SILVER SLEIGH-BELLS.
The shanty was ere long lined in a comely manner with the planks which
had journeyed up the pond in the ice-boat, affording many an evening's
work for Arthur. About Christmas all was right and tight.
Now, to those who have any regrets or sadnesses in the background of
memory, the painfullest of all times are these anniversaries. One is
forced round face to face with the past and the unalterable, to gaze on
it, perchance, through blinding tears. The days return--unchanged: but,
oh, to what changed hearts!
Were they not thinking of the Canadian exiles to-day, at home, at dear
old Dunore? For nothing better than exiles did the young men feel
themselves, this snow-white Christmas morning, in the log-hut among the
backwoods, without a friendly face to smile a greeting, except poor
Andy's; and his was regretful and wistful enough too.
'I say, Bob, what shall we do with ourselves? I'm sure I wish I didn't
know 'twas Christmas day at all. It makes a fellow feel queer and
nonsensical--homesick, I suppose they call it--and all that sort of
thing. I vote we obliterate the fact, by chopping as hard as any other
day.'
So, after reading the chapters for the day (how the words brought up a
picture of the wee country church in Ireland, with its congregation of a
dozen, its whitewashed walls and blindless lancet windows!), they went
forth to try that relief for all pains of memory--steady hard work. The
ten acres allotted for December were nearly chopped through by this
time, opening a considerable space in front of the shanty, and beginning
to reveal the fair landscape of lake and wooded slopes that lay beyond.
The felled trees lay piled in wind rows and plan heaps so far as was
possible without the help of oxen to move the huge logs; snow covered
them pretty deeply, smoothing all unsightliness for the present.
'How I long to have something done towards the building of our house!'
said Robert, pausing after the fall of a hemlock spruce, while Arthur
attacked the upper branches. 'I'd like so much to have it neatly
finished before my father and mother and Linda come next summer.'
'Well, haven't you no end of shingles made for the roof?' said
the other, balancing his axe for a blow. 'You're working at them
perpetually; and Andy isn't a bad hand either at wooden slates, as
he calls them.'
'We must have a raising-bee in spring,' concluded Robert, after some
rumination--'as soon as the snow melts a little. Really, only for such
co-operative working in this thinly peopled country, nothing large
could be ever effected. Bees were a great device, whoever invented
them.'
'By the way,' said Arthur presently, returning from chopping apart the
trunk into two lengths of fifteen feet, 'did you hear that the Scotchman
between us and the "Corner," at Daisy Burn, wants to sell his farm and
improvements, and is pushing out into the wild land farther up the
pond? Nim told me yesterday. He expects three pounds sterling an acre,
including fixtures, and he got the ground for nothing; so that's
doubling one's capital, I imagine.'
'How for nothing?'
'It was before a human being had settled in these townships, and the
concession lines were only just blazed off by the surveyors. Davidson
obtained a grant of land on condition of performing what are called
settlement duties, which means chopping out and clearing the concession
lines for a certain distance. Of course that was another way of payment,
by labour instead of cash. But on swearing that it was done, he obtained
what Nim calls a "lift," a crown patent, we should say, and the land was
his estate for ever.'
'I wish we could transfer a couple of his fenced fields here,' said
Robert, 'and his young orchard. We must have some sort of a garden,
Arthur, before Linda comes.'
'Yes, she never could get on without her flower beds. I say, Bob, won't
Cedar Creek look awfully wild to them?'
They worked on awhile both thinking of that. Any one accustomed to
smooth enclosed countries, with regular roads and houses at short
distances, would indeed find the backwoods 'awfully wild.' And that
most gentle mother, how would she bear the transplanting?
'I had a very misty idea of what bush-life was, I own, till I found
myself in it,' quoth Robert, after a long silence, broken only by the
ring of the axes.
'Living like a labourer at home, but without half his comforts,' said
Arthur, piling the boughs. 'Tell you what, Bob, we wouldn't be seen
doing the things we do here. Suppose Sir Richard Lacy or Lord Scutcheon
saw us in our present trim?'
'But you know that's all false pride,' said Robert, with a little glow
on his cheek nevertheless. 'We shouldn't be ashamed of anything but
wrong.'
'Say what you will, Bob, it strikes me that we aren't of the class which
do best in Canada. The men of hard hands, labouring men and women, are
those who will conquer the forest and gain wealth here.'
'Well, if that be the rule, you and I must strive to be the exception,'
said Robert; 'for I'm determined to have a comfortable homestead for the
dear old people from Dunore, and I'm equally determined to set my mark
on Canadian soil, and to prosper, if it be God's will.'
He lifted off his cap for a moment, looking at the serene sky. The
rising discontent in his brother's heart was stilled by the gesture.
Both worked assiduously, till Andy, with an unusual twinkle in his eyes,
summoned them to dinner.
'What has the fellow been about, I wonder? I know 'twasn't respect for
the holiday kept him indoors all the morning.'
It was presently explained. Andy, ignorant of courses, dished up,
together with the ham, a very fine dumpling emitting the odour of
apples.
'Sure, as ye can't have yer own plum puddin' in this outlandish
counthry, ye can have a thing the same shape, anyhow. Mrs. Jackey showed
me how to make it iligant, of the string of dried bits I had thrun in
the box since we kem here first. Throth an' I'm cur'ous to see did they
ever swell out agin, afther the parchin' they got.'
But for a slightly peculiar taste in the sweet, the dumpling was
unimpeachable.
'I suppose Mrs. Jackey uses maple sugar in her confectionery,' said
Robert; 'a _soupcon_ of trees runs through it.'
Late in the evening, as the pitch-pine logs were flaring abundance of
light through the cabin--light upon Robert at his shingles, and upon
Arthur at his work-bench, and upon Andy shaving and packing the slips
of white pine as fast as his master split them, with a stinging night
outside, some twenty-five degrees below zero, and the snow crusted at
top hard enough to bear anything--all three raised their heads to listen
to some approaching sound through the dead silence of the frozen air. It
was a very distant vagrant tinkling, as of sheep-bells on a common in
old Europe; they looked at one another, and Andy crossed himself
reverently.
'Like chapel bells over the say from poor Ireland,' he muttered, and
crept to the door, which Robert had opened. 'Sure there isn't fairies
all the ways out here? an' 'tis mighty like it'--
'Hush--h--!' Andy crossed himself again as the tinkling became more
plainly audible. A sweetly plaintive jangling it seemed--a tangled
careless music. Nearer, and still nearer it came.
'What a fool I am!' exclaimed Robert; 'it must be sleigh-bells.
Travellers, I suppose.'
And before many minutes were past, the sleigh had rounded its way among
the stumps, over the smooth snow, to the shanty door, filled with
brilliant wood-light.