank.

"Was that honest, Eliza?"

"No, Miss Sophia; but I felt so miserable. It's hard to walk off with

your bundle, and be all alone and afraid of a man coming after you, and

being so angry. He was dreadful angry when I told him I'd come. If you'd

only _promise_ not tell where I came from to anybody, so that it can't

get round to him that I'm here, and so that people won't know how I

lived before--"

"Well, we certainly have no reason to tell anybody. If it will make you

content, I can assure you none of us will talk about your affairs. Was

that all the trouble?"

"No--not all."

"Well, what else?" Sophia laughed a little, and laid her cool hand on

the girl's hot one.

"I can't be anything grand ever, and begin by being a servant, Miss

Sophia. I say I'm not a servant, and I try not to act like one; but Mrs.

Rexford, she's tried hard to make me one. You wouldn't like to be a

servant, Miss Sophia?"

"You are very childish and foolish," said Sophia. "If I had not been

just as foolish about other things when I was your age I would laugh at

you now. But I know it's no use to tell you that the things you want

will not make you happy, and that the things you don't want would,

because I know you will not believe it. I will do my best to help you to

get what you want, so far as it is not wrong, if you will promise to

tell me all your difficulties."

"Will you help me? Why are you so kind?"

"Because--" said Sophia. Then she said no more.

Eliza showed herself cheered.

"You're the only one I care to talk to, Miss Sophia. The others haven't

as much sense as you, have they?"

As these words were quietly put forth in the darkness, without a notion

of impropriety, Sophia was struck with the fact that they coincided with

her own estimate of the state of the case.

"Eliza, what are you talking of--not of my father and mother surely?"

"Why, yes. I think they're good and kind, but I don't think they've a

deal of sense--do you?"

"My father is a wiser man than you can understand, Eliza; and--" Sophia

broke off, she was fain to retreat; it was cold for one thing.

"Miss Sophia," said Eliza, as she was getting to the door, "there's one

thing--you know that young man they were talking about to-night?"

"What of him?"

"Well, if he were to ask about me, you'd not tell him anything, would

you? I've never told anybody but you about father, or any particulars.

The others don't know anything, and you won't tell, will you?"

"I've told you I won't take upon myself to speak of your affairs. What

has that young man to do with it?"--with some severity.

"It's only that he's a traveller, and I feel so silly about every

traveller, for fear they'd want me to go back to the clearin'."

Sophia took the few necessary steps in the cold dark granary and reached

her own room.

CHAPTER XVI.

Sophia was sitting with Mrs. Rexford on the sofa that stood with its

back to the dining-room window. The frame of the sofa was not turned,

but fashioned with saw and knife and plane; not glued, but nailed

together. Yet it did not lack for comfort; it was built oblong, large,

and low; it was cushioned with sacking filled with loose hay plentifully

mixed with Indian grass that gave forth a sweet perfume, and the whole

was covered with a large neat pinafore of such light washing stuff as

women wear about their work on summer days. Sophia and her step-mother

were darning stockings. The homesickness of the household was rapidly

subsiding, and to-day these two were not uncomfortable or unhappy. The

rest of the family, some to work, some to play, and some to run errands,

had been dismissed into the large outside.

The big house was tranquil. The afternoon sun, which had got round to

the kitchen window, blazed in there through a fringe of icicles that

hung from the low eaves of the kitchen roof, and sent a long strip of

bright prismatic rays across the floor and through the door on to the

rag carpet under the dining-room table. Ever and anon, as the ladies

sewed, the sound of sleigh-bells came to them, distant, then nearer,

then near, with the trotting of horses' feet as they passed the house,

then again more distant. The dining-room window faced the road, but one

could not see through it without standing upright.

"Mamma," said Sophia, "it is quite clear we can never make an ordinary

servant out of Eliza; but if we try to be companionable to her we may

help her to learn what she needs to learn, and make her more willing to

stay with us."

It was Mrs. Rexford's way never to approach a subject gradually in

speech. If her mind went through the process ordinarily manifested in

introductory remarks it slipped through it swiftly and silently, and her

speech darted into the heart of the subject, or skipped about and hit it

on all sides at once.

"Ah, but I told her again and again, Sophia, to say 'miss' to the girls.

She either didn't hear, or she forgot, or she wouldn't understand. I

think you're the only one she'll say 'miss' to. But we couldn't do

without her. Mrs. Nash was telling me the other day that her girl had

left in the middle of the washing, and the one they had before that for

a year--a little French Romanist--stole all their handkerchiefs, and did

not give them back till she made confession to her priest at Easter. It

was very _awkward_, Sophia, to be without handkerchiefs all winter." The

crescendo emphasis which Mrs. Rexford had put into her remarks found its

fortissimo here. Then she added more mildly, "Though I got no character

with Eliza I am convinced she will never pilfer."

Mrs. Rexford was putting her needle out and in with almost electric

speed. Her mind was never quiet, but there was a healthy cheerfulness in

her little quick movements that removed them from the region of weak

nervousness. Yet Sophia knit her brow, and it was with an effort that

she continued amicably:

"Certainly we should be more uncomfortable without her just now than

she would be without us; but if she left us there's no saying where her

ambition might lead her."

Mrs. Rexford bethought her that she must look at some apples that were

baking in the kitchen oven, which she did, and was back in time to make

a remark in exchange without causing any noticeable break in the

conversation. She always gave remarks in exchange, seldom in reply.

"Scotchmen are faithful to their kinsfolk usually, aren't they, Sophia?"

"You think that the uncle she wrote to will answer. He may be dead, or

may have moved away; the chances are ten to one that he will not get the

letter. I think the girl is in our hands. We have come into a

responsibility that we can't make light of."

"Good gracious, Sophia! it's only the hen with one chicken that's afraid

to take another under her wing."

"I know you want to do your best for her--that's why I'm talking."

"Oh, _I_--it's you that takes half the burden of them all."

"Well, _we_ want to do our best--"

"And you, my dear, could go back whenever you liked. _You_ have not

burned the bridges and boats behind you. There's _one_ would be glad to

see you back in the old country, and that lover of yours is a good man,

Sophia."

A sudden flush swept over the young woman's face, as if the allusion

offended her; but she took no other notice of what was said, and

continued: "I don't suggest any radical alteration in our ways; I only

thought that, if you had it in your mind to make a companion of her, the

pains you take in teaching her might take a rather different form, and

perhaps have a better result."

"I think our own girls grow more giddy every day," said Mrs. Rexford,

exactly as if it were an answer. "If Blue and Red were separated they

would both be more sensible."

The mother's mind had now wandered from thought of the alien she had

taken, not because she had not given attention to the words of the

daughter she thought so wise, but because, having considered them as

long as she was accustomed to consider anything, she had decided to act

upon them, and so could dismiss the subject with a good conscience.

The conversation ceased thus, as many conversations do, without apparent

conclusion; for Sophia, vexed by her step-mother's flighty manner of

speech, hid her mood in silence. Anything like discussion between these

two always irritated Sophia, and then, conscious that she had in this

fallen below her ideal, she chafed again at her own irritation. The evil

from which she now suffered was of the stuff of which much of the pain

of life is made--a flimsy stuff that vanishes before the investigation

of reason more surely than the stuff of our evanescent joys. There was

nothing that could be called incompatibility of temper between these

two; no one saw more clearly than Sophia the generosity and courage of

Mrs. Rexford's heart; no one else sympathised so deeply with her

motherly cares, for no one else understood them half so well; and yet it

might have been easier for Sophia Rexford to have lived in external

peace with a covetous woman, able to appreciate and keep in steady view

the relative importance of her ideas.

Meantime Mrs. Rexford went on talking. She was generally unconscious of

the other's intellectual disdain. Pretty soon they heard bells and

horses' feet that slackened at the gate. Sophia stood up to look.

There was a comfortable sleigh, albeit somewhat battered and dingy,

turning in at the gate. A good-looking girl was driving it; a thin, pale

lady sat at her side. Both were much enveloped in faded furs. Over the

seats of the sleigh and over their knees were spread abundant robes of

buffalo hide. The horse that drew the vehicle was an old farm-horse, and

the hand that guided the reins appeared more skilful at driving than was

necessary. The old reins and whip were held in a most stylish manner,

and the fair driver made an innocent pretence of guiding her steed up

the road to the back-yard with care. The animal the while, having once

been shown the gate, trotted quietly, with head down, up the middle of

the sleigh track, and stopped humbly where the track stopped, precisely

as it would have done had there been no hand upon the rein.

Sophia, standing in the middle of the sitting-room, watched the visitors

through the windows of that room and of the kitchen, with unwonted

animation in her handsome face. The girl, who was now evidently coming

with her mother to call upon them, had been named to her more than once

by discriminating people as the most likely person in the neighbourhood

to prove a friend and companion to herself, and Sophia, in her present

situation, could not be at all indifferent to such a prospect. She had

already observed them in church, wondering not a little at that

scrupulous attention to ceremony which had made them ignore the

existence of the newcomers till their acquaintance should have been made

in due form.

"Mamma," said she, "this is Mrs. Bennett and her daughter."

"Something to do with an admiral, haven't they?" cried Mrs. Rexford.

It proved to be an unnecessary exertion of memory on Mrs. Rexford's part

to recollect what she had heard of the relatives of her visitors, for

not long after Mrs. Bennett had introduced herself and her daughter she

brought her uncle, the admiral, into the conversation with considerable

skill.

She was a delicate, narrow-minded woman, with no open vulgarity about

her, but simply ignorant of the fact that bragging of one's

distinguished relatives had fallen into disuse. Her daughter, was like

her in manner, with the likeness imposed by having such a mother, but

much more largely made in mind and body, pleasant-looking, healthy,

high-browed. Sophia liked her appearance.

Mrs. Rexford, her mind ever upon some practical exigency, now remembered

that she had also heard that the Bennetts managed their dairy

excellently, and, having a large craving for help on all such subjects,

she began to bewail her own ignorance, asking many and various

questions; but, although she did not perceive it, it soon became

apparent to her more observant daughter that the visitors, having come

out to make a call of ceremony, preferred to talk on subjects more

remote from their daily drudgery, on subjects which they apparently

considered more elegant and becoming. Unable to check the flow of her

mother's talk, Sophia could only draw her chair cosily near to Miss

Bennett and strike into a separate conversation, hoping for, and

expecting, mental refreshment.

"I suppose there are no good lending libraries in any of the towns near

here," she began. "How do you get new books or magazines?"

Miss Bennett had a bright, cordial manner. She explained that she

thought there was a circulating library in every town. When she was

visiting in Quebec her friends had got a novel for her at two cents a

day. And then she said Principal Trenholme bought a good many books, and

he had once told her mother that he would lend them any they chose, but

they had never had time to go and look over them. "It has," she added,

"been such an advantage to Chellaston to have a gentleman so clever as

he at the college."

"Has it?" said Sophia, willing to hear more. "Is he very clever?"

"Oh," cried the other, "from Oxford, you know;" and she said it in much

the tone she might have said "from heaven."

"Is it long," asked Sophia, "since you have been in England?"

Miss Bennett said she had never been "home," but she longed, above all

things, to go.

She had, it seemed, been born in Canada, and her parents had no

possessions in the mother-country, and yet she always called it "home."

This was evidently a tradition.

Sophia, who had come from England a little tired of the conditions

there, and eager for a change, felt the pathetic sameness of the

discontent wrought by surfeit and by famine.

"Yet," said she, "it is a relief to the mind to feel that one lives in a

country where no worthy person is starving, and where every one has a

good chance in life if he will but avail himself of it. It seems to make

me breathe more freely to know that in all this great country there is

none of that necessary poverty that we have in big English towns."

Little answer was made to this, and Sophia went on to talk of what

interested her in English politics; but found that of the politics, as

well as of the social condition, of the country she adored, Miss Bennett

was largely ignorant. Her interest in such matters appeared to sum

itself up in a serene belief that Disraeli, then prominent, was the one

prop of the English Constitution, and as adequate to his position as

Atlas beneath the world. Now, Sophia cherished many a Radical opinion of

her own, and she would have enjoyed discussion; but it would have been

as difficult to aim a remark at the present front of her new

acquaintance as it would be for a marksman to show his skill with a

cloud of vapour as a target. Sophia tried Canadian politics, owning her

ignorance and expressing her desire to understand what she had read in

the newspapers since her arrival; but Miss Bennett was not sure that

there was anything that "could exactly be called politics" in Canada,

except that there was a Liberal party who "wanted to ruin the country by

free trade."

Sophia ceased to take the initiative. She still endeavoured to respect

the understanding of a girl of whom she had heard that when her father's

fortunes were at a low ebb she had retrieved them by good management and

personal industry--a girl, too, who through years of toil had preserved

sprightliness and perfect gentility. What though this gentility was

somewhat cramped by that undue importance given to trifles which is

often the result of a remote life; it was still a very lovely thing, a

jewel shining all the more purely for its iron setting of honest labour.

Sophia fought with the scorn that was thrusting itself into her heart as

she listened when Miss Bennett now talked in a charming way about the

public characters and incidents which interested her.

"I wish for your sake, Miss Rexford," she said, "that some of the Royal

family would come out again. The only time that there is any real

advantage in being in a colony is when some of them come out; for here,

you know, they take notice of every one."

"One would still be on the general level then," said Sophia, smiling.

"Well, I don't know. It makes one feel distinguished, you know, in spite

of that. Now, when the Prince was out, he stopped here for a night, and

we had a ball. It was simply delightful! He danced with us all--I mean

with all who could claim to be ladies, and indeed with some who could

not; but how could _he_ discriminate? There was a man called Blake, who

kept a butcher's shop here then--you may have noticed we haven't such a

thing as a butcher's shop in the village now, Miss Rexford?"

"Indeed I have. It seems so odd."

"Blake had a handsome daughter; and when we had a ball for the Prince,

didn't he buy her a fine dress, and take her to it! She really looked

very handsome."

"I hope the Prince danced with her," laughed Sophia. Her good spirits

were rising, in spite of herself, under the influence of the liveliness

with which Miss Bennett's mind had darted, birdlike, into its own

element.

"_Yes_, he did. Wasn't it good-natured of him! I believe his

aide-de-camp told him who she was; but he was so gracious; he said she

should not go away mortified. I never spoke to her myself; but I've no

doubt she was unable to open her mouth without betraying her origin; but

perhaps on that occasion she had the grace to keep silent, and she

danced fairly well."

"Was her head turned by the honour?" asked Sophia, led by the other's

tone to expect a sequel to the tale.

"Poor girl! The end was sadder than that. She caught a violent cold,

from wearing a dress cut low when she wasn't accustomed to it, and she

died in a week. When we heard of it I was glad that he _had_ danced with

her; but some were cruel enough to say that it served Blake right for

his presumption. He was so broken-hearted he left the place. The dress

she wore that night was a green silk, and he had her buried in it; and

some one told the Prince, and he sent some flowers. Wasn't it sweet of

him! They were buried with her too. It was quite romantic."

"More romantic to have such a swan-like death than to live on as a

butcher's daughter," said Sophia, and sarcasm was only a small

ingredient in the speech.

"We were quite grieved about it," said Miss Bennett, sincerely.

Sophia also felt sorry, but it was not her way to say so. She was more

interested in remarking upon the singular method of getting butcher's

meat then in vogue at Chellaston. A Frenchman, a butcher in a small way,

drove from door to door with his stock, cutting and weighing his joints

in an open box-sleigh. To see the frozen meat thus manipulated in the

midst of the snow had struck Sophia as one of the most novel features of

their present way of life. Miss Bennett, however, could hardly be

expected to feel its picturesqueness. Her parents did not fancy this

vendor's meat, and at present they usually killed their own. Her father,

she said, had grown quite dexterous in the art.

"Really!" cried Sophia. This was an item of real interest, for it

suggested to her for the first time the idea that a gentleman could

slaughter an ox. She was not shocked; it was simply a new idea, which

she would have liked to enlarge on; but good-breeding forbade, for Miss

Bennett preferred to chat about the visit of the Prince, and she

continued to do so in a manner so lively that Sophia found it no dull

hearing.

"And, do you know," she cried, "what Bertha Nash did? The Nashes, you

know, are of quite a common family, although, as Dr. Nash is everybody's

doctor, of course we are all on good terms with them. Well, Bertha asked

the Prince how his mother was!" She stopped.

"I suppose he knew whom she was talking about?"

"Oh, that was the worst of it--he couldn't _help knowing_," cried Miss

Bennett. "I should have sunk through the floor with mortification if I

had done such a thing. I should have expected to be arrested on the spot

for high treason. Bertha says, you know, that she was so nervous at the

thought of who her partner was that she didn't know what she was saying;

but I scarcely think she knew really how to address him. One can never

be thankful enough, I'm sure, for having been thoroughly well brought

up."

She went on to explain what had been her own sensations when first

accosted by this wonderful Prince, upon being led out by him, and so on.

It all sounded like a new fairy tale; but afterwards, when she had gone,

with cordial wishes, as she took leave, that another prince might come

soon and dance with Sophia, the latter felt as if she had been reading a

page of an old-fashioned history which took account only of kings and

tournaments.

This visit was a distinct disappointment on the whole. Sophia had hoped

more from it, and coming after weeks that had been trying, it had power

to depress. It was late afternoon now, and the day was the last in the

year. Sophia, going upstairs to get rid of the noise of the children,

was arrested by the glow of the sunset, and, weary as she was, stood

long by the diamond window that was set in the wooden wall of her room.

It was cold. She wrapped a cloak about her. She did not at first look

observantly at the glow and beauty outside. Her eyes wandered over the

scene, the bright colour upon it rousing just enough interest to keep

her standing there: her thoughts were within.

Sophia Rexford had set herself, like many a saint of olden and modern

times, to crush within her all selfishness; and the result had been the

result of all such effort when it is staunch and honest--to show that

that against which she was warring was no mere mood or bad habit, to be

overcome by directing the life on a nobler plan, but a living thing,

with a vitality so strong that it seemed as if God Himself must have

given it life. She stood now baffled, as she had often been before, by

her invincible enemy. Where was the selfless temper of mind that was her

ideal? Certainly not within her. She was too candid to suppose for a

moment that the impatient scorn she felt for those with whom she had

been talking approached in any way to that humility and love that are

required of the Christian. She felt overwhelmed by surging waves of evil

within. It was at the source the fountain ought to be sweet, and there

ambition and desire for pleasure rose still triumphant; and the current

of her will, set against them, seemed only to produce, not their

abatement, but a whirlpool of discontent, which sucked into itself all

natural pleasures, and cast out around its edge those dislikes and

disdains which were becoming habitual in her intercourse with others. It

was all wrong--she knew it. She leaned her head against the cold pane,

and her eyes grew wet with tears.

There is no sorrow on earth so real as this; no other for which such

bitter tears have been shed; no other which has so moved the heart of

God with sympathy. Yet there came to Sophia just then a strange thought

that her tears were unnecessary, that the salvation of the world was

something better than this conflict, that the angels were looking upon

her discouragement in pained surprise.

She had no understanding with which to take in this thought. As she

looked at it, with her soul's eye dim, it passed away; and she, trying

in vain to recall the light that it seemed to hold, wondered if it would

come again.

Perhaps the tears had given relief to her brain; perhaps some Divine

Presence had come near her, giving hope that she could not weigh or

measure or call by name; at any rate, as she looked round again with

fresh glance, the scene outside seemed fairer than it had yet appeared

to her.

A long strip had been swept on the ice of the river by pleasure-loving

hands. Down this burnished path young men and maidens were skating, and

their way was paved with gold. There was soft tinting of this same light

on the undulations of the pearly land beyond; blue shadows were in its

woods, and reflected fire on many a window of the houses that clustered

near and far. She knew that in each house that was a true Canadian home

there was joyous preparations going on for the next day's fête. She

wondered what it would be like to be at home in this country, to be one

in its sports and festivities. She could not see from her attic window

the land on this side of the river, but she heard the shouts of some

boys who were spending their holiday at the college. They were at some

game or other in a field near. Sophia liked to hear them.

Just then Mrs. Rexford came upstairs to consult her about something. She

joined in the outlook for a few moments, and the sunset made her

reflective.

"Well, my love," said she, "last year at this time we did not know we

should be here to-day! Ah, Sophia, it is always a little doleful to see

the Old Year go out; but here, where there are no bells in the churches,

it will seem less solemn."

END OF BOOK I.

BOOK II.

"_Necessity, like light's electric force,

Is in ourselves and all things, and no more

Without us than within us_--."

CHAPTER I.

The bells have solemn sound that from old belfries ring the passing of

the year in the hearing of thousands; but perhaps it is a more solemn

thing to watch and tell the birth of a new year by the march of stars

that look down out of their purple void upon a land of trackless snow.

If ceremony and the united sentiment of many hearts have impressive

effect, they yet tend to lighten the burden of individual

responsibility, which presses with weight, like the weight of the

atmosphere upon a vacuum, when a man tries to grapple with his own soul

in solitude.

Alec Trenholme was spending another wakeful night in the living-room of

his small railway station. Winter lay around him. For a month the

blueberry flats and bramble thickets had been wholly lost under the

snow, which stretched far whiter than the pure white of the birch trees

in the nearest groves. Now the last night but one of the old year had

brought a fresh downfall, unusually heavy; the long, straight railway

track, and the sleigh-road which was kept open between the station and

Turrifs Settlement, had been obliterated by it. Alec Trenholme had awoke

that morning to observe that his little station of new wood, and the

endless line of rough telegraph poles, were the only remaining signs of

man's lordship of earth, as far as his eyes could see. It was upon this

sight, when the snow clouds had fled, that he had seen a scarlet sun

come up; over the same scene he had watched it roll its golden chariot

all day, and, tinging the same unbroken drifts, it had sunk scarlet

again in the far southwest. He had not been far from his house, and no

one, in train, or sleigh, or on snow-shoes, had happened to come near

it.

He would have gone himself to Turrifs for milk, for the pleasure of

exchanging a word with his fellow-men, and for air and exercise, had it

not been that he had hourly expected to see an engine, with its

snow-plough, approaching on the rails. Conversation by telegraph would

have been a relief to him, but the wires seemed to have succumbed in

more than one place to their weight of snow, and there was nothing for

this young station-master to do but wait, and believe that communication

would be re-established over the road and the wires sooner or later. In

the meantime he suffered no personal inconvenience, unless loneliness

can be thus named, for he had abundance of food and fuel. He watched the

bright day wane and the sun of the old year set, and filled his stove

with wood, and ate his supper, and told himself that he was a very

fortunate fellow and much better off than a large proportion of men.

It is not always when we tell ourselves that we are well off that we are

happiest: that self-addressed assertion often implies some tacit

contradiction.

When darkness came he wondered if he should put on his snow-shoes and

run over to Turrifs. Yet for some reason he did not go, in the way that

men so often do not do things that they think on the whole would be very

good things to do. An hour or two later he knew that the good people

there would have gone to bed and that he had no longer the option of

going. He did not go to bed himself. He had not had enough exercise that

day to make him sleepy; and then, too, he thought he would sit up and

see the old year out. He had an indistinct idea that it was rather a

virtuous thing to do, rather more pious than sleeping the night through

just as if it were any other night. He put his much-handled, oft-read

books down before him on the table, and set himself to passing the

evening with them. Midnight is actually midnight when the sun goes down

before five o'clock and there is no artificial interest for the after

hours.

Most men have more religion at heart, latent or developed, than can be

seen by others. When they have not, when what shows is as much as what

is--God pity them!

Alec Trenholme was not given to self-dissection or to expression of his

private sentiments, therefore neither to himself nor to others was the

religion of him very visible. Nevertheless, this evening his books,

which had become not less but more to him because he had read them

often, palled upon his taste. When he was a boy his father had taught

him that at New Year's time one ought to consider whether the past had

been spent well, and how the future could be spent better. So, as time

went on, he pushed his books further and set himself to this

consideration. For a while he sat looking at his own doings only by the

light, as it were, of two candles--the one, of expediency; the other, of

rectitude. Had he been wise? Had he been good?

Not being of a contemplative or egotistical disposition, he soon

fidgeted. Thinking he heard a sound outside, which might be wind rising,

or might be the distant approach of the iron snow-plough, he got up to

look out. The small panes of his window were so obscured by frostwork

that he did not attempt to look through the glass, but opened his door.

Far or near there was no sign of rising wind or coming engine; only,

above, the glowing stars, with now and then a shaft of northern light

passing majestically beneath them, and, below, the great white world,

dim, but clearly seen as it reflected the light. The constellations

attracted his attention. There hung Orion, there the Pleiades, there

those mists of starlight which tell us of space and time of which we

cannot conceive. Standing, looking upwards, he suddenly believed himself

to be in the neighbourhood of God.

When the keen air upon his bare head had driven him indoors, he sat down

again to formulate his good resolutions, he found that his candles of

expediency and morality had gone out. The light which was there instead

was the Presence of God; but so diffused was this light, so dim, that it

was as hard for him now to see distinction between right and wrong as

it would have been outside upon the snow to see a shadow cast by rays

which had left their stars half a century before. All, all of which he

could think seemed wrong, because it was not God; all, all of which he

could think seemed right, because it was part of God. The young man's

face sank on his arms and lay buried there, while he thought, and

thought, and thought, trying to bring a life of which he could think

into relation with that which is unthinkable.

Was ever reverie more vain! He raised his head and stared about him. The

glaring lamp showed all the details of the room, and made it seem so

real, so much more real than mere thoughts, let alone that of which one

cannot think. He got up to alter the stove-damper, pushing it shut with

a clatter of iron, burning his fingers slightly, and sat down again,

feeling it a relief to know, if by the smart, that he had touched

something.

The wood within the stove ceased blazing when the damper was shut, and

when its crackling was silenced there was a great quiet. The air outside

was still; the flame of the lamp could hardly make sound. Trenholme's

watch, which lay on the table, ticked and seemed to clamour for his

attention. He glanced down at it. It was not very far from midnight.

Just then he heard another sound. It was possibly the same as that which

came to him an hour ago, but more continuous. There was no mistaking

this time that it was an unusual one. It seemed to him like a human

voice in prolonged ejaculatory speech at some distance.

Startled, he again looked out of his door. At first he saw nothing, but

what he had seen before--the world of snow, the starry skies. Yet the

sound, which stopped and again went on, came to him as if from the

direction in which he looked. Looking, listening intently, he was just

about to turn in for his coat and snow-shoes in order to go forth and

seek the owner of the voice, when he perceived something moving between

him and the nearest wood--that very birch wood in which, more than a

month before, he had sought for the man Cameron who had disappeared from

his own coffin. In an instant the mood of that time flashed back on him

as if there had been nothing between.

All the search that had been made for Cameron in the first days of the

snow had resulted in nothing but the finding of his coarse winding-sheet

in this birch wood. Then and since, confused rumours had come that he

was wandering from village to village, but no one had been brave enough

to detain him. Trenholme knew that people on the railway line to the

south believed firmly that the old man was still alive, or that his

ghost walked. Now, as his eyes focussed more intently upon the moving

thing, it looked to him like a man.

Again he heard the sound of a voice, a man's voice certainly. It was

raised for the space of a minute in a sort of chant, not loud enough for

him to hear any word or to know what language was spoken.

"Hi!" cried Trenholme at the top of his voice. "Hi, there! What do you

want?"

There was no doubt that a man out there could have heard, yet, whatever

the creature was, it took not the slightest notice of the challenge.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light he saw that the figure was

moving on the top of the deep snow near the outskirts of the

wood--moving about in an aimless way, stopping occasionally, and

starting again, raising the voice sometimes, and again going on in

silence. Trenholme could not descry any track left on the snow; all that

he could see was a large figure dressed in garments which, in the

starlight, did not seem to differ very much in hue from the snow, and he

gained the impression that the head was thrown back and the face

uplifted to the stars.

He called again, adjuring the man he saw to come at once and say why he

was there and what he wanted. No attention was paid to him; he might as

well have kept silent.

A minute or two more and he went in, shut and bolted his door, even

took the trouble to see that the door of the baggage-room was secured.

He took his lamp down from the wall where, by its tin reflector, it hung

on a nail, and set it on the table for company. He opened the damper of

the stove again, so that the logs within crackled. Then he sat down and

began to read the Shakespeare he had pushed from him before. What he had

seen and heard seemed to him very curious. No obligation rested upon

him, certainly, to go out and seek this weird-looking creature. There

was probably nothing supernatural, but--well, while a man is alone it is

wisest to shut out all that has even the appearance of the supernatural

from his house and from his mind. So Trenholme argued, choosing the

satirical fool of the Forest of Arden to keep him company.

"Now am I in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at home, I was in a

better place: but travellers must be content."

Trenholme smiled. He had actually so controlled his mind as to become

lost in his book.

There was a sound as if of movement on the light snow near by and of

hard breathing. Trenholme's senses were all alert again now as he turned

his head to listen. When the moving figure had seemed so indifferent to

his calls, what reason could it have now for seeking his door--unless,

indeed, it were a dead man retracing his steps by some mysterious

impulse, such as even the dead might feel? Trenholme's heart beat low

with the thought as he heard a heavy body bump clumsily against the

baggage-room door and a hand fumble at its latch. There was enough light

shining through his window to have shown any natural man that the small

door of his room was the right one by which to enter, yet the fumbling

at the other door continued.

Trenholme went into the dark baggage-room and heard the stir against the

door outside. He went near it. Whoever was there went on fumbling to

find some way of entrance.

By this time, if Trenholme had suffered any shock of dismay, he had

righted himself, as a ship rights itself after shuddering beneath a

wave. Clearly it now came within his province to find out what the

creature wanted; he went back into his room and opened its outer door.

Extending beyond the wall, the flooring of the house made a little

platform outside, and, as the opening of the door illuminated this, a

man came quietly across the threshold with clumsy gait. This man was no

ghost. What fear of the supernatural had gathered about Trenholme's mind

fell off from it instantly in self-scorn. The stranger was tall and

strong, dressed in workman's light-coloured clothes, with a big,

somewhat soiled bit of white cotton worn round his shoulders as a shawl.

He carried in his hand a fur cap such as Canadian farmers wear; his grey

head was bare. What was chiefly remarkable was that he passed Trenholme

without seeming to see him, and stood in the middle of the room with a

look of expectation. His face, which was rugged, with a glow of

weather-beaten health upon it, had a brightness, a strength, an

eagerness, a sensibility, which were indescribable.

"Well?" asked Trenholme rather feebly; then reluctantly he shut the

door, for all the cold of the night was pouring in. Neither of him nor

of his words or actions did the old man take the slightest notice.

The description that had been given of old Cameron was fulfilled in the

visitor; but what startled Trenholme more than this likeness, which

might have been the result of mere chance, was the evidence that this

man was not a person of ordinary senses and wits. He seemed like one who

had passed through some crisis, which had deprived him of much, and

given him perhaps more. It appeared probable, from his gait and air,

that he was to some extent blind; but the eagerness of the eyes and the

expression of the aged face were enough to suggest at once, even to an

unimaginative mind, that he was looking for some vision of which he did

not doubt the reality and listening for sounds which he longed to hear.

He put out a large hand and felt the table as he made his clumsy way

round it. He looked at nothing in the room but the lamp on the table

where Trenholme had lately put it. Trenholme doubted, however, if he saw

it or anything else. When he got to the other side, having wandered

behind the reflector, he stopped, as if perhaps the point of light,

dimly seen, had guided him so far but now was lost.

Trenholme asked him why he had come, what his name was, and several such

questions. He raised his voice louder and louder, but he might as well

have talked to the inanimate things about him. This one other human

being who had entered his desolate scene took, it would seem, no

cognisance of him at all. Just as we know that animals in some cases

have senses for sights and sounds which make no impression on human eyes

and ears, and are impervious to what we see and hear, so it seemed to

Trenholme that the man before him had organs of sense dead to the world

about him, but alive to something which he alone could perceive. It

might have been a fantastic idea produced by the strange circumstances,

but it certainly was an idea which leaped into his mind and would not be

reasoned away. He did not feel repulsion for the poor wanderer, or fear

of him; he felt rather a growing attraction--in part curiosity, in part

pity, in part desire for whatever it might be that had brought the look

of joyous expectancy into the aged face. This look had faded now to some

extent. The old man stood still, as one who had lost his way, not

seeking for indications of that which he had lost, but looking right

forwards and upwards, steadily, calmly, as if sure that something would

appear.

Trenholme laid a strong hand upon his arm. "Cameron!" he shouted, to see

if that name would rouse him. The arm that he grasped felt like a rock

for strength and stillness. The name which he shouted more than once did

not seem to enter the ears of the man who had perhaps owned it in the

past. He shook off Trenholme's hand gently without turning towards him.

"Ay," he said. (His voice was strong.) Then he shook his head with a

patient sigh. "Not here," he said, "not here." He spoke as deaf men

speak, unconscious of the key of their own voice. Then he turned

shuffling round the table again, and seemed to be seeking for the door.

"Look here," said Trenholme, "don't go out." Again he put his hand

strongly on his visitor, and again he was quietly brushed aside. The

outside seemed so terribly cold and dark and desolate for this poor old

man to wander in, that Trenholme was sorry he should go. Yet go he did,

opening the door and shutting it behind him.

Trenholme's greatcoat, cap, and snow-shoes were hanging against the

wall. He put them on quickly. When he got out the old man was fumbling

for something outside, and Trenholme experienced a distinct feeling of

surprise when he saw him slip his feet into an old pair of snow-shoes

and go forth on them. The old snow-shoes had only toe-straps and no

other strings, and the feat of walking securely upon seemed almost as

difficult to the young Englishman as walking on the sea of frozen atoms

without them; but still, the fact that the visitor wore them made him

seem more companionable.

Trenholme supposed that the traveller was seeking some dwelling-place,

and that he would naturally turn either up the road to Turrifs or toward

the hills; instead of that, he made again for the birch wood, walking

fast with strong, elastic stride. Trenholme followed him, and they went

across acres of billowy snow.