The Project Gutenberg eBook, What Necessity Knows, by Lily Dougall


This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net





Title: What Necessity Knows


Author: Lily Dougall



Release Date: July 30, 2005  [eBook #16398]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS***


E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from
page images generously made available by Early Canadiana Online
(http://www.canadiana.org/eco/index.html)



Note: Images of the original pages are available through
      Early Canadiana Online. See
      http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/ItemRecord/05750?id=1a6d608d0d7d6b5e





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 naďve
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. _Ŕ
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 fęte. 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.




CHAPTER II.


Why Alec Trenholme followed the old man toward the wood he himself would
have found it a little difficult to tell. If this was really Cameron he
did not wish that he should escape; but, at the same time, he saw no
means of keeping him against his will, unless he went of his own accord
to some place where other men could be called to help. Quite apart,
however, from the question whether the stranger was Cameron or not,
Trenholme felt for him a sort of respect which character alone inspires,
and which character written in a man's appearance has often power to
inspire without a word or action to interpret it further. It was because
of this that curiosity to know where he was going and what for, and a
real solicitude as to what would happen to him, were strong enough to
lead the young man on.

They who have not walked upon snow by starlight do not know, perhaps,
that the chief difficulty of such progress is that there is no shadow;
perhaps they do not even know that at all times the difference between
an upward and a downward slope is revealed to the eye by light and
shade. The snow on which the two men were now walking had been left by
the wind with slight undulations of surface, such as are produced in a
glassy sea by the swing of a gentle under-swell; and Trenholme, not
sensitive as the stranger seemed to be in the points of his snow-shoes,
found himself stepping up when he thought himself stepping down, and the
reverse. At last he stumbled and fell.

It is not a matter of ease to rise from a bed which yields endlessly to
every pressure of arm or knee. Even a sea-bird, that strongest of
flyers, finds it hard to rise from any but its own element; and before
Trenholme had managed to spring up, as it were, from nothing, the man in
front had in some way become aware of his presence for the first time,
and of his fall; he turned and lifted him up with a strong hand. When
Trenholme was walking again the other retained a firm hold of his arm,
looked at him earnestly, and spoke to him. His words expressed a
religious idea which was evidently occupying his whole mind.

"The Lord is coming presently to set up His kingdom," he said. "Are you
ready to meet Him?"

On Alec Trenholme the effect of these words, more unexpected than any
other words could have been, was first and chiefly to convince him that
he was dealing with a witless person. Leaving him again, the speaker had
hurried on in front, making his way still toward the wood. When
Trenholme came up with him the wanderer had evidently found the place
where he had been before, for there was the irregular circular track of
his former wandering upon the snow. Trenholme counted himself a fool to
have been able before to suppose that there was no track because he had
not seen it. But he had hardly time for even this momentary glance at so
small a matter, for the old man was standing with face uplifted to the
stars, and he was praying aloud that the Divine Son of Man would return
to earth and set up His kingdom.

Sometimes there was more light upon the dark scene, sometimes less, for
giant rays of the northern light stalked the sky, passing from it,
coming again, giving light faintly.

Trenholme felt an uncontrollable excitement come over him. His mind was
carried out of himself, not so much to the poor man who was praying, as
to the Divine Man to whom the supplication was addressed; for the voice
of prayer spoke directly from the heart of the speaker to One who he
evidently felt was his friend. The conviction of this other man that he
knew to whom he was speaking caught hold of Alec Trenholme's mind with
mastering force; he had no conviction of his own; he was not at all
sure, as men count certainty, whether there was, or was not, any ear but
his own listening to the other's words; but he did not notice his own
belief or unbelief in the matter, any more than he noticed the air
between him and the stars. The colourlessness of his own mind took on
for the time the colour of the other's.

And the burden of the prayer was this: Our Father, thy kingdom come.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

The hardihood of the prayer was astonishing; all tender arguments of
love were used, all reasonable arguments as of friend with friend and
man with man, and its lengthened pathos was such that Trenholme felt
his heart torn for pity within him.

"Look here!" he said at last. (He had been listening he knew not how
long, but the planets in the sky above had moved westward. He took hold
of the old man.) "Look here! He won't come so that you can see Him; but
He's here just the same, you know."

The only result was that the old man ceased speaking aloud, and
continued as if in silent prayer.

It seemed irreverent to interrupt him. Trenholme stood again irresolute,
but he knew that for himself at least it was madness to stand longer
without exercise in the keen night.

"Come, Lord Jesus!" cried the old man again in loud anguish. "Come. The
world is needing only Thee. We are so wicked, so foolish, so weak--we
need Thee. Come!"

Whether or not his companion had the full use of eyes and ears,
Trenholme was emboldened by the memory of the help he had received on
his fall to believe that he could make himself heard and understood. He
shouted as if to one deaf: "The Lord is here. He is with you now, only
you can't see Him. You needn't stay here. I don't know who you are, but
come into my place and get warmed and fed."

"How do you know He is here?" asked the old man, shaking his head
slowly.

"Everybody knows that."

"I can't hear."

"Everybody knows," shouted Trenholme.

"How do you know? What do you know?" asked the other, shaking his head
sorrowfully.

Trenholme would have given much to comfort him. He tried to drag him by
main force in the direction of the house. The old man yielded himself a
few steps, then drew back, asking,

"Why do you say He is here?"

"Because" (Trenholme called out his words in the same high key) "before
He died, and after, He said He would always be with His servants. Don't
you believe what He said?"

Again the old man yielded a few paces, evidently listening and hearing
with difficulty, perhaps indeed only hearing one or two words that
attracted him.

"Did the Lord say it to _you_?" he asked eagerly.

"No."

There was blank disappointment shown instantly. They had come to a
standstill again.

"Do you know him?" The strong old face was peering eagerly into his, as
if it had not been dark. "Have you heard his voice?"

"I don't know," answered Trenholme, half angrily.

Without another word the old man shook him off, and turned once more to
the starry sky above.

"Lord Jesus!" he prayed, "this man has never heard thy voice. They who
have heard Thee know thy voice--they know, O Lord, they know." He
retraced all the steps he had taken with Trenholme and continued in
prayer.

After that, although Trenholme besought and commanded, and tried to draw
him both by gentleness and force, he obtained no further notice. It was
not that he was repulsed, but that he met with absolute neglect. The old
man was rock-like in his physical strength.

Trenholme looked round about, but there was certainly no help to be
obtained. On the one side he saw the birch wood indistinctly; the white
trunks half vanished from sight against the white ground, but the brush
of upper branches hung like the mirage of a forest between heaven and
earth. All round was the wild region of snow. From his own small house
the lamp which he had left on the table shot out a long bright ray
through a chink in the frostwork on the window. It occurred to him that
when he had fetched down the lamp it was probably this ray, sudden and
unexpected in such a place, that had attracted his strange visitor to
his house. Had his poor dazed brain accepted it as some sign of the
glorious appearing for which he waited?

Trenholme looked again at his companion. It mattered nothing to him who
or what he was; he would have done much to still that pleading voice and
pacify him, but since he could not do this, he would go for a little
while out of sight and hearing. He was fast growing numb with the fierce
cold. He would come back and renew his care, but just now he would go
home. He walked fast, and gained his own door with blood that ran less
chill.

He heaped his stove with fresh logs, and set on food to warm, in the
hope that the stranger might eventually partake of it, and then, opening
the stove door to get the full benefit of the blaze, he sat down for a
little while to warm himself. He looked at his watch, as it lay on the
table, with that glance of interest which we cast at a familiar thing
which has lain in the same place while our minds have undergone
commotion and change. Midnight had passed since he went out, and it was
now nearly two o'clock.

Whether it was that the man with whom he had been, possessed that power,
which great actors involuntarily possess, of imposing their own moods on
others, or whether it was that, coming into such strange companionship
after his long loneliness, his sympathies were the more easily awakened,
Trenholme was suffering from a misery of pity; and in pity for another
there weighed a self-pity which was quite new to him. To have seen the
stalwart old man, whose human needs were all so evident to Trenholme's
eyes, but to his own so evidently summed up in that one need which was
the theme of the prayer he was offering in obstinate agony, was an
experience which for the time entirely robbed him of the power of seeing
the elements of life in that proportion to which his mind's eye had
grown accustomed--that is, seeing the things of religion as a shadowy
background for life's important activities.

The blazing logs through the open stove door cast flickering flamelight
upon the young man, who was restlessly warming himself, shifting his
position constantly, as a man must who tries to warm himself too
hastily. A traveller read in ancient lore, coming suddenly on this cabin
amid its leagues of snow, and looking in to see its light and warmth and
the goodly figure of its occupant, might have been tempted to think that
the place had been raised by some magician's wand, and would vanish
again when the spell was past. And to Alec Trenholme, just then, the
station to which he was so habituated, the body which usually seemed the
larger part of himself, might have been no more than a thought or a
dream, so intent was he upon another sort of reality. He was regardless
of it all, even of the heat that, at the same time, scorched him and
made him shiver. He thought of the words that he--he, Alec
Trenholme--had lifted up his voice to say, waking the echoes of the
snow-muffled silence with proclamation of--He tried not to remember what
he had proclaimed, feeling crushed with a new knowledge of his own
falseness; and when perforce the thought came upon him of the invisible
Actor in the night's drama whose presence, whose action, he had been so
strenuously asserting, he was like a man in pain who does not know what
remedy to try; and his mood was tense, he sought only relief. He essayed
one thought and another to reason away the cloud that was upon him; and
then he tried saying his prayers, which of late had fallen somewhat into
disuse. It was only by way of a try to see if it would do any good; and
he did not give himself much time, for he felt that he must go out again
to try to bring in the old man.

Before he had put on his fur cap a second time, however, he heard the
whistle of the engine he had been expecting now for nearly twenty-four
hours. It came like a sudden trumpet-sound from the outside world to
call him back to his ordinary thoughts and deeds. For the first moment
he felt impatient at it; the second he was glad, for there would
certainly be some one with it who could aid him in using force, if
necessary, to bring the old man to spend the remainder of the night
within doors.

Trenholme saw the black and fiery monster come on into his dark and
silent white world. It shook a great plume of flaming smoke above its
snorting head, and by the light of the blazing jewel in its front he saw
that the iron plough it drove before it was casting the snow in misty
fountains to right and left.

When the engine stopped, Trenholme found that there was a small car with
it, containing about twenty men sent to dig out the drifts where snow
sheds had given way. These were chiefly French Canadians of a rather low
type. The engine-driver was a Frenchman too; but there was a brisk
English-speaking man whose business it was to set the disordered
telegraph system to rights. He came into the station-room to test its
condition at this point of the route. As there was a stove in their car,
only a few of the men straggled in after him. At a larger place the
party might have been tempted to tarry, but here they had no thought of
stopping an unnecessary moment. Trenholme had no time to lose, and yet
he hardly knew how to state his case. He sought the Englishman, who was
at the little telegraph table. The engineer and some others lounged
near. He began by recalling the incident of the dead man's
disappearance. Every one connected with the railway in those parts had
heard that story.

"And look here!" said he, "as far as one can judge by description, he
has come back again here to-night." All who could understand were
listening to him now. "See here!" he urged addressing the brisk
telegraph man, "I'm afraid he will freeze to death in the snow. He's
quite alive, you know--alive as you are; but I want help to bring him
in."

The other was attending to his work as well as to Trenholme. "Why can't
he come in?"

"He won't. I think he's gone out of his mind. He'll die if he's left.
It's a matter of life or death, I tell you. He's too strong for me to
manage alone. Someone must come too."

The brisk man looked at the engineer, and the French engineer looked at
him.

"What's he doing out there?"

"He's just out by the wood."

It ended in the two men finding snow-shoes and going with Trenholme
across the snow.

They all three peered through the dimness at the space between them and
the wood, and they saw nothing. They retraced the snow-shoe tracks and
came to the place where the irregular circuit had been made near the end
of the wood. There was no one there. They held up a lantern and flashed
it right and left, they shouted and wandered, searching into the edge of
the wood. The old man was not to be found.

"I dare say," said the telegraph man to Trenholme, "you'd do well to get
into a place where you don't live quite so much alone. 'T'aint good for
you."

The whole search did not take more than twenty minutes. The railway-men
went back at a quick pace. Trenholme went with them, insisting only that
they should look at the track of the stranger's snow-shoes, and admit
that it was not his own track.

The French engineer was sufficiently superstitious to lend a half belief
to the idea that the place was haunted, and that was his reason for
haste. The electrician was only sorry that so much time had been purely
wasted; that was his reason. He was a middle-aged man, spare, quick, and
impatient, but he looked at Alec Trenholme in the light of the engine
lamp, when they came up to it, with some kindly interest.

"I say," he went on again, "don't you go on staying here alone--a
good-looking fellow like you. You don't look to me like a chap to have
fancies if you weren't mewed up alone."

As Trenholme saw the car carried from him, saw the faces and forms of
the men who stood at its door disappear in the darkness, and watched the
red light at its back move slowly on, leaving a lengthening road of
black rails behind it, he felt more mortified at the thought of the
telegraph man's compassion than he cared to own, even to himself.

He went out again, and hunted with a lantern till he found a track
leading far into the wood in the opposite direction from his house.
This, then, was the way the old man had gone. He followed the track for
a mile, but never came within sight or sound of the man who made it.

At last it joined the railway line, and where the snow was rubbed smooth
he could not trace it. Probably the old man had taken off his snow-shoes
here, and his light moccasins had left no mark that could be seen in the
night.




CHAPTER III.


For two nights after that Alec Trenholme kept his lamp lit all night,
placing it in his window so that all the light that could struggle
through the frosted panes should cast an inviting ray into the night. He
did this in the hope that the old man might still be wandering in the
neighbourhood; but it was soon ascertained that this was not the case;
the stranger had been seen by no one else in Turrifs Settlement. Though
it was clear, from reports that came, that he was the same who had
visited other villages and been accepted as the missing Cameron, nothing
more was heard of him, and it seemed that he had gone now off the lines
of regular communication--unless, indeed, he had the power of appearing
and disappearing at will, which was the popular view of his case.
Turrifs Station had become notorious. Trenholme received jeers and gibes
even by telegraph from neighbouring stations. He had given account to no
one of the midnight visit, but inventive curiosity had supplied details
of a truly wonderful nature. It was not on this account that he gave up
his situation on the line, but because a new impulse had seized him, and
he had no particular reason for remaining. He waited till a new
caretaker arrived from the headquarters of the railway, and then set
forth from the station the following morning on foot.

Turrif had been laid up with some complaint for a week or two, and Alec
went to say good-bye to him. The roads had been opened up again. He had
his snow-shoes on his back, and some clothes in a small pack.

Turrif's wife opened the door, and Trenholme disburdened himself and
went and sat by the bed. The little children were about, as usual, in
blue gowns; he had made friends in the house since his first supper
there, so they stood near now, and laughed at him a great deal without
being afraid. In the long large wooden room, the mother and eldest girl
pursued the housework of the morning tranquilly. Turrif lay upon a bed
in one corner. The baby's cradle, a brown box on rockers, was close to
the bed, and when the child stirred the father put out his hand and
rocked it. The child's head was quite covered with the clothes, so that
Trenholme wondered how it could breathe. He sat by the foot of the bed,
and Turrif talked to him in his slow English.

"You are wise to go--a young man and genteel-man like you."

"I know you think I was a fool to take the place, but a man might as
well earn his bread-and-butter while he is looking round the country."

"You have looked round at this bit of country for two months"--with a
shrug of the shoulders. "I should have sought your bright eyes could see
all what sere is to see in two days."

"You'll think me a greater fool when you know where I am going."

"I hope" (Turrif spoke with a shade of greater gravity on his placid
face)--"I hope sat you are going to some city where sere is money to be
made, and where sere is ladies and other genteel-men like you."

"I knew you would think me mad. I'm going to Bates's clearing to cut
down his trees."

"Why?" The word came with a certain authority.

"You would almost be justified in writing to the authorities to lock me
up in an asylum, wouldn't you? But just consider what an awful condition
of loneliness that poor wretch must be in by this time. You think I've
been more alone than's good for me; think of him, shut up with an old
woman in her dotage. He was awfully cut up about this affair of old
Cameron and the girl, and he is losing all his winter's lumbering for
want of a man. Now, there's a fix, if you will, where I say a man is to
be pitied."

"Yes," said Turrif, gravely, "it is sad; but sat is _hees_ trouble."

"Look here: he's not thirty miles away, and you and I know that if he
isn't fit to cut his throat by this time it isn't for want of trouble to
make him, and you say that that state of things ought to be only his own
affair?"

"Eh?"

"Well, I say that you and I, or at least I, have something to do with
it. You know very well I might go round here for miles, and offer a
hundred pounds, and I couldn't get a single man to go and work for
Bates; they're all scared. Well, if they're scared of a ghost, let them
stay away; but _I'm_ not frightened, and I suppose I could learn to chop
down trees as well as any of them. He's offered good wages; I can take
his wages and do his work, and save him from turning into a blethering
idiot."

Probably, in his heat to argue, he had spoken too quickly for the
Frenchman to take in all his words. That his drift was understood and
pondered on was evident from the slow answer.

"It would be good for Monsieur Bates, but poor for you."

"I'm not going to turn my back on this country and leave the fellow in
that pickle. I should feel as if his blood were on my head."

"Since?"

"How since?"

"Since what day did you have his care on you? Last time you came you did
not mean sen to help him." It was true, but so strongly did Trenholme
see his point that he had not realised how new was the present aspect of
the case to him.

"Well," said he, meaning that this was not a matter of importance.

"But why?" said Turrif again.

"Oh, I don't know." Trenholme looked down at his moccasined feet. "I
thought" (he gave a laugh as if he were ashamed) "I'd turn over a new
leaf this year, and do something that's more worth doing. I was well
enough off here so far as looking out for myself was concerned."

Turrif looked at him with kind and serious disapproval.

"And when will you begin to live se life of a _man_?"

"How do you mean--'a man'?"

"When will you make money and get married?"

"Do you think time is all wasted when one isn't making money and getting
married?"

"For a _boy_, no; for a _man_, yes."

Trenholme rose. "Good-bye, and thank you for all your hospitality," said
he. "I'll come back in spring and tell you what I'm going to do next."

He was moving out, when he looked again at the little shrine in the
middle of the wall, the picture of the Virgin, and, below, the little
altar shelf, with its hideous paper roses. He looked back as it caught
his eye, arrested, surprised, by a difference of feeling in him towards
it.

Noticing the direction of Trenholme's glance, the Frenchman crossed
himself.

It was a day of such glory as is only seen amid Northern snowfields.
Alec Trenholme looked up into the sky, and the blue of other skies that
he remembered faded beside it, as the blue of violets fades beside the
blue of gentian flowers. There was no cloud, no hint of vapour; the
sky, as one looked for it, was not there, but it was as if the sight
leaped through the sunlit ether, so clear it was, and saw the dark blue
gulfs of space that were beyond the reach of the sun's lighting. The
earth was not beyond the reach of the sunlight, and in all that wide
white land, in mile after mile of fields, of softened hillock and buried
hollow, there was not a frozen crystal that did not thrill to its centre
with the sunlight and throw it back in a soft glow of myriad rays.

Trenholme retraced his steps on the road from Turrif's door to a point
nearer his old railway-station; then he put on his snow-shoes and set
out for the gap in the hills that led to the Bates and Cameron clearing.
As he mounted the soft snow that was heaped by the roadside and struck
out across the fields, his heart bounded with a sense of power and
freedom, such as a man might have who found means to walk upon the
ocean. Little need had he of map or guide to mark the turning or
crossing of his road; the gap in the hills was clear to his eyes fifteen
miles away; the world was white, and he strode across it. When the earth
is made up of pearl-dust and sunshine, and the air is pure as the air of
heaven, the heart of man loses all sense of effort, and action is as
spontaneous as breath itself. Trenholme was half-way to the hills before
he felt that he had begun his day's journey.

When he got past the unbroken snow of the farm lands and the blueberry
flats, the white surface was broken by the tops of brushwood. He did not
take the line of the straight corduroy road; it was more free and
exciting to make a meandering track wherever the snow lay sheer over a
chain of frozen pools that intersected the thickets. There was no
perceptible heat in the rays the sun poured down, but the light was so
great that where the delicate skeletons of the young trees were massed
together it was a relief to let the eye rest upon them.

That same element of pleasure, relief, was found also in the restful
deadness of the wooded sides of the hills when he came near them. Grey
there was of deciduous trees in the basin of the river, and dull green
of spruce firs that grew up elsewhere. Intense light has the effect of
lack of light, taking colour from the landscape. Even the green of the
fir trees, as they stood in full light on the hill summits, was faded in
comparison with the blue beyond.

This was while he was in the open plain; but when he walked into the
forest, passing into the gap in the hills, all was changed. The snow,
lightly shadowed by the branches overhead, was more quiet to the sight,
and where his path lay near fir trees, the snow, where fell their heavy
shade, looked so dead and cold and grey that it recalled thoughts of
night-time, or of storm, or of other gloomy things; and this thought of
gloom, which the dense shadow brought, had fascination, because it was
such a wondrous contrast to the rest of the happy valley, in which the
sunbeams, now aslant, were giving a golden tinge to the icy facets of
crags, to high-perched circling drifts, to the basin of unbroken snow,
to the brown of maple trunks, and to the rich verdure of the very firs
which cast the shadow.

It was after four o'clock in the afternoon when he stopped his steady
tramp, arrested by the sight of the first living things he had seen--a
flock of birds upon a wild vine that, half snow-covered, hung out the
remnant of its frozen berries in a cleft of the hill. The birds did not
fly at his approach, and, going nearer and nearer on the silent snow, he
at last stopped, taking in greedily the sight of their pretty,
fluttering, life. They were rather large birds, large as the missel
thrush; they had thick curved beaks and were somewhat heavy in form; but
the plumage of the males was like the rose-tint of dawn or evening when
it falls lightly upon some grey cloud. They uttered no note, but, busy
with their feast, fluttered and hopped with soft sound of wings.

In lieu of gun or net, Trenholme broke a branch from a tree beside him,
and climbed nearer to the birds in order to strike one down if
possible. To his surprise, as he advanced deftly with the weapon, the
little creatures only looked at him with bright-eyed interest, and made
no attempt to save themselves. The conviction forced itself upon him
with a certain awe that these birds had never seen a man before. His arm
dropped beside him; something of that feeling which comes to the
explorer when he thinks that he sets his foot where man has never trod
came to him now as he leaned against the snow-bank. The birds, it is
true, had fluttered beyond his arm's length, but they had no thought of
leaving their food. Twice his arm twitched with involuntary impulse to
raise the stick and strike the nearest bird, and twice the impulse
failed him, till he dropped the stick.

The slight crust which usually forms on snow-banks had broken with the
weight of his figure as he leaned against it, and he lay full length
against the soft slope, enjoying rest upon so downy a couch, until the
birds forgot him, and then he put out his hand and grasped the nearest,
hardly more to its own surprise than to his. The bird feigned dead, as
frightened birds will, and when he was cheated into thinking it dead, it
got away, and it was only by a very quick movement that he caught it
again. He put it in a hanging pocket of his coat, and waited till he
could catch a companion to fill the opposite pocket.

Thus weighted, he continued his journey. It gave him the cheerful
feeling that a boy has when choice marbles are in his pocket. Neither
birds nor marbles under such circumstances have absolute use, but then
there is always the pleasant time ahead when it will be suitable to take
them out and look at them. The man did not finger his birds as a boy
might have done his marbles, but he did not forget them, and every now
and then he lifted the flaps of the, baggy pockets to refill them with
air.

He was tramping fast now down the trough of the little valley, under
trees that, though leafless, were thick enough to shut out the
surrounding landscape. The pencils of the evening sunlight, it is true,
found their way all over the rounded snow-ground, but the sunset was
hidden by the branches about him, and nothing but the snow and the tree
trunks was forced upon his eye, except now and then a bit of blue seen
through the branches--a blue that had lost much depth of colour with the
decline of day, and come nearer earth--a pale cold blue that showed
exquisite tenderness of contrast as seen through the dove-coloured grey
of maple boughs.

Where the valley dipped under water and the lake in the midst of the
hills had its shore, Trenholme came out from under the trees. The sun
had set. The plain of the ice and the snowclad hills looked blue with
cold--unutterably cold, and dead as lightless snow looks when the eye
has grown accustomed to see it animated with light. He could not see
where, beneath the snow, the land ended and the ice began; but it
mattered little. He walked out on the white plain scanning the
south-eastern hill-slope for the house toward which he intended to bend
his steps. He was well out on the lake before he saw far enough round
the first cliff to come in sight of the log house and its clearing, and
no sooner did he see it than he heard his approach, although he was yet
so far away, heralded by the barking of a dog. Before he had gone much
farther a man came forth with a dog to meet him.

The two men had seen one another before, in the days when the
neighbourhood had turned out in the fruitless search for Cameron's
daughter and for Cameron himself. At that time a fevered eye and haggard
face had been the signs that Bates was taking his misfortune to heart;
now Trenholme looked, half expecting to see the same tokens developed by
solitude into some demonstration of manner; but this was not the case.
His flesh had certainly wasted, and his eye had the excitement of
expectation in it as he met his visitor; but the man was the same man
still, with the stiff, unexpressive manner which was the expression of
his pride.

Bates spoke of the weather, of the news Trenholme brought from Turrifs
Settlement, of the railway--all briefly, and without warmth of interest;
then he asked why Trenholme had come.

"You haven't been able to get any one yet to fell your trees for you?"

Bates replied in the negative.

"They think the place is dangerous," said the other, as if giving
information, although he knew perfectly that Bates was aware of this. He
had grown a little diffident in stating why he had come.

"Fools they are!" said Bates, ill-temperedly.

Trenholme said that he was willing to do the work Bates had wanted a man
for, at the same wages.

"It's rough work for a gentlemany young man like you."

Trenholme's face twitched with a peculiar smile. "I can handle an axe. I
can learn to fell trees."

"I mean, the living is rough, and all that; and of course" (this was
added with suspicious caution) "it wouldn't be worth my while to pay the
same wages to an inexperienced hand."

Trenholme laughed. This reception was slightly different from what he
had anticipated. He remarked that he might be taken a week on trial, and
to this Bates agreed, not without some further hesitation. Trenholme
inquired after the health of the old aunt of whom he had heard.

"In bodily health," said Bates, "she is well. You may perhaps have heard
that in mind she has failed somewhat."

The man's reserve was his dignity, and it produced its result, although
obvious dignity of appearance and manner was entirely lacking to him.

The toothless, childish old man woman Trenholme encountered when he
entered the house struck him as an odd exaggeration of the report he had
just received. He did not feel at home when he sat down to eat the food
Bates set before him; he perceived that it was chiefly because in a new
country hospitality is considered indispensable to an easy conscience
that he had received any show of welcome.

Yet the lank brown hand that set his mug beside him shook so that some
tea was spilt. Bates was in as dire need of the man he received so
unwillingly as ever man was in need of his fellow-man. It is when the
fetter of solitude has begun to eat into a man's flesh that he begins to
proclaim his indifference to it, and the human mind is never in such
need of companionship as when it shuns companions.

The two spent most of the evening endeavouring to restore to liveliness
the birds that Trenholme had taken from his pockets, and in discussing
them. Bates produced a very old copy of a Halifax newspaper which
contained a sonnet to this bird, in which the local poet addressed it as

   "The Sunset-tinted grosbeak of the north"

Trenholme marvelled at his resources. Such newspapers as he stored up
were kept under the cushion of the old aunt's armchair.

Bates brought out some frozen cranberries for the birds. They made a
rough coop and settled them in it outside, in lee of one of the sheds.
It is extraordinary how much time and trouble people will expend on such
small matters if they just take it into their heads to do it.




CHAPTER IV.


There was no very valuable timber on Bates's land. The romance of the
lumber trade had already passed from this part of the country, but the
farmers still spent their winters in getting out spruce logs, which were
sold at the nearest saw-mills. Bates and Cameron had possessed
themselves of a large portion of the hill on which they had settled,
with a view to making money by the trees in this way--money that was
necessary to the household, frugal as it was, for, so far, all their
gains had been spent in necessary improvements. Theirs had been a
far-seeing policy that would in the end have brought prosperity, had the
years of uninterrupted toil on which they calculated been realised.

It was not until the next day that Trenholme fully understood how
helpless the poor Scotchman really was in his present circumstances. In
the early morning there was the live-stock to attend to, which took him
the more time because he was not in strong health; and when that was
done it seemed that there was much ado in the house before the old woman
would sit down peacefully for the day. He apologised to Trenholme for
his housework by explaining that she was restless and uneasy all day
unless the place was somewhat as she had been accustomed to see it; he
drudged to appease her, and when at last he could follow to the bush,
whither he had sent Trenholme, it transpired that he dared not leave her
more than an hour or two alone, for fear she should do herself a
mischief with the fire. In the bush it was obvious how pitifully small
was the amount of work accomplished. Many trees had been felled before
Cameron's death; but they still had to be lopped and squared, cut into
twelve-foot lengths, dragged by an ox to the log-slide, and passed down
on to the ice of the lake. Part of the work required two labourers; only
a small part of what could be done single-handed had been accomplished;
and Trenholme strongly suspected that moonlight nights had been given to
this, while the old woman slept.

It is well known that no line can be drawn between labour and play; it
is quite as much fun making an ox pull a log down a woodland path as
playing at polo, if one will only admit it, especially when novelty acts
as playmate. Most healthy men find this fascination hidden in labour,
provided it only be undertaken at their own bidding, although few have
the grace to find it when necessity compels to the task. Alec Trenholme
found the new form of labour to which he had bidden himself toilsome and
delightful; like a true son of Adam, he was more conscious of his toil
than of his delight--still both were there; there was physical
inspiration in the light of the snow, the keen still air, and the sweet
smell of the lumber. So he grew more expert, and the days went past,
hardly distinguished from one another, so entire was the unconsciousness
of the slumber between them.

He had not come without some sensation of romance in his
knight-errantry. Bates was the centre, the kernel as it were, of a wild
story that was not yet explained. Turrif had disbelieved the details
Saul had given of Bates's cruelty to Cameron's daughter, and Trenholme
had accepted Turrif's judgment; but in the popular judgment, if
Cameron's rising was not a sufficient proof of Bates's guilt, the
undoubted disappearance of the daughter was. Whatever had been his
fault, rough justice and superstitious fear had imposed on Bates a term
of solitary confinement and penal servitude which so far he had accepted
without explanation or complaint. He still expressed no satisfaction at
Trenholme's arrival that would have been a comment on his own hard case
and a confession of his need. Yet, on the whole, Trenholme's interest in
him would have been heightened rather than decreased by a nearer view of
his monotonous life and his dry reserve, had it not been that the man
was to the last degree contentious and difficult to deal with.

Taking for granted that Trenholme was of gentle extraction, he treated
him with the generosity of pride in the matter of rations; but he
assumed airs of a testy authority which were in exact proportion to his
own feeling of physical and social inferiority. Seen truly, there was a
pathos in this, for it was a weak man's way of trying to be manful but
his new labourer, could not be expected to see it in that light. Then,
too, on all impersonal subjects of conversation which arose, it was the
nature of Bates to contradict and argue; whereas Trenholme, who had
little capacity for reasonable argument, usually dealt with
contradiction as a pot of gunpowder deals with an intruding spark. As
regarded the personal subject of his own misfortune--a subject on which
Trenholme felt he had a certain right to receive confidence--Bates's
demeanour was like an iron mask.

Bates scorned the idea, which Turrif had always held, that Cameron had
never really died; he vowed, as before, that the box he had sent in
Saul's cart had contained nothing but a dead body; he would hear no
description of the old man who, it would seem, had usurped Cameron's
name; he repeated stolidly that Saul had put his charge into some
shallow grave in the forest, and hoaxed Trenholme, with the help of an
accomplice; and he did not scruple to hint that if Trenholme had not
been a coward he would have seized the culprit, and so obviated further
mystery and after difficulties. There was enough truth in this view of
the case to make it very insulting to Trenholme. But Bates did not seem
to cherish anger for that part of his trouble that had been caused by
this defect; rather he showed an annoying indifference to the whole
affair. He had done what he could to bury his late partner decently; he
neither expressed nor appeared to experience further emotion concerning
his fate.

When a man has set himself to anything, he generally sticks to it, for a
time at least; this seemed to be the largest reason that Trenholme had
the first four weeks for remaining where he was. At any rate, he did
remain; and from these unpromising materials, circumstance, as is often
the case, beat, out a rough sort of friendship between the two men. The
fact that Bates was a partial wreck, that the man's nerve and strength
in him were to some extent gone, bred in Trenholme the gallantry of the
strong toward the weak--a gallantry which was kept from rearing into
self-conscious virtue by the superiority of Bates's reasoning powers,
which always gave him a certain amount of real authority. Slowly they
began to be more confidential.

"It's no place for a young man like you to be here," Bates observed with
disfavour.

It was Sunday. The two were sitting in front of the house in the
sunshine, not because the sun was warm, but because it was bright;
dressed, as they were, in many plies of clothes, they did not feel the
cold, in flat, irregular shape the white lake lay beneath their hill. On
the opposite heights the spruce-trees stood up clear and green, as
perfect often in shape as yews that are cut into old-fashioned cones.

"I was told that about the last place I was in, and the place before
too," Trenholme laughed. He did not seem to take his own words much to
heart.

"Well, the station certainly wasn't much of a business," assented Bates;
"and, if it's not rude to ask, where were ye before?"

"Before that--why, I was just going to follow my own trade in a place
where there was a splendid opening for me; but my own brother put a stop
to that. He said it was no fit position for a young man like me. My
brother's a fine fellow," the young man sneered, but not bitterly.

"He ought to be," said Bates, surveying the sample of the family before
him rather with a glance of just criticism than of admiration. "What's
your calling, then?"

Alec pulled his mitts out of his pocket and slapped his moccasins with
them to strike off the melting snow. "What do you think it is, now?"

Bates eyed him with some interest in the challenge. "I don't know," he
said at last. "Why didn't your brother want ye to do it?"

"'Twasn't grand enough. I came out naturally thinking I'd set up near my
brother; but, well, I found he'd grown a very fine gentleman--all honour
to him for it! He's a good fellow." There was no sneer just now.

Bates sat subjecting all he knew of Alec to a process of consideration.
The result was not a guess; it was not in him to hazard anything, even a
guess.

"What does your brother do?"

"Clergyman, and he has a school."

"Where?"

"Chellaston, on the Grand Trunk."

"Never heard of it. Is it a growing place?"

"It's thriving along now. It was just right for my business."

"Did the clergyman think your business was wrong?"

The young man laughed as a man laughs who knows the answer to an amusing
riddle and sees his neighbour's mental floundering. "He admits that it's
an honest and respectable line of life."

"Did ye give in, then?"

"I took a year to think over it. I'm doing that now."

"Thinking?"

"Yes."

"I've not observed ye spending much time in meditation."

The young man looked off across the basin of the frozen lake. What is
more changeful than the blue of the sky? Today the far firmament looked
opaque, an even, light blue, as if it were made of painted china. The
blue of Alec Trenholme's eyes was very much like the sky; sometimes it
was deep and dark, sometimes it was a shadowy grey, sometimes it was
hard and metallic. A woman having to deal with him would probably have
imagined that something of his inward mood was to be read in these
changes; but, indeed, they were owing solely to those causes which
change the face of the sky--degrees of light and the position of that
light. As for Bates, he did not even know that his companion had blue
eyes; he only knew in a general way that he was a strong, good-looking
fellow, whose figure, even under the bulgy shapes of multiplied
garments, managed to give suggestion of that indefinite thing we call
style. He himself felt rather thinner, weaker, more rusty in knowledge
of the world, more shapeless as to apparel, than he would have done had
he sat alone.

After a minute or two he said, "What's your trade?"

Trenholme, sitting there in the clear light, would have blushed as he
answered had his face not been too much weathered to admit of change of
colour. He went through that momentary change of feeling that we connect
with blushes. He had been perfectly conscious that this question was
coming, and perfectly conscious, too, that when he answered it he would
fall in Bates's estimation, that his prestige would be gone. He thought
he did not mind it, but he did.

"Butcher," he said.

"Ye're not in earnest?" said Bates, with animosity.

"Upon my word."

"Ye don't look like that"--with disappointment.

"Look like what?"--fiercely--"What would you have me look like? My
father was as good-looking a man as you'd see in the three kingdoms, and
as good a butcher, too. He got rich, had three shops, and he sent us
boys to the best school he could find. He'd have set me up in any
business I liked; if I chose his it was because--I did choose it."

He was annoyed at Bates's open regret, just as we are constantly more
annoyed at fresh evidence of a spirit we know to be in a man than with
the demonstration of some unexpected fault, because we realise the trait
we have fathomed and see how poor it is.

"How did your brother come to be a minister?"

"He's a _clergyman_ of the Church of England"--with loftiness.

"Well, that's more of a thing than a minister; how did he come by it?"

"He was clever, and father was able to send him to Oxford. He was a good
deal older than I was. I suppose he took to the Church because he
thought it his duty."

"And now that he's out here he wants to sink the shop?"

"Oh, as to that"--coldly--"when he was quite young, in England, he got
in with swells. He's tremendously clever. There were men in England that
thought no end of him."

"Did he lie low about the shop there?"

"I don't know"--shortly--"I was at school then."

Bates, perceiving that his questions were considered vastly offensive,
desisted, but not with that respectfulness of mind that he would have
had had Alec's father been a clergyman as well as his brother. Bates's
feeling in this matter was what it was by inheritance, exactly as was
the shape of his nose or the length of his limbs; it required no
exercise of thought on his part to relegate Alec Trenholme to a place of
less consequence.

Trenholme assuaged his own ill-temper by going to take out his pink and
grey grosbeaks and give them exercise. He was debating in his mind
whether they were suffering from confinement or not--a question which
the deportment of the birds never enabled him to solve completely--when
Bates wandered round beside him again, and betrayed that his mind was
still upon the subject of their conversation.

"Ye know," he began, with the deliberate interest of a Scotchman in an
argument, "I've been thinking on it, and I'm thinking your brother's in
the right of it."

"You do!" The words had thunderous suggestion of rising wrath.

"Well," said the other again, "ye're hard to please; ye were vexed a
while since because ye thought I was criticising him for lying low."

The answer to this consisted in threats thrown out at any man who took
upon himself to criticise his brother.

"And now, when I tell ye I'm thinking he's in the right of it, ye're
vexed again. Now, I'll tell ye: ye don't like to think the Rev. Mr.
Trenholme's in the right, for that puts ye in the wrong; but ye don't
like me to think he's in the wrong, because he's your brother. Well,
it's natural! but just let us discuss the matter. Now, ye'll agree with
me it's a man's duty to rise in the world if he can."

Upon which he was told, in a paraphrase, to mind his own business.




CHAPTER V.


It was a delightful proof of the blessed elasticity of inconsistency in
human lives, a proof also that there was in these two men more of good
than of evil, that that same evening, when the lamp was lit, they
discussed the problem that had been mooted in the afternoon with a fair
amount of good temper. As they sat elbowing the deal table, sheets of
old newspapers under their inspection, Trenholme told his story more
soberly. He told it roughly, emphasising detail, slighting important
matter, as men tell stories who see them too near to get the just
proportion; but out of his words Bates had wit to glean the truth. It
seemed that his father had been a warmhearted man, with something
superior in his mental qualities and acquirements. Having made a
moderate fortune, he had liberally educated his sons. There is nothing
in which families differ more by nature than in the qualities of heart
which bind them together or easily release them from the bonds of
kinship. The members of this small family had that in them which held
them together in spite of the pulling of circumstance; for although the
elder son had come on the stage of manhood ten years before the younger,
although he had had talents that advanced him among scholarly men, and
had been quickly taken from his first curacy to fill a superior position
in a colony, he had never abated an affectionate correspondence with
Alec, and had remained the hero of his young brother's imagination. This
younger son, not having the same literary tastes, and having possibly a
softer heart, gratified his father by going into business with him; but
at that good man's death he had had sufficient enterprise, sufficient
distaste, possibly, for his English position, to sell the business that
was left in his hands, and affection drew him, as a loadstone a magnet,
to his brother's neighbourhood. He brought with him securities of the
small fortune they were to divide between them, and expected nothing but
happiness in the meeting and prosperity in his future career.
Unfortunately, a cause of dispute between the two brothers arose
instantly on Alec's arrival: there was an exceptionally good opening in
Chellaston for one of Alec's calling; the brothers took different views
concerning that calling; they had quarrelled with all the fire of warm
natures, and were parted almost as soon as met.

"And did ye think it would be pleasing to your brother to have a
tradesman of the same name and blood as himself in the same place?"
asked Bates with lack of toleration in his tone.

"That's all very fine!"--scornfully. "You know as well as I do that my
lord and my gentleman come out to this country to do what farm-hands and
cattle-men would hardly be paid to do at home--"

"When they've ruined themselves first, but not till then," Bates put in.

"And besides, old Robert sets up to be a saint. I didn't suppose he'd
look upon things in the _vulgar_ way." This reflection was cast on Bates
as one of a class. "Was I likely to suppose he'd think that to kick
one's heels on an office stool was finer than honest labour, or that my
particular kind of labour had something more objectionable about it than
any other? In old times it was the most honourable office there was.
Look at the priests of the Old Testament! Read Homer!"

"I don't know that I'm understanding ye about Homer."

"Why, hear him tell the way the animals were cut up, and the number of
them--yards and yards of it."

"But in the Bible the animals were used for sacrifice; that's very
different." Bates said this, but felt that a point had been scored
against him in the poetry of Homer; the Old Testament was primeval, but
Homer, in spite of ancient date, seemed to bring with him the authority
of modern culture.

"If they were, the people feasted upon them all the same, and the
office of preparing them was the most honourable. I'm not claiming to be
a priest (I leave that to my respected brother); I claim my right in a
new country, where Adam has to delve again, to be a butcher and a
gentleman." All his words were hot and hasty.

"But ye see," said Bates, "in the towns here, things are beginning to
regulate themselves much in the shape they take in the old country."

"My brother cares more what people think than I do."

"And a verra good thing too; for with the majority there is wisdom," put
in Bates, keen and contentious.

"You think so, do you?"--with sarcasm.

"Ye must remember ye're young yet; your brother has seen more of the
world--"

Now Alec Trenholme had had no intention of telling what, to his mind,
was the worst of his brother's conduct, but here he slapped the table
and burst out angrily:

"And I tell you he believes as I do, but he hasn't pluck to act up to
it. He's not even told one of his fine friends what his brother does; he
says it's for the sake of his school. He's living a lie for his own
pride. He's got himself made master of a college, fine as a fiddle, and
he cares more about that than about his brother. With all his prayers
and his sermons in church every Sunday, he'd let me go to the dogs
rather than live out the truth. He thinks I've gone to the devil now,
because I left him in a rage, and I told him I'd go and learn to spend
my money, and drink, and swear, and gamble as a _gentleman_ should. He
thinks I've done it, and he writes and implores me, by all that's holy,
to forsake evil courses; but never a word like 'Come back and set up
your shop, old fellow, and I'll be your customer.' That's the amount of
his religion."

"It was a hard choice ye put upon him," said Bates, solemnly.

"You think it was? Well!" The young man gave a boisterous laugh.

"For, in the first place, it's not his fault, but your own entirely, if
ye go to the bad."

"I've not gone to the bad; but if I had, if I'd gone straight there, it
would have been his fault."

"'Twould just have been your own. There's just one man that's
responsible for your actions, and that's yourself. If your brother was a
compete blackguard, instead of a good man, that's no excuse for you. God
never put any man into this world and said, 'Be good if some other man
is.'"

"When a man sets up to preach, and then throws away his influence over
his own brother for a little finery opposition, it's more than being a
blackguard. What does a man mean by standing up to preach if he doesn't
mean that he's taking some responsibility for other people?"

"Well, but it wasn't he that threw away his influence over you; it was
you. He never said 'Don't be influenced any more by me.' If ye thought
he was an angel before then, more fool ye were, for no man is an angel.
What business had you to make all the influence of his godly life
condeetion on his doing right, or what you thought right, on a certain
point of opinion?"

"He's living a lie, I tell you."

"I'm not sure but he's right not to have blazoned it. I'm not sure but
I'd have done the same myself."

"Well, as you just remarked, men are not angels. That you would have
done it doesn't prove anything."

Next morning Trenholme, whose half-awaked mind had not yet recurred to
the night's dispute stepped out of the house into a white morning fog,
not uncommon in fierce weather when holes for fishing had been made in
the ice of the lake. The air, seemingly as dry as smoke, but keen and
sweet, was almost opaque, like an atmosphere of white porcelain, if such
might be. The sun, like a scarlet ball, was just appearing; it might
have been near, it might have been far; no prospect was seen to mark the
distance. Trenholme was walking round by the white snow path, hardly
discerning the ox-shed to which he was bound, when he suddenly came
upon the dark figure of Bates, who was pitching hay for his Cattle.
Bates let down his fork and stood in his path.

"For God's sake, Mr. Trenholme," said he, "let your brother know where
you are."

Trenholme started: Bates's figure stood not unlike some gnarled thorn
that might have appeared to take human shape in the mist.

"For God's sake, man, write! If ye only knew what it was to feel the
weight of another soul on ye, and one that ye had a caring for! Ye're
easy angered yourself; ye might as easy anger another, almost without
knowing it; and if he or she was to go ye didn't know where, or perhaps
die, be sure ye would blame yourself without heeding their blame."

Bates's voice was trembling. The solemnity of his mien and the feminine
pronoun he had let slip revealed to Trenholme the direction his thoughts
had taken.

He went on, holding out an arm, as though by the gesture swearing to his
own transgression: "I counted myself a good man, and I'll not say now
but I did more for"--some name died upon his lips--"than one man in a
hundred would have done; but in my folly I angered her, and when I'd
have given my life ten times over--"

This, then, was the sorrow that dogged his life. Trenholme knew, without
more ado, that Bates loved the lost girl, that it was her loss that
outweighed all other misfortune. He felt a great compassion: he said
impatiently:

"There's no use trying to interfere between brothers. You can't see the
thing as I see it. Let's leave it."

"Ay, leave it," cried the other, voice and limb shaking, "and life is
short, and the time to die is every time, and if some accident is to
sweep us away to-night, who's to tell him that your death, and your soul
too, isn't on his head?"

"Bother my soul!" said Alec; and yet there was a certain courtesy
expressed in the gentler tone in which he spoke, and what he thought
was, "How much he must have loved her!"

When the fog had vanished, leaving daylight absolute, this scene of the
morning seemed like a dream, and in the evening, as much from curiosity
to see if he could revive its essence again as from a friendly desire to
relieve the overcharged heart of his comrade, he said:

"Tell me about her, Bates. What was she like?"

Bates responded to the question like a man whose heart is beating
against the walls of his silence as a bird beats upon its cage. He spoke
a few words, hardly noticing that he was telling his memories; then the
mask of his self-bound habit was resumed; then again the dignity of his
sorrow found some expression; and still again he would retire into
dumbness, setting the questioner aside slightingly; and when he had
forgotten that he had drawn back within himself some further revealing
would come from him. It was little that he said in all, but language
that has been fused in the furnace of so strong a sorrow and silence has
little of the dross of common speech--the unmeaning, misleading,
unnecessary elements: his veritable memory and thought and feeling were
painted by his meagre tale.

Was that tale true? John Bates would have thought it a great sin to
deceive himself or another, and yet, such was the power of his love,
blown to white heat by the breath of regret and purified, that when he
spoke of the incidents of Sissy's childhood, of the cleverness she
displayed when he taught her, of her growth until the day in which he
had offended her by speaking of marriage, when he told of her tears, and
prayers, and anger, and of his own despotism, the picture of it all that
arose in Trenholme's imagination was exceedingly different from what
would have been there had he seen the reality. He would not have liked
Cameron's daughter had he seen her, but, seeing her through the medium
of a heart that loved her, all the reverence that is due to womanly
sweetness stirred in him. Cupid may be blind, but to the eyes of
chastened love is given the vision of God.

When it appeared that Bates had said all that he was going to say, Alec
Trenholme sat pondering the problem of this girl's disappearance with
more mental energy than he had before given to it. Knowing the place
now, he knew that what Bates and Saul had averred was true--that there
were but two ways by which any one could leave it while water was
unfrozen, one by the boat, and the other by striking at random across
the hill to the back of the farm--a route that could only lead either to
one of several isolated farms, or, by a forty-mile tramp round by the
nearest river bridge, to the railway. At no farmhouse had she been seen,
and the journey by the bridge was too long to have been accomplished
before the snow storm must have impeded her. It was in attempting this
journey, Bates was convinced, that she had perished. There was, of
course, another possibility that had been mooted at Turrifs Settlement;
but the testimony of Bates and Saul, agreeing in the main points, had
entirely silenced it. Trenholme, thinking of this now, longed to
question more nearly, yet hardly dared.

"Do you think she could have gone mad? People sometimes do go stark mad
suddenly. Because, if so, and if you could be mistaken in thinking you
saw her in the house when you went--"

The Scotchman was looking keenly at him with sharp eyes and haggard
face. "I understand ye," he said, with a sigh of resignation, "the noise
o' the thing has been such that there's no evil men haven't thought of
me, or madness of her. Ye think the living creature ye saw rise from the
coffin was, maybe, the dead man's daughter?"

"I think it was much too big for a woman."

"Oh, as to that, she was a good height." Perhaps, with involuntary
thought of what might have been, he drew himself up to his full stature
as he said, "A grand height for a woman; but as to this idea of yours,
I'll not say ye're insulting her by it, though! that's true too; but
I've had the same notion; and now I'll tell ye something. She was not
mad; she took clothes; she left everything in order. Was that the act of
a maniac? and if she wasn't mad, clean out of her wits, would she have
done such a thing as ye're thinking of?"

"No"--thoughtfully--"I should think not."

"And, furthermore; if she had wished to do it, where is it she could
have laid him? D'ye think I haven't looked the ground over? There's no
place where she could have buried him, and to take him to the lake was
beyond her strength." There was nothing of the everyday irascibility
about his voice; the patience of a great grief was upon him, as he
argued away the gross suspicion.

"That settles it." Trenholme said this willingly enough.

"Yes, it settles it; for if there was a place where the earth was loose
I dug with my own hands down to the very rock, and neither man nor woman
lay under it."

Trenholme was affected; he again renounced his suspicion.

"And now I've told ye that," said Bates, "I'll tell ye something else,
for it's right ye should know that when the spring comes it'll not be in
my power to help ye with the logs--not if we should lose the flood and
have to let 'em lie till next year--for when the snow passes, I must be
on the hills seeking her." (He had put a brown, bony hand to shade his
eyes, and from out its shade he looked.) "There were many to help me
seek her alive; I'll take none wi' me when I go to give her burial."

The other saddened; The weary length and uncertainty of such a search,
and its dismal purpose, came to him.

"You've no assurance that she hasn't drowned herself in the lake here,"
he cried, remonstrating.

"But I have that; and as ye'll be naturally concerned at me leaving the
logs, I'll tell ye what it is, if ye'll give me your word as an honest
man that ye'll not repeat it at any time or place whatsoever."

He looked so like a man seeking courage to confess some secret sin that
Trenholme drew back.

"I'll not _tell_, but--"

Bates took no heed. "My aunt," he began, "had money laid by; she had ten
English sovereigns she liked to keep by her--women often do. There was
no one but me and Sissy knew where it was; and she took them with her.
By that I know she was making for the railway, and--" His voice grew
unsteady as he brought his hand down; there was a look of far-off vision
in his eyes, as though he saw the thing of which he spoke. "Ay, she's
lying now somewhere on the hills, where she would be beaten down by the
snow before she reached a road."

Trenholme was thinking of the sadness of it all, forgetting to wonder
even why he had been told not to repeat this last, when he found Bates
was regarding his silence with angry suspicion.

"It wasn't stealing," he said irritably; "she knew she might have them
if she wanted." It was as though he were giving a shuffling excuse for
some fault of his own and felt its weakness.

The young man, taken by surprise, said mechanically, "Would Miss Bates
have given them to her?" He had fallen into the habit of referring to
the childish old woman with, all due form, for he saw Bates liked it.

"Hoots! What are you saying, man? Would ye have had the lassie leave the
burden on my mind that she'd gone out of her father's house penniless?
'Twas the one kindness she did me to take the gold."




CHAPTER VI.


One evening Alec Trenholme sat down to write to his brother. Bates had
urged him to write, and, after a due interval, of his own accord he
wrote. The urging and the writing had a certain relation of cause and
effect, but the writer did not think so. Also, the letter he wrote was
very different from the document of penitence and recantation that Bates
had advised, and now supposed him to be writing.

He gave a brief account of what he had done before he accepted the post
of station-master at Turrifs Station, and then,

   "I liked it well enough," he wrote, "until one night a queer thing
   happened. As evening came on, a man drove up bringing a coffin
   to be sent by train to the next village for burial. When I was left
   alone with the thing, the man inside got up--he really did, I saw him.
   I shut him in and ran to fetch the carter, but couldn't catch him.
   When I came back, the man had got out and ran into the wood.
   They had lined the box with a white bed-quilt, and we found that
   some miles away in the bush the next day, but we never found the
   man; and the queer thing is that there were two men and a girl who
   seem to have been quite certain he was dead. One of them, a very
   intelligent fellow that I am staying with now, thinks the carter must
   have played some trick on the way; but I hardly believe that myself,
   from the way the carter acted. I think he spoke the truth; he said
   he had been alone on the road all day, and had been scared out of his
   wits by hearing the man turn in the coffin. He seemed well frightened,
   too. Of course, if this is true, the man could not really have
   been dead; but I'm not trying to give an explanation; I'm just telling
   you what occurred. Well, things went on quietly enough for
   another month, and on the last night of the old year the place was
   snowed up--tracks, roads, everything--and at midnight an old man
   came about who answered to the description I had of the dead man,
   clothes and all, for it seems they were burying him in his clothes.
   He was rather deaf, and blind I think, though I'm not sure, and he
   seemed to be wandering in his mind somehow; but he was a fine,
   powerful fellow--reminded me a little of father--and the pathetic
   thing about it was that he had got the idea into his head--"

Here Alec stopped, and, holding the pen idly in his hand, sat lost in
thought. So wistful did he look, so wrapt, that Bates, glancing
furtively at him, thought the letter had raised associations of his home
and childhood, and took himself off to bed, hoping that the letter would
be more brotherly if the writer was left alone. But when Alec put pen to
paper again he only wrote:--

  "Well, I don't know that it matters what he had got into his head;
  it hadn't anything to do with whether he was Cameron (the name of the
  man supposed dead) or not. I could not get a word out of him as to who
  he was or where he came from. I did all I could to get him to come in
  and have food and get warmed; but though I went after him and stood with
  him a long while, I didn't succeed. He was as strong as a giant. It was
  awfully solemn to see an old man like that wandering bareheaded in the
  snow at night, so far from any human being. I was forced to leave him,
  for the engine came clearing the track. I got some men to come after him
  with me, but he was gone, and we never saw him again. I stayed on there
  ten days, trying to hear something of him, and after that I came here to
  try my hand at lumbering. The owner of this place here was terribly cut
  up about the affair. It was he who started the coffin I told you of, and
  he's been left quite alone because this tale frightened men from coming
  to work for him in the winter as usual. I have a very comfortable berth
  here. I think there must have been something curious--a streak of some
  kind--in the dead man's family; his only daughter went off from here in
  a rage a few days after his death, and as the snow came at once, she is
  supposed to have perished in the drifts on the hills. Our logs have to
  be floated down the small river here at the spring flood, and this man,
  Bates, is determined to look for the lost girl at the same time. I'll
  stay and see him through the spring. Very likely I shall look in on you
  in summer."

Alec Trenholme went to bed not a little sleepy, but satisfied that he
had given a clear account of the greater part of what had befallen him.

The next day he tramped as far as the railway to post the letter.

When Principal Trenholme received this letter he was standing in his
library, holding an interview with some of his elder pupils. He had a
pleasant manner with boys; his rule was to make friends with them as
much as possible; and if he was not the darling of their hearts, he was
as dear to them as a pedagogue ever is to a class under his authority.
When he saw Alec's letter, his heart within him leaped with hope and
quailed with fear. It is only a few times during his life that a man
regards a letter in this way, and usually after long suspense on a
subject which looms large in his estimate of things. When he could
disengage himself, he tore it open, and the first question with which
he scanned it concerned Alec only--was he in trouble? had he carried out
his threat of evil-doing? or was it well with him?

Robert Trenholme was not now merely of the stuff of which men of the
world are made. Could we but know it, a man's mind probably bears to his
religion no very different relation from what his body bears; his creed,
opinions, and sentiments are more nearly allied to what St. Paul calls
"the flesh" than they are to the hidden life of the man, with which God
deals. To the inner spring of Robert Trenholme's life God had access, so
that his creed, and the law of temperance in him, had, not perfection,
but vitality; and the same vitality, now permitted, now refused, by
unseen inlets flowed into all he did and was, and his estimate of things
was changed. He, in subtle selfishness, did much, almost all he could,
to check and interrupt the incoming life, although indeed he prayed, and
often supposed his most ardent desire was, to obtain it. Such is the
average man of faith; such was Robert Trenholme--a better thing, truly,
than a mere man, but not outwardly or inwardly so consistent.

The great fear he had when he opened this letter was that he had caused
his brother to stumble; the great hope, that, because of his prayers,
Heaven would grant it should not be so; but when, on the first hasty
glance over the pages, he discovered that Alec was well, and was
apparently amusing himself in a harmless way, that fear and hope
instantly glided into the background; he hardly knew that they had both
been strong, so faded did they look in the light of the commonplace
certainty.

The next question that pressed assumed an air of paramount importance.
He had asked Alec to enter some honourable mercantile profession. He had
pressed this in the first interview, when the hot-tempered young man had
left him in a rage. He had argued the point in subsequent letters; he
had even offered his own share of their inheritance as additional
capital. He felt that he deserved an answer to this offer, and believed
that his happiness depended upon Alec's acceding to the proposed change
of his life-plan. His mind full of this secondary subject, he perused
the sheets of the letter with singular impatience and distaste. Any man
might, in the most favourable circumstances, have been excused for
experiencing impatience at having so wild a tale foisted in brief
confusion upon his credulity; in the mood of his present circumstance
the elder Trenholme refolded the letter, using within himself the
strongest language in his vocabulary.

Robert Trenholme was not a happy man just now. Since he had last seen
Alec a change had come to him which made this matter of the other's
calling of warmer interest than it had been. Then his early love for
Sophia Rexford had been a memory and a far, half-formed hope; now it had
been roused again to be a true, steady flame, an ever-present influence.
His one desire now was to win her affection. He would not be afraid then
to tell her all that there was to tell of himself, and let her love
decide. He did not feel that he should wrong her in this. At present he
had everything to give, she everything to receive, except the possession
of gentle blood, which would apparently be her only dowry. The girl he
could not once have dared to address was now working servantless in her
father's kitchen; he knew that it was no light drudgery; and he could
offer her a comparatively luxurious home, and a name that had attracted
to itself no small honour. He had a nice appreciation for what is called
position, and the belief that their mutual positions had changed was
very sweet to him. All his mind expanded in this thought, as the nerves
of the opium-eater to the influence of his drug; it soothed him when he
was weary; it consoled him when he was vexed; it had come to him as an
unexpected, unsought good, like a blessing direct from heaven.

This was as things now were; but if his brother adhered to his purpose
of establishing himself in his business in the same country, that would
make a difference--a difference that it was hard, perhaps, for a
thoughtful man to put into words, but which was still harder to wipe
away by any sophistry of words. Robert Trenholme may have been wise, or
he may have been foolish, but he estimated this difference as great.
Should Alec persist in this thing, it would, in the first place,
endanger the success of his school, or alter his relation to that
school; in the second, it would make him more unworthy in the eyes of
all Sophia's well-born relatives. While he remained in suspense,
therefore, he was too honourable to seek to entangle her affections by
the small arts that are used for such purposes; for if the worst came,
he felt that he would be too proud to ask her to be his wife, or, if
love should overcome pride, and he should still sue for what he loved
better than life, he must do so before he sought her heart--not after;
he must lay his cause before the tribunal of Sophia's wit before she had
let go her heart--a thing that he, being what he was, had not courage to
do.

He was not "living a lie" (as his brother had said) any more than every
man does who allows his mind to dwell on the truth of what pleases him
more than on disagreeable truth. The fact that he was, by a distant tie
of consanguinity, related to a gentleman of some county position in
England was just as true, and to Trenholme's mind more largely true,
than the fact of his father's occupation. Yet he had never made this a
boast; he had never voluntarily stated the pleasant truth to any one to
whom he had not also told the unpleasant; and where he had kept silence
concerning the latter, he had done so by the advice of good men, and
with excuse concerning his professional influence. Yet, some way, he was
not sufficiently satisfied with all this to have courage to bring it
before Miss Rexford, nor yet was he prepared (and here was his worldly
disadvantage) to sacrifice his conscience to success. He would not ask
his brother to change, except in so far as he could urge that brother's
duty and advantage; he would not say to him, "Do this for my sake"; nor
yet would he say, "Go, then, to the other side of the world"; nor yet,
"You shall be no longer my brother."

Robert Trenholme was bearing a haunted life. The ghost was fantastic
one, truly--that of a butcher's shop; but it was a very real haunting.




CHAPTER VII.


The Rexford family was without a servant. Eliza, the girl they had
brought with them from Quebec, had gone to a situation at the Chellaston
hotel. The proprietor and manager of that large building, having become
lame with rheumatism, had been sorely in need of a lieutenant, or
housekeeper, and had chosen one with that shrewdness which had ever been
his business capital. His choice had fallen on Eliza and she had
accepted the place.

When Robert Trenholme heard of this arrangement he was concerned,
knowing how difficult servants were to procure. He took occasion to
speak to Miss Rexford on the subject, expressing sympathy with her and
strong censure of Eliza.

"Indeed I am not sure but that she has done right," said Sophia.

"You surprise me very much. I thought you made somewhat of a companion
of her."

"I do; and that is why, after hearing what she has to say about it, I
think she has done right. She has abilities, and this is the only
opening in sight in which she can exercise them."

"I should think"--sternly--"that these abilities were better
unexercised."

"That is probably because you haven't the least idea what it is to have
energies and faculties for which you have no scope"--this archly.

"But I should think the risk of learning pert manners--"

"That is the way men always argue about women. I tell you there is no
such risk for an energetic, clever girl as to place her where the rust
of unexercised faculties will eat into her soul. It is just because so
many girls have to undergo this risk, and cannot do it safely, that the
world is so full of women that are captious or morbid or silly. Boys
treated in the same way would turn out as badly."

"But there is scope for all the highest faculties of a woman's nature in
such a household as yours," cried he.

"Since you say so"--politely--"I am bound to believe it."

"No, but really--do you mean to say you don't think so?"

"You have just expressed yourself so positively that I am curious to
know how you came by your knowledge, first, as to Eliza's faculties, and
secondly, as to the scope for them in our house."

"It is unkind of you to laugh at me when I am only a humble enquirer
after truth."

"Having expressed yourself thus modestly--"

"Nay, but I only said what I would have said about any girl in any such
family."

"And you only said it with that simplicity of certainty which every man
would have felt on the same subject."

"I cry a truce; I plead for mercy. Let us have out the traits of Eliza's
character separately, and examine the scope in detail."

"To begin with, she has wonderful foresight; her power to plan the work
of the house so as to get it done as easily as possible often surprises
me. Now, of what use is this faculty in the kingdom of my step-mother,
who always acts on the last impulse, and upsets every one's plans
without even observing them? She has great executive ability, too; but
what use is it when, as soon as she gets interested in the
accomplishment of something, my mother cries, 'Come, Eliza, all work
and no play makes Jack a dull boy; go and romp with the children!' Then,
too, she has plenty of resource; but of what use is that, when the thing
she sees to be best in an emergency is seldom the thing that is done?
The hotel-keeper is more observing than you; he has noticed that Eliza
is no ordinary manager, and offered her high wages."

"You know, of course, what you are talking about," said Trenholme,
feelingly, for he had no doubt that her sympathy with Eliza had arisen
out of the pains of her own experience; "but in your house there is
surely boundless room for humble, loving service; and how much better
this girl would be if she could set aside her cleverness to perform such
service." He did not add, "as you have done," but there was that in his
voice which implied it. He went on: "I do not yet allow that you have
disproved my statement, for I said that where she was she had scope for
her _highest_ faculties."

"I suppose it is admitted that the highest faculty of man is worship,"
remarked Sophia, suggesting that he was not speaking to the point; "but
that is no reason why a boy with a head for figures should be made a
farmer, or that a young woman with special ability should remain a
maid-of-all-work."

"And what of the affections--love for children, and for other women
better than herself? A girl who has such privileges as this girl had
with you has a far better chance of doing well than in a public hotel,
even if that were a safe place for her."

Possibly Sophia thought her companion showed too great sensibility
concerning Eliza's privileges, for she did not take notice of any but
the last part of his sentence.

"It is a safe place for her; for she is able to take care of herself
anywhere, if she chooses; and if she doesn't choose, no place is safe.
Besides, you know, the place is a boarding-house really, rather than an
hotel."

"I am not so surprised at the view _you_ take of it, for you will do
more than any one else to supply her place."

This, Trenholme's feeling prophecy, was quite true. Sophia did do more
of Eliza's work than any one. She spared her younger sisters because she
wanted them to be happy.

In spite of this, however, Sophia was not so much in need of some one's
sympathy as were those younger girls, who had less work to do. A large
element in happiness is the satisfaction of one's craving for romance.
Now, there are three eras of romance in human life. The first is
childhood, when, even if the mind is not filled with fictitious fairy
tales which clothe nature, life is itself a fairy tale, a journey
through an unexplored region, an enterprise full of effort and wonder,
big with hope, an endless expectation, to which trivial realisations
seem large. It was in this era that the younger Rexford children, up to
Winifred, still lived; they built snow-men, half-expecting, when they
finished them in the gloaming, that the thing of their creation would
turn and pursue them; they learned to guide toboggans with a trailing
toe, and half dreamed that their steeds were alive when they felt them
bound and strain, so perfectly did they respond to the rider's will.
Sophia, again, had reached the third epoch of romance, when, at a
certain age, people make the discovery of the wondrous loveliness in the
face of the Lady Duty, and, putting a hand in hers, go onward, thinking
nothing hard because of her beauty. But it is admitted by all that there
is often a stage between these two, when all the romance of life is
summed up in the hackneyed word "love." The pretty girls who were
nicknamed Blue and Red had outgrown childhood, and they saw no
particular charm in work; they were very dull, and scarce knew why,
except that they half envied Eliza, who had gone to the hotel, and who,
it was well known, had a suitor in the person of Mr. Cyril Harkness, the
Philadelphian dentist.

Harkness had set up his consulting room in the hotel, but, for economy's
sake, he lodged himself in the old Harmon house that was just beyond
Captain Rexford's, on the same road. By this arrangement he passed the
latter house twice a day, but he never took any notice of Blue and Red.
They did not wish that he should--oh no, they were above that--but they
felt sure that Eliza was very silly to dislike him as she did,
and--well, between themselves, they found an infinite variety of things
to say concerning him, sayings emphasised by sweet little chuckles of
laughter, and not unfrequently wandering sighs. Sophia, at their age,
had had many suitors, this was the family tradition, and lo, upon their
own barren horizon there was only one pretty young man, and he only to
be looked at, as it were, through the bars of a fence.

One day, when the blue merino frock was flitting about near the red one,
the wearers of both being engaged in shaking up a feather bed, Red
suddenly stopped her occupation in some excitement.

"Oh, Blue!" She paused a moment as if she were experiencing some
interesting sensation; "oh, Blue, I think I've got toothache."

"No!" cried Blue, incredulously, but with hope.

Again over Red's face came the absorbed expression of introspection, and
she carefully indented the outside of her pretty cheek several times
with her forefinger.

"Yes, I'm sure I feel it. But no; there, it's gone again!"

"It's just the very way things have," said Blue, lamenting. "For two
months we've quite wished we had toothache, and there was Tommy the
other night just roaring with it."

"I shouldn't like a _roaring_ toothache," said Red, reflectively.

"Oh, but the worse it was," cried Blue, encouragingly, "the more
necessary it would be--" She stopped and shook her head with a very
roguish and significant glance at her sister.

"Mamma only put a bag of hot salt to Tommy's," said Red, prognosticating
evil.

"But if it were me," cried Blue, with assurance, "I'd not be cured by
bags of hot salt. I would insist upon consulting a dentist."

They both laughed a laugh of joyful plotting.

"It was only the other day," said Red, twisting her little English voice
into the American accent, "that he told Harold he was right down clever
at tinkering a tooth in the most pain_less_ manner."

"Oh, Red, dear Red," begged Blue, "do feel it again, for my sake; it
would be so joyfully funny if mamma would take us to him."

"I'd a little bit rather _you_, had the ache, Blue."

"I'd have it this _instant_ if I could, but"--reproachfully--"it was you
that felt the twinge.".

"Well, I don't mind," said Red, heroically, "as long as my cheek doesn't
swell; I won't go with a swelled face."

"What would it matter? He knows that your face is alike on both sides
_usually_."

"Still, I shouldn't like it," replied Red, with a touch of obstinacy.

Eliza, however, was of a very different mind about this same young man.
She had not taken her new situation with any desire to see more of him;
rather she hoped that by seeing him oftener she should more quickly put
an end to his addresses.

The "Grand Hotel" of Chellaston was, as Miss Rexford had said, a
boarding-house. It had few transient visitors. The only manufacturer of
the village, and his wife, lived in it all the year round; so did one of
the shopkeepers. Several other quiet people lived there all winter; in
summer the prices were raised, and it was filled to overflowing by more
fashionable visitors from the two cities that were within a short
journey. This "hotel" was an enormous wooden house, built in the
simplest fashion, a wide corridor running from front to rear on each
storey, on which the room doors opened. Rooms and corridors were large,
lofty, and well-lighted by large windows. The dining-room,
billiard-room, office, and bar-room, on the ground-floor, together with
the stairs and corridors, were uncarpeted, painted all over a light
slate grey. With the exception of healthy geraniums in most of the
windows, there was little ornament in these ground-floor rooms; but all
was new, clean, and airy. The upper rooms were more heavily furnished,
but were most of them shut up in winter. All the year round the landlord
took in the daily papers; and for that reason his bar-room, large and
always tolerably quiet, was the best public reading-room the village
boasted.

The keeper of this establishment was a rather elderly man, and of late
he had been so crippled by rheumatism that he could walk little and only
on crutches. He was not a dainty man; his coat was generally dusty, his
grey beard had always a grimy appearance of tobacco about it. He spent
the greater part of his day now sitting in a high pivot chair, his
crutches leaning against it.

"You see, miss," he said to Eliza, "I'll tell you what the crying need
for you is in this house at present; it's to step round spry and see
that the girls do their work. It's this way; when I was spry, if I
wasn't in the room, the young people knew that, like as not, I was just
round the corner; they knew I _might_ be there any minute; at present
they know they'll hear my sticks before I see them. It makes all the
difference. What I want of you is to be feet for me, and eyes for me,
and specially in the dining-room. Mrs. Bantry--that dressy lady you saw
in the corridor--Mrs. Bantry told me that this morning they brought her
buckwheat cakes, and _ten minutes after_, the syrup to eat 'em with. How
hot do you suppose they were?"

He finished his speech with the fine sarcasm of this question. He looked
at Eliza keenly. "You're young," he remarked warningly, "but I believe
you're powerful."

And Eliza showed that she was powerful by doing the thing that he
desired of her, in spite of the opposition from the servants which she
at first experienced. She had a share of hand work to do also, which was
not light, but she had high wages, a comfortable room in the top
storey, and the women who were boarding in the house made friends with
her. She would have thought herself very well off had it not been for
her dislike of Harkness, for which one reason certainly was the show he
made of being in love with her.

Harkness had his office on the first floor, and he took dinner at the
hotel. For about a week after Eliza's advent the young dentist and the
young housekeeper measured each other with watchful eyes, a measurement
for which the fact that they crossed each other's path several times a
day gave ample opportunity. Because the woman had the steadier eyes and
the man was the more open-tempered, Eliza gained more insight into
Harkness's character than he did into hers. While he, to use his own
phrase, "couldn't reckon her up the least mite in the world," she
perceived that under his variable and sensitive nature there was a
strong grip of purpose upon all that was for his own interest in a
material way; but having discovered this vein of calculating
selfishness, mixed with much of the purely idle and something that was
really warmhearted, she became only the more suspicious of his
intentions towards herself, and summoned the whole strength of her
nature to oppose him.

She said to him one day, "I'm surprised to hear that you go about
telling other gentlemen that you like me. I wonder that you're not
ashamed."

As she had hitherto been silent, he was surprised at this attack, and at
first he took it as an invitation to come to terms.

"I've a right-down, hearty admiration for you, Miss White. I express it
whenever I get the chance; I'm not ashamed of my admiration."

"But I am," said Eliza, indignantly. "It's very unkind of you."

Harkness looked at her, failing to unravel her meaning.

"There ain't anything a young lady likes better than to have an
admirer. She mayn't always like _him_, but she always likes him to be
admiring of her."

However true this philosophy of the inner secrets of the heart might be,
Eliza did not admit it for a moment. She denounced his behaviour, but it
was clear, as the saying is, that she was speaking over the head of her
audience. The youth evidently received it as a new idea that, when he
had spoken only in her praise, she could seriously object.

"Why now," he burst forth, "if any young lady took to admiring me,
thinking a heap of me and talking about me to her friends, d'ye think
I'd be cut up? I'd be pleased to that extent I'd go about on the broad
grin. I mightn't want to marry just yet; and when I did, I mightn't
_possibly_ take up with her; but I can tell you, as soon as I was
disposed to marry, I'd have a soft side towards her; I'd certainly think
it right to give her the first chance in considering who I'd have. And
that's all I ask of you, Miss White. You won't have anything to do with
me (why, I can't think), but I just give it put that I'm an admirer, and
I hang on, hoping that you'll think better of it."

He was good-natured about it, perfectly open apparently, and at the same
time evidently so confident that his was the sensible view of the matter
that Eliza could only repeat her prohibition less hopefully.

A little later she found that he had quelled a revolt against her
authority that was simmering in the minds of the table-maids. She went
at once to the door that was decorated with the dentist's sign.

It was opened by Harkness in the bowing manner with which he was wont to
open to patients. When he saw Eliza's expression he straightened
himself.

"I want to know what you've been saying to those girls downstairs about
me."

"Well now," said he, a little flustered, "nothing that you'd dislike to
hear."

"Do you think," she went on with calm severity, "that I can't manage my
affairs without your help?"

"By no means." His emphasis implied that he readily perceived which
answer would give least offence. "Same time, if I can make your path
more flowery--fail to see objections to such a course."

"I don't want you to trouble yourself."

"It wasn't the least mite of trouble," he assured her. "Why, those girls
downstairs, whenever I roll my eyes, they just fly to do the thing I
want."

"Do you think that is nice?" asked Eliza.

"Lovely--so convenient!"

"I do not like it."

"It don't follow that whenever they roll their eyes, I do what they
want. Jemima! no. They might roll them, and roll them, and roll them,
right round to the back of their heads; 'twouldn't have an atom of
effect on me."

He waited to see some result from this avowal, but Eliza was looking at
him as coldly as ever.

"In that respect," he added, "there ain't no one that interferes with
your prerogative."

Eliza looked as if he had spoken in a foreign tongue. "I do not
understand," she said, and in this she told a lie, but she told it so
successfully that he really did not know whether she had understood, or
whether it behooved him to speak more plainly.

Before he could make up his mind, she had taken her departure. When she
was gone he stood looking darkly, wishing he knew how to hasten the day
when she should change her aspect to him.




CHAPTER VIII.


When Harkness found that he was always defied by Eliza he grew gloomy,
and was quiet for a time. One day, however, he recovered his former
cheerfulness. He seemed, indeed, to be in high spirits. When he saw his
time, he sought talk with Eliza. He did not now affect to be lively, but
rather wore a manner of marked solemnity.

"Can you read the French language?" he asked.

"No," she answered.

"That's unfortunate, for I'm not a good hand at it myself; but I've
found a bit of news in a French paper here that is real interesting and
important."

He unfurled a crushed copy of a Quebec journal a few days old. "It
says," he began translating, that "there's a man called Cameron, who's
been nicknamed Lazarus Cameron, because he seemed to be dead and came to
life again."

He looked hard at the paper, as if needing a few moments to formulate
further translation.

"Do go on," said Eliza, with manifest impatience.

"Why now, you're _real_ interested, Miss White."

"Anybody would want to know what you're at."

"Well, but, considering it's any one so composed as you, Miss White,
it's real pleasant to see you so keen."

"I'm keen for my work. I haven't time, like you, to stand here all day."

All this time he had been looking at the paper. "What I've read so far,
you see, is what I've told you before as having happened to my knowledge
at a place called Turrifs Station."

"Is that all?"

"No," and he went on translating. "'Whether this man was dead or not, he
is now alive, but partially deaf and blind; and whether he has ever seen
anything of the next world or not, he has now no interest in this one,
but spends his whole time praying or preaching, living on crusts, and
walking great distances in solitary places. He has lately appeared in
the suburbs of this city' (that is Quebec) 'and seems to be a
street-preacher of no ordinary power.'"

Harkness stopped with an air of importance.

"Is that all?" asked Eliza.

He gave her another paper, in English, to read. This contained a longer
and more sensational account of the same tale, and with this difference,
that instead of giving the simple and sentimental view of the French
writer, the English journalist jeered greatly, and also stated that the
nickname Lazarus had been given in derision, and that the man, who was
either mad or an imposter, had been hooted, pelted, and even beaten in
the streets.

"Is that all?" she asked.

"Unless you can tell me any more." He did not say this lightly.

"Is that all?" she asked again, as if his words had been unmeaning.

"Well now, I think that's enough. 'Tisn't every day this poor earth of
ours is favoured by hearing sermons from one as has been t'other side of
dying. I think it would be more worth while to hear him than to go to
church, I do."

"Do you mean to say," she asked, with some asperity, "that you really
believe it?"

"I tell you I saw the first part of it myself, and unless you can give
me a good reason for not believing the second, I'm inclined to swallow
it down whole, Miss Cameron--I beg your pardon, White, I mean. One gets
real confused in names, occasionally."

"Well," said Eliza, composedly, preparing to leave him, "I can't say I
understand it, Mr. Harkness, but I must say it sounds too hard for me to
believe."

He looked after her with intense curiosity in his eyes, and in the next
few days returned to the subject in her presence again and again,
repeating to her all the comments that were made on the story in the
bar-room, but he could not rouse her from an appearance of cheerful
unconcern.

Another item appeared in the papers; the old man called Cameron had been
brought before the magistrates at Quebec for some street disturbance of
which he appeared to have been the innocent cause.

Upon this Cyril Harkness took a whim into his head, which he made known
to all his friends in the place, and then to Eliza--a most extraordinary
whim, for it was nothing less than to go down to Quebec, and take the
street preacher under his own protection.

"I feel as if I had a sort of responsibility," said he, "for I was at
the very beginning of this whole affair, and saw the house where he had
lived, and I got real well acquainted with his partner, who no doubt had
ill-treated him. I saw the place where a daughter of his perished too,
and now he's got so near up here as this, I can't bear to think of that
old man being ill-treated and having no one to look after him. I'm going
right down to Quebec by the Saturday-night train, an' I'll be back
Monday morning if I can persuade the old gentleman to come right here
where I can look after him. I reckon there's room in the Harmon house
for both him and me, an' I reckon, if he's got anything particularly
powerful to say in the way of religion, it won't do this little town any
harm to hear it."

He had said all this to Eliza.

"Don't!" she cried in great surprise, but with determined opposition. "I
shall never think you have any sense again if you do such a foolish and
wicked thing."

"Why now, Miss White, as to losing your good opinion, I didn't know as
I'd been fortunate enough to get it yet; and as to its being wicked, I
don't see how you make _that_ out."

"It's meddling with what you have nothing to do with."

"Well now, what will you give me not to go?" He said these words, as he
said most of his words, in a languid, lingering way, but he turned and
faced her with an abrupt glance.

He and she were standing at the head of the first staircase in the
unfurnished corridor. It was the middle of the afternoon; no one chanced
to be passing. He, light-moving, pretty fellow as he was, leaned on the
wall and glanced at her sharply. She stood erect, massive, not only in
her form, but in the strength of will that she opposed to his, and a red
flush slowly mantled her pale, immobile face.

"I don't know what you want of me," she said. "Money's the thing you
love, and I haven't any money; but whether I had or not, I would give
you _nothing_." She turned at the last word.

Then Harkness, taking the chiding and jeers of all his companions
good-naturedly, and giving them precisely the same excuses that he had
given to Eliza, started for Quebec.

What was more remarkable, he actually brought back the old preacher with
him--brought him, or rather led him, to the Harmon house, for the old
man was seemingly quite passive. This was an accomplished fact when
Eliza and Harkness met again.




CHAPTER IX.


The day after his coming, and the next, for some reason the old stranger
called Cameron remained in the brick house to which Harkness had brought
him. The young man, impatient for novelty, if for nothing else, began to
wonder if he had sunk into some stupor of mind from which he would not
emerge. He had heard of him as a preacher, and as the conceptions of
ordinary minds are made up only of the ideas directly presented to them,
he had a vague notion that this old man continually preached. As it was,
he went to his work at the hotel on the third morning, and still left
his strange guest in the old house, walking about in an empty room,
munching some bread with his keen white teeth, his bright eyes half shut
under their bushy brows.

Harkness came to the hotel disconcerted, and, meeting Eliza near the
dining-room, took off his hat in sullen silence. Several men in the room
called after him as he passed. "How's your dancing bear, Harkness?"
"How's the ghost you're befriending?" "How's your coffin-gentleman?"
There was a laugh that rang loudly in the large, half-empty room.

After Harkness had despatched two morning visitors, however, and was
looking out of his window, as was usual in his idle intervals, he
noticed several errand-boys gazing up the road, and in a minute an
advancing group came within his view, old Cameron walking down the
middle of the street hitting the ground nervously with his staff, and
behind him children of various sizes following rather timidly. Every now
and then the old man emitted some sound--a shout, a word of some sort,
not easily understood. It was this that had attracted the following of
children, and was very quickly attracting the attention of every one in
the street. One or two men, and a woman with a shawl over her head, were
coming down the sidewalks the same way and at about the same pace as the
central group, and Harkness more than suspected that they had diverged
from the proper course of their morning errands out of curiosity. He
took more interest in the scene than seemed consistent with his slight
connection with the principal actor. He made an excited movement toward
his door, and his hand actually trembled as he opened it. Eliza was
usually about the passages at this time of day. He called her name.

She put her head over the upper bannister.

"Come down and see Lazarus Cameron!"

"I'll come in a minute."

He saw through the railing of the bannisters the movement of some linen
she was folding.

"He'll be past in a minute." Harkness's voice betrayed his excitement
more than he desired.

Eliza dropped the linen and came downstairs rather quickly. Harkness
returned to his window; she came up beside him. The inner window was
open, only one pane was between them and the outer air. In yards all
round cocks were crowing, as, on a mild day in the Canadian March, cocks
will crow continually. Light snow of the last downfall lay on the
opposite roofs, and made the hills just seen behind them very white. The
whole winter's piles of snow lay in the ridges between the footpaths and
the road. Had it not been that some few of the buildings were of brick,
and that on one or two of the wooden ones the white paint was worn off,
the wide street would have been a picture painted only in different
tones of white. But the clothes of the people were of dark colour, and
the one vehicle in sight was a blue box-sleigh, drawn by a shaggy pony.

Eliza was conscious of the picture only as one is conscious of
surroundings upon which the eye does not focus. Her sight fastened on
the old man, now almost opposite the hotel. He was of a broad, powerful
frame that had certainly once possessed great strength. Even now he was
strong; he stooped a little, but he held his head erect, and the
well-formed, prominent features of his weather-beaten face showed forth
a tremendous force of some sort; even at that distance the brightness of
his eyes was visible under bushy brows, grey as his hair. His clothes
were of the most ordinary sort, old and faded. His cap was of the
commonest fur; he grasped it now in his hand, going bareheaded. Tapping
the ground with his staff, he walked with nervous haste, looking upward
the while, as blind men often look.

Harkness did not look much out of the window; he was inspecting Eliza's
face: and when she turned to him he gave her a glance that, had she been
a weaker woman, would have been translated into many words--question and
invective; but her silence dominated him. It was a look also that, had
he been a stronger man, he would have kept to himself, for it served no
purpose but to betray that there was some undercurrent of antagonism to
her in his mind.

"You're very queer to-day, Mr. Harkness," she remarked, and with that
she withdrew.

But when the door closed she was not really gone to the young man. He
saw her as clearly with his mind as a moment before he had seen her with
his eyes, and he pondered now the expression on her face when she looked
out of the window. It told him, however, absolutely nothing of the
secret he was trying to wring from her.

There was no square in Chellaston, no part of the long street much
wider than any other or more convenient as a public lounging place.
Here, in front of the hotel, was perhaps the most open spot, and
Harkness hoped the old man would make a stand here and preach; but he
turned aside and went down a small side street, so Harkness, who had no
desire to identify himself too publicly with his strange _protégé_, was
forced to leave to the curiosity of others the observation of his
movements.

The curiosity of people in the street also seemed to abate. The more
respectable class of people are too proud to show interest in the same
way that gaping children show it, and most people in this village
belonged to the more respectable class. Those who had come to doors or
windows on the street retired from them just as Harkness had done; those
out in the street went on their ways, with the exception of two men of
the more demonstrative sort, who went and looked down the alley after
the stranger, and called out jestingly to some one in it.

Then the old man stopped, and, with his face still upturned, as if blind
to everything but pure light, took up his position on one side of the
narrow street. He had only gone some forty paces down it. A policeman,
coming up in front of the hotel, looked on, listening to the jesters.
Then he and they drew a little nearer, the children who had followed
stood round, one man appeared at the other end of the alley. On either
side the houses were high and the windows few, but high up in the hotel
there was a small window that lighted a linen press, and at that small
window, with the door of the closet locked on the inside, Eliza stood
unseen, and looked and listened.

The voice of the preacher was loud, unnatural also in its rising and
falling, the voice of a deaf man who could not hear his own tones. His
words were not what any one expected. This was the sermon he preached:

"In a little while He that shall come will not tarry. Many shall say to
Him in that day, 'Lord, Lord,' and He shall say, 'Depart from me; I
never knew you.'"

His voice, which had become very vehement, suddenly sank, and he was
silent.

"Upon my word, that's queer," said one of the men who stood near the
policeman.

"He's staring mad," said the other man in plain clothes. "He should be
in the asylum."

This second man went away, but the first speaker and the policeman drew
still nearer, and the congregation did not diminish, for the man who
left was replaced by the poor woman with the checked shawl over her head
who had first followed the preacher up the street, and who now appeared
standing listening at a house corner. She was well known in the village
as the wife of a drunkard.

The old man began speaking again in softer voice, but there was the same
odd variety of tones which had exciting effect.

"Why do you defraud your brother? Why do you judge your brother? Why do
you set at nought your brother? Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of
these, you do it to Him."

His voice died away again. His strong face had become illumined, and he
brought down his gaze toward the listeners.

"If any man shall do His will he shall know of the doctrine. He will
know--yes, know--for there is no other knowledge as sure as this."

Then, in such a colloquial way that it almost seemed as if the listeners
themselves had asked the question, he said: "What shall we do that we
may work the works of God?"

And he smiled upon them, and held out his hands as if in blessing, and
lifted up his face again to heaven, and cried, "This is the work of God,
that ye believe on Him Whom He hath sent."

As if under some spell, the few to whom he had spoken stood still, till
the preacher slowly shifted himself and began to walk away by the road
he had come.

Some of the children went after him as before. The poor woman
disappeared behind the house she had been standing against. The
policeman and his companion began to talk, looking the while at the
object of their discussion.

Eliza, in the closet, leaned her head against the pile of linen on an
upper shelf, and was quite still for some time.




CHAPTER X.


Principal Trenholme had been gone from Chellaston a day or two on
business. When he returned one evening, he got into his smart little
sleigh which was in waiting at the railway station, and was driving
himself home, when his attention was arrested and his way blocked by a
crowd in front of the hotel. He did not force a way for his horse, but
drew up, listening and looking. It was a curious picture. The wide
street of snow and the houses were dusky with night, except where light
chanced to glow in doorways and windows. The collection of people was
motley. Above, all the sky seemed brought into insistent notice as a
roof or covering, partly because pale pink streamers of flickering
northern light were passing over it, partly because the leader of the
crowd, an old man, by looking upwards, drew the gaze of all to follow
whither his had gone.

Trenholme heard his loud voice calling: "Behold He shall come again, and
every eye shall look on Him Whom they have pierced. Blessed are those
servants whom their Lord when He cometh shall find watching."

The scene was foreign to life in Chellaston. Trenholme, who had no mind
to stand on the skirts of the crowd, thrust his reins into the hand of
his rustic groom, and went up the broad steps of the hotel, knowing that
he would there have his inquiries most quickly answered.

In the bar-room about thirty men were crowded about the windows, looking
at the preacher, not listening, for the double glass, shut out the
preacher's voice. They were interested, debating loudly among
themselves, and when they saw who was coming up the steps, they said to
each other and the landlord, "Put it to the Principal." There were men
of all sorts in this group, most of them very respectable; but when
Trenholme stood inside the door, his soft hat shading his shaven face,
his fur-lined driving coat lying back from the finer cloth it covered,
he was a very different sort of man from any of them. He did not know
that it was merely by the influence of this difference (of which perhaps
he was less conscious than any of them) that they were provoked to
question him. Hutchins, the landlord, sat at the back of the room on his
high office chair.

"Good evening, Principal," said he. "Glad to see you in the place again,
sir. Have you heard of a place called Turrifs Road Station? 'Tain't on
our map."

Trenholme gave the questioner a severe glance of inquiry. The scene
outside, and his proposed inquiry concerning it, passed from his mind,
for he had no means of divining that this question referred to it. The
place named was known to him only by his brother's letter. The men, he
saw, were in a rough humour, and because of the skeleton in his closet
he jumped to the thought that something had transpired concerning his
brother, something that caused them to jeer. He did not stop to think
what it might be. His moral nature stiffened itself to stand for truth
and his brother at all costs.

"I know the place;" he said.

His words had a stern impressiveness which startled his hearers. They
were only playing idly with the pros and cons of a newspaper tale; but
this man, it would seem, treated the matter very seriously.

Hutchins had no desire to annoy, but he did not know how to desist from
further question, and, supposing that the story of Cameron was known, he
said in a more ingratiating way:

"Well, but, sir, you don't want us to believe the crazy tale of the
station hand there, that he saw the dead walk?"

Again there was that in Trenholme's manner which astonished his
hearers. Had they had the slightest notion they were offending him, they
would have known it was an air of offence, but, not suspecting that,
they could only judge that he thought the subject a solemn one.

"I would have you believe his word, certainly. He is a man of honour."

A facetious man here took his pipe out of his mouth and winked to his
companions. "You've had private information to that effect, I suppose,
Principal."

Very haughtily Trenholme assented.

He had not been in the room more than a few moments when all this had
passed. He was handed a newspaper, which gave still another account of
the remote incident which was now at last ticklings the ears of the
public, and he was told that the man Cameron was supposed to be the
preacher who was now without. He heard what part Harkness had played,
and he saw that his brother's name was not mentioned in the public
print, was apparently not known. He took a little pains to be genial (a
thing he was certainly not in the habit of doing in that room), in order
to dissipate any impression his offended manner might have given, and
went home.

It is not often a man estimates at all correctly the effect of his own
words and looks; he would need to be a trained actor to do this, and,
happily, most men are not their own looking-glasses. Trenholme thought
he had behaved in a surly and stiff manner, and, had the subject been
less unpleasant, he would rather have explained at once where and who
his brother was. This was his remembrance of his call at the hotel, but
the company there saw it differently.

No sooner had he gone than the facetious man launched his saw-like voice
again upon the company. "He had private information on the subject, _he
had_."

"There's one sure thing," said a stout, consequential man; "he believes
the whole thing, the Principal does."

A commercial traveller who was acquainted with the place put in his
remark. "There isn't a man in town that I wouldn't have expected to see
gulled sooner."

To which a thin, religious man, who, before Trenholme entered, had
leaned to the opinion that there were more things in the world than they
could understand, now retorted that it was more likely that the last
speaker was gulled himself. Principal Trenholme, he asserted, wasn't a
man to put his faith in anything without proofs.

Chellaston was not a very gossiping place. For the most part the people
had too much to do, and were too intent upon their own business, to take
much trouble to retail what they chanced to hear; but there are some
things which, as the facetious man observed, the dead in their graves
would gossip about if they could; and one of these themes, according to
him, was that Principal Trenholme believed there had been something
supernatural about the previous life of the old preacher. The story went
about, impressing more particularly the female portion of the community,
but certainly not without influence upon the males also. Portly men, who
a week before would have thought themselves compromised by giving a
serious thought to the narrative, now stood still in the street to get
the chance of hearing the preacher, and felt that in doing so they were
wrapped in all the respectability of the cloth of Trenholme's coats, and
standing firm on the letters of his Oxford degree and upon all the
learning of the New College.

They did not believe the story themselves. No, there was a screw loose
somewhere; but Principal Trenholme had some definite knowledge of the
matter. The old man had been in a trance, a very long trance, to say the
least of it, and had got up a changed creature. Principal Trenholme was
not prepared to scout the idea that he had been nearer to death than
falls to the lot of most living men.

It will be seen that the common sense of the speakers shaped crude
rumour to suit themselves. Had they left it crude, it would have died.
It is upon the nice sense of the probable and possible in talkative men
that mad rumour feeds.

As for Trenholme, he became more or less aware of the report that had
gone out about his private knowledge of old Cameron, but it was less
rather than more. The scholastic life of the college was quite apart
from the life of the village, and in the village those who talked most
about Cameron were the least likely to talk to Trenholme on any subject.
His friends were not those who were concerned with the rumour; but even
when he was taxed with it, the whole truth that he knew was no apparent
contradiction. He wrote to Alec, making further inquiries, but Alec had
retreated again many miles from the post. To be silent and ignore the
matter seemed to be his only course.

Thus it happened that, because Harkness housed him in the hope of
working upon Eliza, and because Trenholme happened to have had a brother
at Turrifs Station, the strange old preacher found a longer resting
place and a more attentive hearing in the village of Chellaston than he
would have been likely to find elsewhere.




CHAPTER XI.


There was in Chellaston a very small and poor congregation of the sect
called Adventists. The sect was founded by one Miller, a native of New
York State, a great preacher and godly man, who, from study of prophecy,
became convinced that the Second Coming of the Lord would take place in
the year 1843. He obtained a large following; and when the time passed
and his expectation was not fulfilled, this body, instead of melting
away, became gradually greater, and developed into a numerous and rather
influential sect. In the year of Miller's prediction, 1843, there had
been among his followers great excitement, awe and expectation; and the
set time passed, and the prediction had no apparent fulfilment, but lay
to every one's sight, like a feeble writing upon the sands of fantasy,
soon effaced by the ever flowing tide of natural law and orderly
progression. Now, that this was the case and that yet this body of
believers did not diminish but increased, did not become demoralised but
grew in moral strength, did not lose faith but continued to cherish a
more ardent hope and daily expectation of the Divine appearing, is no
doubt due to the working of some law which we do not understand, and
which it would therefore be unscientific to pronounce upon.

The congregation of Adventists in Chellaston, however, was not
noticeable for size or influence. Some in the neighbourhood did not even
know that this congregation existed, until it put forth its hand and
took to itself the old preacher who was called Lazarus Cameron. They
understood his language as others did not; they believed that he had
come with a message for them; they often led him into their
meeting-place and into their houses; and he, perhaps merely falling into
the mechanical habit of going where he had been led, appeared in his own
fashion to consort with them.

There, was something weird about the old preacher, although he was
healthy, vigorous, and kindly, clean-looking in body and soul; but the
aspect of any one is in the eye of the beholder. This man, whose mind
was blank except upon one theme, whose senses seemed lost except at rare
times, when awakened perhaps by an effort of his will, or perhaps by an
unbidden wave of psychical sympathy with some one to whom he was drawn
by unseen union, awoke a certain feeling of sensational interest in most
people when they approached him. The public were in the main divided
into two classes in their estimate of him--those who felt the force of
his religion, and argued therefrom that his opinions were to be
respected; and those who believed that his mind was insane, and argued
therefrom that his religion was either a fancy or a farce. At first
there was a great deal of talk about whether he should be put in a
madhouse or not; some called Harkness a philanthropist, and others
called him a meddling fellow. Soon, very soon, there was less talk:
that which is everybody's business is nobody's business. Harkness
continued to befriend him in the matter of food and lodging; the old man
grew to be at home in the Harmon house and its neglected surroundings.
When the will to do so seized him, he went into the village and lifted
up his voice, and preached the exactions of the love of the Son of God,
proclaiming that He would come again, and that quickly.

The winter days had grown very long; the sun had passed the vernal
equinox, and yet it looked upon unbroken snowfields. Then, about the
middle of April, the snow passed quickly away in blazing sunshine, in a
thousand rivulets, in a flooded river. The roads were heavy with mud,
but the earth was left green, the bud of spring having been nurtured
beneath the kindly shelter of the snow.




CHAPTER XII.


Now came the most lovely moment of the year. All the trees were putting
forth new leaves, leaves so young, so tiny as yet, that one could see
the fowls of the air when they lodged in the branches--no small
privilege, for now the orange oriole, and the bluebird, and the
primrose-coloured finch, were here, there, and everywhere; and more
rarely the scarlet tanager. A few days before and they had not come; a
few days more and larger leaves would hide them perfectly. Just at this
time, too, along the roadsides, big hawthorn shrubs and wild plum were
in blossom, and in the sheltered fields the mossy sod was pied with
white and purple violets, whose flowerets so outstripped their
half-grown leaves that blue and milky ways were seen in woodland glades.

With the sense of freedom that comes with the thus sudden advent of the
young summer, Winifred Rexford strayed out of the house one morning.
She did not mean to go, and when she went through the front gate she
only meant to go as far as the first wild plum-tree, to see if the white
bloom was turning purple yet, as Principal Trenholme had told her it
would. When she got to the first plum-tree she went on to the second.
Winifred wore a grey cotton dress; it was short, not yet to her ankles,
and her broad hat shaded her from the sun. When she reached the second
group of plum-trees she saw a scarlet tanager sitting on a telegraph
pole--for along the margin of the road, standing among uncut grass and
flowers and trees, tall barkless stumps were set, holding the wires on
high. Perhaps they were ugly things, but a tree whose surface is uncut
is turned on Nature's lathe; at any rate, to the child the poles were
merely a part of the Canadian road, and the scarlet tanager showed its
plumage to advantage as it sat on the bare wood. There was no turning
back then; even Sophia would have neglected her morning task to see a
tanager! She crept up under it, and the bird, like a streak of red
flame, shot forth from the pole, to a group of young pine trees further
on.

So Winifred strayed up the road about a quarter of a mile, till she came
to the gate of the Harmon garden. The old house, always half concealed,
was quickly being entirely hidden by the massive Curtains the young
leaves were so busily weaving. The tanager turned in here, as what bird
would not when it spied a tract of ground where Nature was riotously
decking a bower with the products of all the roots and seeds of a
deserted garden! There was many a gap in the weather-beaten fence where
the child might have followed, but she dare not, for she was in great
awe of the place, because the preacher who was said to have died and
come to life again lived there. She only stood and looked through the
fence, and the tanager--having flitted near the house--soared and
settled among the feathery boughs of a proud acacia tree; she had to
look across half an acre of bushes to see him, and then he was so high
and so far that it seemed (as when looking at the stars) she did not
see him, but only the ray of scarlet light that travelled from him
through an atmosphere of leaflets. It was very trying, for any one knows
that it is _something_ to be able to say that you have come to close
quarters with a scarlet tanager.

Winifred, stooping and looking through the fence, soon heard the college
bell jangle; she knew that it was nine o'clock, and boys and masters
were being ingathered for morning work. The college buildings in their
bare enclosure stood on the other side of the road. Winifred would have
been too shy to pass the playground while the boys were out, but now
that every soul connected with the place would be indoors, she thought
she might go round the sides of the Harmon garden and see the red bird
much nearer from a place she thought of.

This place was nothing but a humble, disused, and untidy burying-ground,
that occupied the next lot in the narrow strip of land that here for a
mile divided road and river. Winifred ran over the road between the
Harmon garden and the college fence, and, climbing the log fence, stood
among the quiet gravestones that chronicled the past generations of
Chellaston. Here grass and wild flowers grew apace, and close by ran the
rippling river reflecting the violet sky above. A cemetery, every one
knows, is a place where any one may walk or sit as long as he likes, but
Winifred was surprised to find Principal Trenholme's housekeeper there
before her; and moreover, this staid, sad woman was in the very place
Winifred was going to, for she was looking through the fence that
enclosed the Harmon garden.

"Good morning, Mrs. Martha," said Winifred politely, concealing her
surprise.

"I've been milking," said the sad woman, glancing slightly at a pail of
foaming milk that she had set for greater security between two
grave-heaps.

Winifred came and took her place beside the housekeeper, and they both
looked through the paling of the Harmon property.

The tanager was still on the acacia, from this nearer point looking like
a great scarlet blossom of some cactus, so intense was the colour; but
Winifred was distracted from her interest in the bird by seeing the old
house more plainly than she had ever seen it before. It stood, a large
substantial dwelling, built not without the variety of outline which
custom has given to modern villas, but with all its doors and windows on
this side fastened by wooden shutters, that, with one or two exceptions,
were nailed up with crossbeams and overgrown with cobwebs. Winifred
surveyed it with an interested glance.

"Did you come to see him?" whispered the housekeeper.

Winifred's eye reverted to the tanager of which, on the whole, her mind
was more full. "Yes"--she whispered the word for fear of startling it.

"I should think yer ma would want you in of a morning, or Miss Sophia
would be learning you yer lessons. When I was your age--But"--sadly--"it
stands to reason yer ma, having so many, and the servant gone, and the
cows comin' in so fast these days one after t'other, that they can't
learn you much of anything reg'lar."

Winifred acquiesced politely. She was quite conscious of the
shortcomings in the system of home education as it was being applied to
her in those days; no critic so keen in these matters as the pupil of
fourteen!

"Well now, it's a pity," said the housekeeper, sincerely, "and they do
say yer ma does deplorable bad cooking, and yer sisters that's older
than you aren't great hands at learning." The housekeeper sat down on a
grave near the paling, as if too discouraged at the picture she had
drawn to have energy to stand longer.

Winifred looked at the tanager, at the housekeeper, and round her at the
happy morning. This sad-eyed, angular woman always seemed to her more
like a creature out of a solemn story, or out of a stained-glass window,
than an ordinary person whose comments could be offensive. They had
talked together before, and each in her own way took a serious interest
in the other.

"Sister Sophia has learned to cook very nicely," said the child, but not
cheerfully. It never seemed to her quite polite to be cheerful when she
was talking to Mrs. Martha.

"Yes, child; but she can't do everything"--with a sigh--"she's put upon
dreadful as it is." Then in a minute, "What made you think of coming
here after him?"

"I think it's so wonderful." The child's eyes enlarged as she peered
through the fence again at the scarlet bird.

"Lolly, child! I'm glad to hear you say that," said Mrs. Martha,
strongly. "He's far above and beyond--he's a very holy man."

Winifred perceived now that she was talking of old Cameron, and she
thought it more polite not to explain that she had misunderstood.
Indeed, all other interests in her mind became submerged in wonder
concerning the old man as thus presented.

"He's mad, isn't he?"

"No, he isn't."

"I knew he was very good, but couldn't he be good and mad too?"

"No," said Mrs. Martha; and the serious assertion had all the more
effect because it stood alone, unpropped by a single reason.

"When I've milked the Principal's special cow I often come here of a
morning, and sometimes I see the saint walking under the trees. I don't
mind telling you, child, for you've a head older than yer years, but you
mustn't speak of it again. I'd not like folks to know."

"I won't tell," whispered Winifred, eagerly. She felt inexpressibly
honoured by the confidence. "Do you think he'll come out now?" Awe and
excited interest, not unmingled with fear, were taking possession of
her. She crouched down beside the solemn woman, and looked through at
the house and all its closed windows. The hedge was alive with birds
that hopped and piped unnoticed, even the scarlet bird was forgotten.

"Mrs. Martha," she whispered, "I heard papa say Cameron believed that
our Saviour was soon coming back again, and only those people would go
with Him who were watching and waiting. Mr. Trenholme said every one was
mad who thought that."

"There's a sight of people will tell you you're mad if you're only
fervent."

The child did not know precisely what "fervent" meant, but she began to
doubt Trenholme's positive knowledge on the subject. "Do you believe the
end of the world's coming so soon?"

"Lor, child! what do I know but the world might go on a good bit after
that? I can't tell from my Bible whether the Lord will take us who are
looking for Him up to His glory for a while, or whether He'll appoint us
a time of further trial while He's conquering the earth; but I do know
it wouldn't matter much which, after we'd heard Him speak to each of us
by name and seen His face." The sad woman looked positively happy while
she spoke.

"Oh, Mrs. Martha, are _you_ watching like that? But how can you all the
time--you must sleep and work, you know?"

"Yes, child; but the heart can watch; and He knows we must sleep and
work; and for that reason I'm not so sure but, if we're faithful, He
might in mercy give us a word beforehand to let us know when to be
expecting more particularly. I don't know, you know, child; I'm only
saying what might be."

"But what makes you think so, Mrs. Martha?"

Winifred was quick-witted enough to perceive something withheld.

"There's things that it's not right for any one to know but those as
will reverence them."

"Oh, I will, I will," said Winifred, clasping her hands.

"As I understand it, Mr. Cameron's had no assurance yet."

Winifred did not ask what this meant. She felt that she was listening
to words that, if mysterious, were to be pondered in silence.

"You know the poor thing whose husband is always tipsy--drunken Job they
call him--that you've seen listening to Mr. Cameron?--and that weakly
Mr. McNider, with the little boy?"

"Yes," assented Winifred.

"He told them," whispered the housekeeper, "that when he was agonising
in prayer it came into his mind to _wait until August this year_. He
hasn't any assurance what it may have meant; but that may come later,
and p'r'aps the days may be told him; and he's awaiting, and we're
awaiting too. There, that's all I have to tell, child, and I must be
going."

She gathered her lean figure up from the hillock, and took up her pail.

As for the girl Winifred, a terrible feeling of fear had come over her.
All the bright world of sun and flowers seemed suddenly overshadowed by
the lowering cloud of an awful possibility. She would no more have
allowed herself to be left alone in that sunny corner of the glad spring
morning than she would have remained alone where visible danger beset
her. Her face bathed in the sudden tears that came so easily to her
girlish eyes, she sprang like a fawn after her companion and grasped her
skirt as she followed.

"How you take on!" sighed the woman, turning. "Do you mean to say you
ain't, glad?"

"I'm frightened," gasped the girl.

"And you been confirmed this spring! What did it mean to you if you
ain't glad there's ever such a little chance of perhaps seeing Him
before the year's out."

They both climbed the fence, handing over the milk-pail between them.
When they had got on to the road and must part, the housekeeper spoke.

"I tell you what it is, Winifred Rexford; we've not one of us much to
bring Him in the way of service. If there's one thing more than another
I'm fond of it's to have my kitchen places to myself, but I've often
thought I ought to ask yer ma to send one of you over every day to learn
from me how a house ought to be kept and dinner cooked. Ye'd learn more
watching me in a month, you know, than ye'd learn with yer ma a fussin'
round in six years. Don't tell yer ma it's a trial to me, but just ask
her if she'll send you over for an hour or two every morning."

"Thank you," said Winifred, reluctantly. "Do you think I _ought_ to
come?"

"Well, I'd want to be a bit more use to my ma if I was you."

"It's very kind of you," acknowledged Winifred; "but--but--Mrs. Martha,
if it was true about this--_this August,_ you know--what would be the
use of learning?"

"Child," said the woman, and if her voice was sad it was also vehement,
"them as are mad in religion are them as thinks doing the duty of each
day for _His_ sake ain't enough without seeing where's the _use_ of
doing what He puts to our hand."

"Mrs. Martha," besought Winifred, timidly, "I--don't like cooking; but
do you think if I did this I should perhaps get to be glad to think--be
glad to think our Saviour might be coming again so soon?"

"To love Him is of His grace, and you must get it direct from Him; but
it's wonderful how doing the best we can puts heart into our prayers."

The scarlet tanager rose and flew from tree to tree like a darting
flame, but Winifred had forgotten him.




CHAPTER XIII.


Midsummer came with its culmination of heat and verdure; and a great
epoch it was in the Chellaston year, for it brought the annual influx of
fashionable life from Quebec and Montreal. To tell the plain truth, this
influx only consisted of one or two families who had chosen this as a
place in which to build summer residences, and some hundred other people
who, singly or in parties, took rooms in the hotel for the hot season;
but it made a vast difference in the appearance of the quiet place to
have several smart phaetons, and one carriage and pair, parading its
roads, and to have its main street enlivened by the sight of the gay
crowd on the hotel verandahs.

"Now," said Miss Bennett, calling upon Miss Rexford, "there will be a
few people to talk to, and we shall see a little life. These people are
really a very good sort; you'll begin to have some enjoyment."

The Rexfords had indeed been advertised more than once of the advantage
that would accrue to them from the coming of the town-folks, and this
chiefly by Trenholme himself.

"The place will seem far different," he had said, "when you have passed
one of our summers. We really have some delightful pleasure parties here
in summer." And another time he had said, "When Mrs. Brown and her
daughters come to their house on the hill I want you to know them. They
are such true-hearted people. All our visitors are genuine Canadians,
not immigrants as we and our neighbours are; and yet, do you know, they
are so nice you would _hardly_ know them from English people. Oh, they
add to our social life very much when they come!"

He had said so many things of this sort, ostensibly to Mrs. Rexford,
really to Sophia, who was usually a party to his calls on her mother,
that he had inspired in them some of his own pleasurable anticipation.
It was not until the summer visitors were come that they realised how
great was the contrast between their own bare manner of living and the
easy-going expenditure of these people, who were supposed to be such
choice acquaintances for them. Everything is relative. They had not been
mortified by any comparison of their own circumstances and those of
Chellaston families, because, on one account and another, there had
always appeared to be something to equalise the difference. Either their
neighbours, if better off, had not long ago begun as meagrely, or else
they lacked those advantages of culture or social standing which the
Rexfords could boast. Such are the half conscious refuges of our
egotism. But with the introduction of this new element it was different.
Not that they drew any definite comparison between themselves and their
new neighbours--for things that are different cannot be compared, and
the difference on all points was great; but part of Trenholme's prophecy
took place; the life in that pleasant land did appear more and more
desirable as they witnessed the keen enjoyment that these people, who
were not workers, took in it--only (Trenholme and Miss Bennett seemed to
have overlooked this) the leisure and means for such enjoyment were not
theirs.

"Oh, mamma," said Blue and Red, "we saw the Miss Browns driving on the
road, and they had such pretty silver-grey frocks, with feathers in
their hats to match. We wish we could have feathers to match our
frocks."

And later Sophia, seeking her step-mother, found her in her own room,
privately weeping. The rare sight rent her heart.

"If I am their mother" (she began her explanation hurriedly, wiping her
tears) "I can say truthfully they're as pretty a pair of girls as may be
seen on a summer day. You had your turn, Sophia; it's very noble of you
to give up so much for us now, but it can't be said that you didn't have
your turn of gaiety."

Now Blue and Red were not in need of frocks, for before they left
England their mother had stocked their boxes as though she was never to
see a draper's shop again. But then, she had been in a severely
utilitarian mood, and when she cut out the garments it had not occurred
to her that Fashion would ever come across the fields of a Canadian
farm.

Sophia rallied her on this mistake now, but resolutely abstracted
certain moneys from the family purse and purchased for the girls white
frocks. She did not omit blue and red ribbons to distinguish between the
frocks and between the wearers. Trenholme had remarked of the girls
lately that neither would know which was herself and which the other if
the badge of colour were removed, and Sophia had fallen into the way of
thinking a good deal of all he said. She was busy weighing him in the
scales of her approval and disapproval, and the scales, she hardly knew
why, continued to balance with annoying nicety.

For the making up of the frocks, she was obliged to apply for advice to
Eliza, who was the only patron of dressmakers with whom she was
intimate.

"I think, on the whole, she is satisfactory," said Eliza of one whom she
had employed. "She made the dress I have on, for instance; it fits
pretty well, you see."

Sophia did not resent this. Eliza had had a rocket-like career of
success in the hotel which pleased and amused her; but she felt that to
forgive the Brown family for having a carriage and pair required
large-mindedness while her father's carriage still stood in the
unfurnished drawing-room, and even Mrs. Rexford had given up hopes of
finding horses to draw it.

Very soon after, their annual arrival, Mr. and Mrs. Brown and their two
daughters came kindly to call on the new English family. Principal
Trenholme found time to run over by appointment and introduce his
friends. The visitors were evidently generous-minded, wholesome sort of
people, with no high development of the critical faculty, travelled,
well-read, merry, and kind. Sophia confessed to herself after the first
interview that, had it not been for their faulty degree of wealth and
prosperity, she would have liked them very much. Mrs. Bennett, whose
uncle had been an admiral, considered them desirable friends for her
daughter, and this was another reason why, out of pure contrariness,
Sophia found liking difficult; but she determined for Trenholme's sake
to try--a good resolution which lasted until she had taken Blue and Red
to return the call, but no longer.

"And Miss Rexford," said good Mrs. Brown, "we hear you have had the
privilege of knowing Principal Trenholme for a long time before he came
out here. He is a very _good_ man; for so comparatively young a man, and
one, as you might say, with so many worldly advantages, I think it is
perhaps remarkable that he is so spiritually-minded. I count it a
blessing that we have the opportunity of attending his church during the
summer months." Simple sense and perfect sincerity were written on every
line of Mrs. Brown's motherly face.

"He really is very good," said one of the daughters. "Do you know, Miss
Rexford, we have a friend who has a son at the college. He really went
to the college a _very_ naughty boy, no one could manage him; and he's
so changed--such a nice fellow, and doing so well. His mother says she
could thank Principal Trenholme on her knees, if it was only the
conventional thing to do."

"He is a most devoted Christian," added Mrs. Brown, using the religious
terms to which she was accustomed, "and I believe he makes it a matter
of prayer that no young man should leave his college without deepened
religious life. I believe in prayer as a power; don't you, Miss
Rexford?"

"Yes," replied Sophia, tersely. She did not feel at that moment as if
she wanted to discuss the point.

"And then he's so jolly," put in the youngest Miss Brown, who was a
hearty girl. "That's the sort of religion for me, the kind that can
rollick--of course I mean _out of church_," she added naďvely.

Blue and Red sat shyly upon their chairs and listened to this discourse.
It might have been Greek for all the interest they took in it.

As for Sophia, it could not be said to lack interest for her--it was
very plain, she thought, why Robert Trenholme thought so highly of the
Browns.

There was a youth belonging to this family who was a year or two older
than Blue and Red. His mother, sent for him to come into the room, and
introduced him to them. He was a nice youth, but precocious; he said to
them:

"I suppose you think Chellaston is a very pretty place, but I'll tell
you what our natural beauties lack as yet. It is such a literature as
you have in England, which has done so much to endear the wildflowers
and birds and all natural objects there to the heart of the people. Our
Canadian flora and fauna are at present unsung, and therefore, to a
large extent, unobserved by the people, for I think the chief use of the
poet is to interpret nature to the people--don't you?"

Blue ventured "yes," and Red lisped in confusion, "Do you think so,
really?" but as for any opinion on the subject they had none. Sophia,
fearing that her sisters would be cast aside as hopeless dunces, was
obliged to turn partially from the praise that was being lavished on
Trenholme to make some pithy remark upon the uses of the poet.

Sophia, although half conscious of her own unreasonableness, decided now
that the Browns might go one way and she another; but she was indebted
to this visit for a clue in analysing the impression Trenholme made upon
her. His new friends had called him noble; she knew now that when she
knew him ten years before he had seemed to her a more noble character.

In the next few weeks she observed that in every picnic, every pleasure
party, by land or water, Principal Trenholme was the most honoured
guest, and, indeed, the most acceptable cavalier. His holidays had come,
and he was enjoying them in spite of much work that he still exacted
from himself. She wondered at the manner in which he seemed to enjoy
them, and excused herself from participation. It was her own doing that
she stayed at home, yet, perversely, she felt neglected. She hardly knew
whether it was low spite or a heaven-born solicitude that made her feel
bitter regret at the degeneracy she began to think she saw in him.

In due time there came a pleasure party of which Trenholme was to be the
host. It was to take place in a lovely bit of wilderness ground by the
river side, at the hour of sunset and moonrise, in order that, if the
usual brilliancy attended these phenomena, the softest glories of light
might be part of the entertainment. Music was also promised. Principal
Trenholme came himself to solicit the attendance of the Miss Rexfords;
but Sophia, promising for Blue and Red, pleaded lack of time for
herself. "And I wish your scheme success," cried she, "but I need not
wish you pleasure since, as on all such occasions, you will 'sit
attentive to your own applause.'"

She felt a little vexed that he did not seem hurt by her quotation, but
only laughed. She did not know that, although the adulation he received
was sweet to him, it was only sweet that summer because he thought it
must enhance his value in her eyes. Some one tells of a lover who gained
his point by putting an extra lace on his servants' liveries; and the
savage sticks his cap with feathers: but these artifices do not always
succeed.




CHAPTER XIV.


Up the road, about a mile beyond the college and the Harmon house, there
was a wilderness of ferns and sumac trees, ending in a stately pine
grove that marked the place where road and river met. Thither Blue and
Red were sent on the evening of Trenholme's picnic. They were dressed in
their new frocks, and had been started at the time all the picnic-goers
were passing up the road. They walked alone, but they were consigned to
Mrs. Bennett's care at the place of assembly. Several carriages full of
guests passed them.

"I'm growing more shy every moment," said Blue.

"So am I," sighed Red.

Young girls will make haunting fears for themselves out of many things,
and these two were beset with a not unnatural fear of young men who
would talk to them about flora and fauna. Sophia had told them that they
looked like ninnies when they appeared not to know what people meant,
and they could not endure the thought.

Sighed Blue at last, "Do you think it would be dreadfully wicked not to
go?"

All the guests had passed them by this time, for they had loitered
sadly. It was not that they were not proud of their clothes; they were
as proud as peacocks, and minced along; but then it was enough just to
wear one's fine clothes and imagine that they might meet somebody who
would admire them.

"Oh, Blue," said Red suddenly, withholding her steps, "suppose we didn't
go, and were to walk back just a little later, don't you think we might
meet--?" There was no name, but a sympathetic understanding. It was
Harkness of whom they thought.

"I'm sure he's a great deal better looking than young Mr. Brown, and I
think it's unkind to mind the way he talks. Since Winifred had her teeth
done, I think we might just bow a little, if we met him on the road."

"I think it would be naughty," said Red, reflectively, "but nice--much
nicer than a grown-up picnic."

"Let's do it," said Blue. "We're awfully good generally; that ought to
make up."

The sunset cloud was still rosy, and the calm bright moon was riding up
the heavens when these two naughty little maidens, who had waited out of
sight of the picnic ground, judged it might be the right time to be
walking slowly home again.

"I feel convinced he won't come," said Blue, "just because we should so
much like to pass him in these frocks."

Now an evil conscience often is the rod of its own chastisement; but in
this instance there was another factor in the case, nothing less than a
little company of half tipsy men, who came along from the town,
peacefully enough, but staggering visibly and talking loud, and the
girls caught sight of them when they had come a long way from the
pleasure party and were not yet very near any house. The possibility of
passing in safety did not enter their panic-stricken minds. They no
sooner spied the men than they stepped back within the temporary shelter
of a curve in the road, speechless with terror. They heard the voices
and steps coming nearer. They looked back the long road they had come,
and perceived that down its length they could not fly. It was in this
moment of despair that a brilliant idea was born in the mind of Red. She
turned to the low open fence of the little cemetery.

"Come, we can pretend to be tombs," she cried, and whirled Blue over the
fence. They climbed and ran like a streak of light, and before the
drunkards were passing the place, the girls were well back among marble
gravestones.

Some artistic instinct warned them that two such queer monuments ought
to be widely apart to escape notice. So, in the gathering dimness, each
knelt stock still, without even the comfort of the other's proximity to
help her through the long, long, awful minutes while the roisterous
company were passing by. The men proceeded slowly; happily they had no
interest in inspecting the gravestones of the little cemetery; but had
they been gazing over the fence with eager eyes, and had their designs
been nothing short of murderous upon any monument they chanced to find
alive, the hearts of the two erring maidens could not have beat with
more intense alarm. Fear wrought in them that sort of repentance which
fear is capable of working. "Oh, we're very, very naughty; we ought to
have gone to the picnic when Sophia was so good as to buy us new
frocks," they whispered in their hearts; and the moon looked down upon
them benevolently.

The stuff of their repentance was soon to be tested, for the voice of
Harkness was heard from over the Harmon fence.

"Oh, Glorianna! there was never such sculptures. Only want wings. Hats
instead of wings is a little curious even for a funeral monument."

The two girls stood huddled together now in hasty consultation. "We
didn't mean to be sculptures," spoke up Red, defending her brilliant
idea almost before she was aware. "There's nothing but stand-up slabs
here; we thought we'd look something like them."

"We were so frightened at the men," said Blue. They approached the fence
as they spoke.

"Those men wouldn't have done you one mite of harm," said the dentist,
looking down from a height of superior knowledge, "and if they had, I'd
have come and made a clearance double quick."

They did not believe his first assertion, and doubted his ability to
have thus routed the enemy, but Blue instinctively replied, "You see, we
didn't know you were here, or _of course_ we shouldn't have been
frightened."

"Beautiful evening, isn't it?" remarked the dentist.

"Yes, but I think perhaps,"--Red spoke doubtfully--"we ought to be going
home now."

She was a little mortified to find that he saw the full force of the
suggestion.

"Yes, I suppose your mother'll be looking for you."

They both explained, merely to set him right, that this would not be the
case, as they had started to Principal Trenholme's picnic.

He asked, with great curiosity, why they were not there, and they
explained as well as they could, adding, in a little burst of
semi-confidence, "It's rather more fun to talk to you across a fence
than sit up and be grand in company."

He smiled at them good-naturedly.

"Say," said he, "if your mother let you stay out, 'twas because you were
going to be at the Trenholme party. You're not getting benefit of clergy
here, you know."

"We're going;"--loftily--"we're only waiting to be sure there's no more
drunken people."

"I was just about to remark that I'd do myself the pleasure of escorting
you."

At this they whispered together. Then, aloud--"Thank you very much, but
we're not afraid; we're often out as late in papa's fields. We're
afraid mamma wouldn't like it if you came with us."

"Wouldn't she now?" said Harkness. "Why not? Is she stuck up?"

Blue felt that a certain romance was involved in acknowledging her
parents' antipathy and her own regret.

"Rather," she faltered. "Papa and mamma are rather proud, I'm afraid."
It was a bold flight of speech; it quite took Red's breath away. "And
so,"--Blue sighed as she went on--"I'm afraid we mustn't talk to you any
more; we're very sorry. We--I'm sure--we think you are very nice."

Her feeling tone drew from him a perfectly sincere reply, "So I am; I'm
really a very nice young man. My mother brought me up real well." He
added benevolently, "If you're scared of the road, come right through my
place here, and I'll set you on your own farm double quick."

It was with pleasurable fear that the girls got through the fence with
his help. They whispered to each other their self-excuses, saying that
mamma would like them to be in their own fields as quickly as possible.

The moonlight was now gloriously bright. The shrubs of the old garden,
in full verdure, were mysteriously beautiful in the light. The old house
could be clearly seen. Harkness led them across a narrow open space in
front of it, that had once been a gravel drive, but was now almost green
with weeds and grasses. On the other side the bushes grew, as it seemed,
in great heaps, with here and there an opening, moonlit, mysterious. As
they passed quickly before the house, the girls involuntarily shied like
young horses to the further side of Harkness, their eyes glancing
eagerly for signs of the old man. In a minute they saw the door in an
opening niche at the corner of the house; on its steps sat the old
preacher, his grey hair shining, his bronzed face bathed in moonlight.
He sat peaceful and quiet, his hands clasped. Harkness next led them
through, a dark overgrown walk, and, true to his promise, brought them
at once to the other fence. He seemed to use the old paling as a gate
whenever the fancy took him. He pulled away two of the rotten soft wood
pales and helped the girls gallantly on to their father's property.

"Charmed, I'm sure, to be of use, ladies!" cried he, and he made his
bow.

On the other side of their own fence, knee-deep in dry uncut grass, they
stood together a few paces from the gap he had made, and proffered their
earnest thanks.

"Say," said Harkness, abruptly, "d'you often see Miss White up to your
house?"

"Eliza, do you mean?" said they, with just a slight intonation to
signify that they did not look upon her as a "Miss." Their further
answer represented the exact extent of their knowledge in the matter.
"She didn't come much for a good while, but last week she came to tea.
It is arranged for mamma to ask her to tea once in a while, and we're
all to try and be nice to her, because--well, our sister says, now that
people pay her attentions, she ought to have a place where she can come
to, where she can feel she has friends."

"How d'ye mean--'pay her attentions'?"

"That was what we heard sister Sophia say," they replied, pursing up
their little lips. They knew perfectly well what the phrase meant, but
they were not going to confess it. The arts of those who are on the
whole artless are very pretty.

"Say, d'ye think Miss White's got the least bit of a heart about her
anywheres?"

"We don't know exactly what you mean"--with dignity--"but one of the
ladies who boards at the hotel told mamma that Eliza _always_ behaves
_admirably_'; that's part of the reason we're having her to tea."

"Did she, though? If having about as much feeling as this fence has is
such fine behaviour--!" He stopped, apparently not knowing exactly how
to end his sentence.

The girls began to recede. The grass grew so thin and dry that they did
little harm by passing through it. It sprang up in front of their feet
as they moved backwards in their white dresses. All colour had passed
from the earth. The ripple of the river and the cry of the
whip-poor-will rose amid the murmur of the night insects.

"Do you sometimes come down here of an evening?" asked the young man.
"At sunset it's real pleasant."

"Sometimes," answered Blue. Her soft voice only just reached him.




CHAPTER XV.


So the days wore on till August. One morning Cyril Harkness lay in wait
for Eliza. It was early; none of the boarders at the hotel were down
yet. Eliza, who was always about in very good time, found him in the
corridor on the first floor. He did not often attempt to speak to her
now.

"Say," said he, gloomily, "come into my office. I've something to tell."

The gloom of his appearance, so unusual to him, gave her a presage of
misfortune. She followed him into the room of dental appliances.

He told her to sit down, and she did so. She sat on a stiff sofa against
the wall. He stood with one elbow on the back of the adjustable chair.
Behind him hung a green rep curtain, which screened a table at which he
did mechanical work. They were a handsome pair. The summer morning
filled the room with light, and revealed no flaw in their young
comeliness.

"Look here! It's January, February, March"--he went on enumerating the
months till he came to August--"that I've been hanging on here for no
other earthly reason than to inspire in you the admiration for me that
rises in me for you quite spontaneous."

"Is that all you have to say?"

"Isn't that enough--eight months out of a young man's life?"

"It's not enough to make me waste my time at this hour in the morning."

"Well, it's _not_ all, but it's what I'm going to say first; so you'll
have to listen to it for my good before you listen to the other for your
own. I've done all I could, Miss White, to win your affection."

He paused, looking at her, but she did not even look at him. She did
appear frightened, and, perceiving this, he took a tone more gentle and
pliant.

"I can't think why you won't keep company with me. I'm a real lovable
young man, if you'd only look at the thing fairly."

He had plenty of humour in him, but he did not seem to perceive the
humour of acting as showman to himself. He was evidently sincere.

"Why, now, one of my most lovable qualities is just that when I do
attach myself I find it awful hard to pull loose again. Now, that's just
what you don't like in me; but if you come to think of it, it's a real
nice characteristic. And then, again, I'm not cranky; I'm real amiable;
and you can't find a much nicer looking fellow than me. You'll be sorry,
you may believe, if you don't cast a more favourable eye toward me."

She did not reply, so he continued urging. "If it's because you're stuck
up, it must have been those poor English Rexfords put it into your head,
for you couldn't have had such ideas before you came here. Now, if
that's the barrier between us, I can tell you it needn't stand, for I
could have one of those two pretty young ladies of theirs quick as not.
If I said 'Come, my dear, let's go off by train and get married, and ask
your father's blessing after,' she'd come."

"How dare you tell me such a falsehood!" Eliza rose magnificently.

"Oh," said he, "I meet them occasionally."

She looked at him in utter disdain. She did not believe him; it was only
a ruse to attract her.

"How do you know," she asked fiercely, "what ideas I could have had or
not before I went to the Rexfords?"

"That's a part of what I was going to say next"--she sat down
again--"but I don't _want_ to hurt you, mind. I'd make it real easy for
you if you'd let me cherish you."

"What have you to say?"

"Just this--that it'll all have to come out some time; you know to what
I allude."

She did not look as if she knew.

"Upon my word!" he ejaculated admiringly, "you do beat all."

"Well, what are you talking of?" she asked.

"In this world or the next, all you've done will be made public, you
know," he replied, not without tone of menace. "But what I want to speak
about now is Father Cameron. I've got him here, and I've never regretted
the bread and shelter I give him, for he's a real nice old gentleman;
but I can't help him going to people's houses and putting ideas into
their heads--no more than the wind, I can't keep him. He's crazed, poor
old gentleman, that's what he is."

"You ought never to have brought him here."

"_You'd_ rather he'd been stoned in Quebec streets?" He looked at her
steadily. "It's because they all more than half believe that he got his
ideas when dead, and then came to life again, that he gets into harm. If
it wasn't for that tale against him he'd not have been hurt in Quebec,
and he'd not be believed by the folks here."

"I thought you believed that too."

He gave her a peculiar smile. "If you was to say right out now in public
that you knew he wasn't the man they take him for, but only a poor
maniac who don't know who he is himself, you'd put an end to the most
part of his influence."

"What do I know about it?" she asked scornfully; but, in haste to
divert him from an answer, she went on, "I don't see that he does any
harm, any way. You say yourself he's as good as can be."

"So he is, poor gentleman; but he's mad, and getting madder. I don't
know exactly what's brewing, but I tell you this, there's going to be
trouble of some sort before long."

"What sort?"

"Well, for one thing, drunken Job is calling out in the rum-hole that
he'll kill his wife if he finds her up to any more religious nonsense;
and she is up to something of that sort, and he's quite able to do it,
too. I heard him beating her the other night."

Eliza shuddered.

"I'm a kind-hearted fellow, Miss White," he went on, with feeling in his
voice. "I can't bear to feel that there's something hanging over the
heads of people like her--more than one of them perhaps--and that
they're being led astray when they might be walking straight on after
their daily avocations."

"But what can they be going to do?" she asked incredulously, but with
curious anxiety.

"Blest if I know! but I've heard that old man a-praying about what he
called 'the coming of the Lord,' and talking about having visions of
'the day and the month,' till I've gone a'most distracted, for otherwise
he does pray so beautiful it reminds me of my mother. He's talking of
'those poor sheep in the wilderness,' and 'leading them' to something.
He's mad, and there's a dozen of them ready to do any mad thing he
says."

"You ought to go and tell the ministers--tell the men of the town."

"Not I--nice fool I'd look! What in this world have I to accuse him of,
except what I've heard him praying about? I've done myself harm enough
by having him here."

"What do you want me to do then?"

"Whatever you like; I've told you the truth. There was a carter at
Turrifs drunk himself to death because of this unfortunate Mr. Cameron's
rising again--that's one murder; and there'll be another."

With that he turned on his heel and left her in his own room. He only
turned once to look in at the door again. "If _you're_ in any trouble,
I'm real soft-hearted, Eliza; I'll be real good to you, though you've
been crusty to me."

If she was in trouble then, she did not show it to him.




CHAPTER XVI.


Nothing contributes more frequently to indecision of character in the
larger concerns of existence than a life overcrowded with effort and
performance. Had Robert Trenholme not been living at too great a pace,
his will, naturally energetic, would not, during that spring and summer,
have halted as it did between his love for Sophia Rexford and his shame
concerning his brother's trade. With the end of June his school had
closed for the summer, but at that time the congregation at his little
church greatly increased; then, too, he had repairs in the college to
superintend, certain articles to write for a Church journal, interesting
pupils to correspond with--in a word, his energy, which sometimes by
necessity and sometimes by ambition had become regulated to too quick a
pace, would not now allow him to take leisure when it offered, or even
to perceive the opportunity. His mind, habituated to unrest, was
perpetually suggesting to him things needing to be done, and he always
saw a mirage of leisure in front of him, and went on the faster in order
to come up to it. By this mirage he constantly vowed to himself that
when the opportunity came he would take time to think out some things
which had grown indistinct to him. At present the discomfort and sorrow
of not feeling at liberty to make love to the woman he loved was some
excuse for avoiding thought, and he found distraction in hard work and
social engagements. With regard to Sophia he stayed his mind on the
belief that if he dared not woo she was not being wooed, either by any
man who was his rival, or by those luxuries and tranquillities of life
which nowadays often lure young women to prefer single blessedness.

In the meantime he felt he had done what he could by writing again and
again, and even telegraphing, to Turrifs Station. It is a great relief
to the modern mind to telegraph when impatient; but when there is
nothing at the other end of the wire but an operator who is under no
official obligation to deliver the message at an address many miles
distant, the action has only the utility already mentioned--the relief
it gives to the mind of the sender. The third week in August came, and
yet he had heard nothing more from Alec. Still, Alec had said he would
come in summer, and if the promise was kept he could not now be long,
and Robert clung to the hope that he would return with ambitions toward
some higher sphere of life, and in a better mind concerning the
advisability of not being too loquacious about his former trade.

In this hope he took opportunity one day about this time, when calling
on Mrs. Rexford, to mention that Alec was probably coming. He desired,
he said, to have the pleasure of introducing him to her.

"He is very true and simple-heaped," said the elder brother; "and from
the photograph you have seen, you will know he is a sturdy lad." He
spoke with a certain air of depression, which Sophia judged to relate to
wild oats she supposed this Alec to be sowing. "He was always his dear
father's favourite boy," added Trenholme, with a quite involuntary sigh.

"A Benjamin!" cried Mrs. Rexford, but, with that quickness of mind
natural to her, she did not pause an instant over the thought.

"Well, really, Principal Trenholme, it'll be a comfort to you to have
him under your own eye. I often say to my husband that that must be our
comfort now--that the children are all under our eye; and, indeed, with
but one sitting-room furnished, and so little outing except in our own
fields, it couldn't well be otherwise. It's an advantage in a way."

"A doubtful advantage in some ways," said Sophia; but the little
children were now heard crying, so she ran from the room.

"Ah, Principal Trenholme," cried the little step-mother, shaking her
head (she was sewing most vigorously the while), "if my children will
but profit by _her_ example! But, indeed, I reproach myself that she is
here at all, although she came against my desire. Sophia is not involved
in our--I might say poverty, Principal Trenholme." (It was the
first-time the word had crossed her lips, although she always conversed
freely to him.) "When I see the farm producing so little in comparison,
I may say, in confidence, _poverty_; but Sophia has sufficient income of
her own." "I did not know that," said Trenholme, sincerely. "She came
with us, for we couldn't think of taking any of it for the house
expenses if she was away; and, as it's not large, it's the more
sacrifice she makes. But Sophia--Sophia might have been a very rich
woman if she'd married the man she was engaged to. Mr. Monekton was only
too anxious to settle everything upon her."

Trenholme had positively started at these words. He did not hear the
next remark. The eight years just passed of Sophia's life were quite
unknown to him, and this was a revelation. He began to hear the talk
again.

"My husband said the jointure was quite remarkable. And then the
carriages and gowns he would have given! You should have seen the jewels
she had! And poor Mr. Monekton--it was one month off the day the wedding
was fixed, for when she broke it off. Suddenly she would have none of
it."

Trying to piece together these staccato jottings by what he knew of the
character of his love, Trenholme's mind was sore with curiosity about it
all, especially with regard to the character of Mr. Monckton.

"Perhaps"--he spoke politely, as if excusing the fickleness of the
absent woman--"perhaps some fresh knowledge concerning the gentleman
reached Miss Rexford."

"For many a year we had known all that was to be known about Mr.
Monckton," declared the mother, vigorously. "Sophia changed her mind. It
was four years ago, but she might be Mrs. Monckton in a month if she'd
say the word. He has never been consoled; her father has just received a
letter from him to-day begging him to renew the subject with her; but
when Sophia changes once she's not likely to alter again. There's not
one in a thousand to equal her."

Trenholme agreed perfectly with the conclusion, even if he did not see
that it was proved by the premises. He went away with his mind much
agitated and filled with new anxieties. The fact that she had once
consented to marry another seemed to him to make it more probable that
she might do so again. He had allowed himself to assume that since the
time when he had seen her as a young girl, the admired of all, Sophia
had drifted entirely out of that sort of relation to society; but now,
by this sudden alarm, she seemed to be again elevated on some pinnacle
of social success beyond his reach. It struck him, too, as discouraging
that he should be able to know so little about a girl he had loved in a
vague way so long, and now for a time so ardently, and who had dwelt for
months at his very door. He blamed the conventionalities of society that
made it impossible for him to ask her the thousand and one questions he
fain would ask, that refused him permission to ask any until he was
prepared to make that offer which involved the explanation from which he
shrank so much that he would fain know precisely what degree of evil he
must ask her to face before he asked at all. He told himself that he
shrank not so much on account of his own dislike, as on account of the
difficulty in which his offer and explanation must place her if she
loved him; for if she was not bound strongly by the prejudices of her
class, all those she cared for certainly were. On the other hand, if she
did not love him, then, indeed, he had reason to shrink from an
interview that would be the taking away of all his hope. Who would not
wrestle hard with hope and fear before facing such an alternative?
Certainly not a man of Trenholme's stamp.

It is a mistake to suppose that decision and fearlessness are always the
attributes of strength. Angels will hover in the equipoise of indecision
while clowns will make up their minds. Many a fool will rush in to woo
and win a woman, who makes her after-life miserable by inconsiderate
dealings with incongruous circumstance, in that very unbending temper of
mind through which he wins at first. Trenholme did not love the less,
either as lover or brother, because he shrank, as from the galling of an
old wound, when the family trade was touched upon. He was not a weaker
man because he was capable of this long suffering. That nature has the
chance to be the strongest whose sensibilities have the power to draw
nourishment of pain and pleasure from every influence; and if such soul
prove weak by swerving aside because of certain pains, because of
stooping from the upright posture to gain certain pleasures, it still
may not be weaker than the more limited soul who knows not such
temptations. If Trenholme had swerved from the straight path, if he had
stooped from the height which nature had given him, the result of his
fault had been such array of reasons and excuses that he did not now
know that he was in fault, but only had hateful suspicion of it when he
was brought to the pass of explaining himself to his lady-love. The
murmurs of an undecided conscience seldom take the form of definite
self-accusation. They did not now; and Trenholme's suspicion that he was
in the wrong only obtruded itself in the irritating perception that his
trouble had a ludicrous side. It would have been easier for him to have
gone to Sophia with confession of some family crime or tragedy than to
say to her, "My father was, my brother is, a butcher; and I have allowed
this fact to remain untold!" It was not that he did not intend to prove
to her that his silence on this subject was simply wise; he still
writhed under the knowledge that such confession, if it did not evoke
her loving sympathy, might evoke her merriment.

That afternoon, however, he made a resolution to speak to Sophia before
another twenty-four hours had passed--a resolution which was truly
natural in its inconsistency; for, after having waited for months to
hear Alec's purpose, he to-day decided to act without reference to him.
At the thought of the renewed solicitation of another lover, his own
love and manliness triumphed over everything else. He would tell her
fully and frankly all that had made him hesitate so long, and of his
long admiration for her, and how dearly he now loved her. He would not
urge her; he would, leave the choice to her. This resolution was not
made by any impulsive yielding to a storm of feeling, nor in the calm of
determined meditation; he simply made up his mind in the course of that
afternoon's occupation.




CHAPTER XVII.


Trenholme went from Mrs. Rexford's door that same day to pay some visits
of duty in the village. The afternoon was warm, and exquisitely bright
with the sort of dazzling brightness that sometimes presages rain. On
his return he met a certain good man who was the Presbyterian minister
of the place. The Scotch church had a larger following in Chellaston
than the English. The clergyman and the minister were friends of a sort,
a friendship which was cultivated on chance occasions as much from the
desire to exercise and display large-mindedness as from the drawings of
personal sympathy. The meeting this afternoon led to their walking out
of the village together; and when the Scotchman had strolled as far as
the college gate, Trenholme, out of courtesy and interest in the
conversation, walked a mile further up the road with him.

Very beautiful was the road on that bright summer day. They heard the
ripple of the river faintly where it was separated from them by the
Harmon garden and the old cemetery. Further on, the sound of the water
came nearer, for there was only the wilderness of half overgrown pasture
and sumac trees between them and it. Then, where the river curved, they
came by its bank, road and river-side meeting in a grove of majestic
pines. The ground here was soft and fragrant with the pine needles of
half a century; the blue water curled with shadowed wave against matted
roots; the swaying firmament was of lofty branches, and the summer wind
touched into harmony a million tiny harps. Minds that were not choked
with their own activities would surely here have received impressions of
beauty; but these two men were engaged in important conversation, and
they only gave impassive heed to a scene to which they were well
accustomed.

They were talking about improvements and additions which Trenholme hoped
to get made to the college buildings in the course of a few years. The
future of the college was a subject in which he could always become
absorbed, and it was one sufficiently identified with the best interests
of the country to secure the attention of his listener. In this land,
where no church is established, there is so little bitterness existing
between different religious bodies, that the fact that the college was
under Episcopal management made no difference to the Presbyterian's
goodwill towards it. He sent his own boys to school there, admired
Trenholme's enthusiastic devotion to his work, and believed as firmly as
the Principal himself that the school would become a great university.
It was important to Trenholme that this man--that any man of influence,
should believe in him, in his college, and in the great future of both.
The prosperity of his work depended so greatly upon the good opinion of
all, that he had grown into the habit of considering hours well spent
that, like this one, were given to bringing another into sympathy with
himself in the matter of the next projected improvement. It was thus
that he had advanced his work step by step since he came to Chellaston;
if the method sometimes struck his inner self as a little sordid, the
work was still a noble one, and the method necessary to the quick
enlargement he desired. Both men were in full tide of talk upon the
necessity for a new gymnasium, its probable cost, and the best means of
raising the money, when they walked out of the pine shade into an open
stretch of the road.

Soft, mountainous clouds of snowy whiteness were winging their way
across the brilliant blue of the sky. The brightness of the light had
wiped all warm colour from the landscape. The airy shadows of the clouds
coursed over a scene in which the yellow of ripened fields, the green of
the woods on Chellaston Mountain, and the blue of the distance, were
only brought to the eye in the pale, cool tones of high light. The road
and the river ran together now as far as might be seen, the one almost
pure white in its inch-deep dust, the other tumbling rapidly, a dancing
mirror for the light.

The talkers went on, unmindful of dust and heat. Then a cloud came
between them and the sun, changing the hue of all things for the moment.
This lured them further. The oat harvest was ready. The reaping machines
were already in the fields far and near, making noise like that of some
new enormous insect of rattling throat. From roadside trees the cicada
vied with them, making the welkin ring.

There were labourers at various occupations in the fields, but on the
dusty stretch of road there was only one traveller to be seen in front
of the two companions. When they gained upon him they recognised the old
preacher who went by the name of Cameron. The poor old wanderer had been
a nine days' wonder; now his presence elicited no comment. He was
walking cap in hand in the sunshine, just as he had walked in the winter
snow. To Trenholme the sight of him brought little impression beyond a
reminder of his brother's wayward course. It always brought that
reminder; and now, underneath the flow of his talk about college
buildings, was the thought that, if all were done and said that might
be, it was possible that it would be expedient for the future of the New
College that the present principal should resign. This was, of course,
an extreme view of the results of Alec's interference; but Trenholme had
accustomed himself to look at his bugbear in all lights, the most
extreme as well as the most moderate. _That_ for the future; and, for
immediate agitation, there was his resolution to speak to Sophia. As he
walked and talked, his heart was wrestling with multiform care.

With one of those welcome surprises which Nature can bestow, the big
swinging cloud which had shadowed their bit of earth for a few minutes
and then passed off the sun again, now broke upon them in a heavy
shower. They saw the rain first falling on Chellaston Mountain, which
was only about a quarter of a mile distant, falling in the sunshine like
perpendicular rays of misty light; then it swept down upon them; but so
bright was the sunshine the while that it took them a few minutes to
realise that this dazzling shower could actually be wet. Its drenching
character was made apparent by the sight of field labourers running to a
great spreading maple for shelter; then they, literally having regard to
their cloth, ran also and joined the group. They passed the old man on
the road, but when they were all under the tree he also came towards it.

There is no power in the art of words, or of painting, or of music, to
fully describe the perfect gratefulness of a shower on a thirsty day.
The earth and all that belongs to her thrill with the refreshing, and
the human heart feels the thrill just in so far as it is one with the
great plan of nature, and has not cut itself off from the whole by
egotism as a dead branch is cut. All under the tree were pleased in
their own way. The labourers cooled their sweating brows by wiping them
with the shirtsleeves the rain had wet; Trenholme and his friend saw
with contentment the dust laid upon their road, listened to the chirp of
birds that had been silent before, and watched the raindrops dance high
upon the sunny surface of the river.

The old man came quietly to them. The rain falling through sunshine made
a silver glory in the air in which he walked saintlike, his hoary locks
spangled with the shining baptism. He did not heed that his old clothes
were wet. His strong, aged face was set as though looking onward and
upward, with the joyful expression habitual to it.

Trenholme and his friend were not insensible to the picture. They were
remarking upon it when the old man came into their midst. There was
something more of keenness and brightness in his mien than was common to
him; some influence, either of the healing summer or of inward joy,
seemed to have made the avenues of his senses more accessible.

"Sirs," he said, "do you desire the coming of the Lord?"

He asked the question quite simply, and Trenholme, as one humours a
village innocent, replied, "We hope we are giving our lives to advance
His kingdom."

"But the _King,_" said the old man. "He is coming. Do you cry to Him to
come quickly?"

"We hope and trust we shall see Him in His own time," said Trenholme,
still benignly.

"His own time is suddenly, in the night," cried the old man, "when the
Church is sleeping, when her children are planting and building,
selling, buying; and marrying--that is _His time_. We shall see Him. We
shall see His face, when we tell Him that we love Him; we shall hear His
voice when he tells us that He loves us. We shall see Him when we pray;
we shall hear Him give the answer. Sirs, do you desire that He should
come now, and reign over you?"

The labourers bestirred themselves and came nearer. The old man had
always the power of transmitting his excitements to others, so that,
strangely, they felt it incumbent upon them to answer. One, a
dull-looking man, answered "yes," with conventional piety. Another said
sincerely that he would like to get the oats in first. Then, when the
first effect of the enthusiast's influence was passing off, they began
to rebel at having this subject thrust upon them. A youth said rudely
that, as there were two parsons there, Father Cameron was not called on
to preach.

The old man fixed his questioning look on Trenholme. "He will come to
reign," he cried, "to exalt the lowly and meek, to satisfy the men who
hunger for righteousness; and the pure in heart shall live with Him.
Sir, do you desire that He shall come now?"

Trenholme did not give answer as before.

"Poor fellow," said the Presbyterian, pityingly.

The shower was passing over, and they moved away.

The old man lifted his arm, and pointed to the mountain that stood in
all the beauty of its wet verdure. He looked round upon them all, and
there was unusual show of excitement in his manner.

"I have a message to you," he said. "Before another Lord's, day comes,
_He_ will come."

The two ministers heard him as they walked away, and the Scotchman
thought to go back and reprove such an audacious word.

"He is mad; they all know that he is mad," urged Trenholme, dissuading
him.

They looked back, and saw the old man still preaching to the labourers
under the tree. A mare with its foal, and two half-grown colts, had come
up to an open fence within the tree's shadow, and, with their long
gentle heads hanging over, they too seemed to be listening.

The Scotchman, exhilarated by the cooling of the atmosphere, genially
invited Trenholme to a longer walk. Chellaston Mountain, with its cool
shades and fine prospect, was very near. A lane turned from the high
road, which led to the mountain's base. A hospitable farmhouse stood
where the mountain path began to ascend, suggesting sure offer of an
evening meal. Trenholme looked at the peaceful lane, the beautiful hill,
and all the sunny loveliness of the land, and refused the invitation. He
had not time, he said.

So they walked back the mile they had come, and Trenholme little thought
how soon, and with what agitation, he would pass that way again.




CHAPTER XVIII.


The next day, before Trenholme had had time to devise a plan for seeing
Miss Rexford, Mrs. Martha brought him a telegram. She watched him as he
drew his finger through the poor paper of the envelope, watched him as
one might watch another on the eve of some decisive event; yet she could
not have expected much from a telegram--they came too often.

"Ha!" cried Trenholme, "we are going to have visitors, Mrs. Martha."

A good deal to Trenholme's surprise, the message was from Alec, and from
a point no further away than Quebec. It stated that he was there with
Bates, who was ill, and he thought the best thing would be to bring him
with him to Chellaston, if his brother had house-room enough.

The answers we give to such appeals are more often the outcome of
life-long habit than instances of separate volition. No question of what
answer to send occurred to Trenholme's mind as he pencilled his reply,
assuring a welcome to the sick man.

When the answer was despatched he saw that, as fate had thrust the
notice of this arrival between him and the proposed interview with
Sophia; it would be better, after all, to wait only a day or two more,
until he knew his brother's mind.

He heard nothing more from Alec that day. The day after was Saturday,
and it rained heavily.

"What time will the gentlemen arrive?" asked Mrs. Martha, but not as if
she took much interest in the matter.

"I can't tell," he replied. "They will probably let us know; but it's
best to be ready when guests may come any time, isn't it?"

He asked her this with a cheering smile, because her manner was strange,
and he wished to rouse her to a sense of her duties.

"Yes, sir; 'twouldn't seem like as if we was truly expecting and hoping
unless we did our best to be ready."

The fervour of her answer surprised him.

For some time past Winifred Rexford had been spending part of each
morning learning housewifery of Mrs. Martha. That day, because of the
rain, Trenholme insisted upon keeping her to dinner with him. He brought
her into his dining-room with playful force, and set her at the head of
his table. It was a great pleasure to him to have the child. He twitted
her with her improvement in the culinary art, demanding all sorts of
impossible dishes in the near future for his brother's entertainment. He
was surprised at the sedateness of her answers, and at a strange look of
excited solicitude that arose in her eyes. It seemed to him that she was
several times on the point of saying something to him, and yet she did
not speak.

"What is it, Princess Win?" he cried. "What is in your mind, little
one?"

He came to the conclusion that she was not very well. He got no
information from her on the subject of her health or anything else; but
thinking naturally that the change in the weather might have given her
cold, he took pains to wrap her in his own mackintosh and take her home
under his own large umbrella.

When there, he went in. He was greatly cheered by the idea that,
although he might not tell his mind that day, he was now and henceforth
courting Sophia openly, whatever befell; but the open courting, since it
had only begun with his resolution of yesterday, and existed only in his
own intention, was naturally not recognised. He was received with the
ordinary everyday friendliness. But a change had occurred in the family
circumstances, nothing less than that they sat now in the long neglected
and still unfurnished room which went by the name of the drawing-room.
The windows had been thrown open, and the covering taken from the family
carriage. There it stood, still wheelless, but occupied now by Sophia
and Mrs. Rexford, the girls and the darning basket, while some of the
children climbed upon the box. Blue and Red, who were highly delighted
with the arrangement, explained it to Trenholme.

"You see, we had a carriage we couldn't use, and a room we couldn't use
for want of furniture; so this rainy day, when we all were so tired of
the other room, mamma suddenly thought that we'd make the carriage do
for furniture. It's the greatest fun possible." They gave little jumps
on the soft cushions, and were actually darning with some energy on
account of the change.

Trenholme shook hands with the carriage folk in the gay manner necessary
to the occasion, but his heart ached for the little mother who had thus
so bravely buried her last vestige of pride in the carriage by giving it
to her children as a plaything.

"It's more comfortable than armchairs, and keeps the feet from the bare
floor," she said to him, in defiance of any criticisms he might have in
mind. But all his thought was with and for her, and in this he was
pleased to see that he had divined Sophia's mind, for, after adding her
warm but brief praise to the new arrangement, she changed the subject.

Winifred went upstairs quietly. Trenholme suggested that he hardly
thought her looking quite well.

"She's an odd child," said Sophia. "I did not tell you, mamma, what I
found her doing the other day. She was trying on the white frock she had
this spring when she was confirmed. It's unlike her to do a thing like
that for no reason; and when I teased her she began to cry, and then
began speaking to me about religion. She has been puzzled by the views
your housekeeper holds, Mr. Trenholme, and excited by old Cameron's
teaching about the end of the world."

"I don't think it's the end of the world he's prophesying exactly," said
Trenholme, musingly. "The Adventists believe that the earth will not be
ruined, but glorified by the Second Advent."

"Children should not hear of such abstruse, far-off things," observed
Mrs. Rexford; "it does harm; but with no nursery, no schoolroom, what
can one do?"

Trenholme told them of Alec's telegram, and something of what he knew
concerning Bates. His own knowledge was scanty, but he had not even said
all he might have said when Mrs. Rexford politely regretted that her
husband and son, taking advantage of the rain, had both gone to the next
town to see some machinery they were buying, and would be away over
Sunday, otherwise they would not have missed the opportunity offered by
Sunday's leisure to call upon the newcomers.

"Oh, he's quite a common working-man, I fancy," added Trenholme,
hastily, surprised at the gloss his words had thrown on Bates's
position, and dimly realising that his way of putting things might
perhaps at some other times be as misleading as it had just that moment
been.

Then he went away rather abruptly, feeling burdened with the further
apologies she made with respect to Alec.




CHAPTER XIX.


Trenholme went home and sat down to write an article for a magazine. Its
subject was the discipline of life. He did not get on with it very well.
He rose more than once to look at the weather-glass and the weather.
Rain came in torrents, ceasing at intervals. The clouds swept over, with
lighter and darker spaces among them. The wind began to rise. Thunder
was in the air; as it became dusk lightning was seen in the far
distance.

A little after dark he heard a quick, light step upon the garden path.
The voice of the young dentist was audible at the door, and Mrs. Martha
ushered him into the study. Trenholme had felt more or less prejudice
against this fellow since he had become aware that he was in some way
connected with the incident that had discomforted his brother in his
lonely station. He looked at him with a glance of severe inquiry.

"I'm _real_ sorry to disturb you," said the dentist; "but, upon my word,
I'm uneasy in my mind. I've lost old Mr. Cameron."

It occurred to Trenholme now for the first time since he had heard of
Bates's coming that he, Bates, was the very man who could speak with
authority as to whether the old man in question had a right to the name
of Cameron. He wondered if the American could possibly have private
knowledge of Bates's movements, and knew that his coming could dispel
the mystery. If so, and if he had interest in keeping up the weird
story, he had done well now to lose his charge for the time being. Wild
and improbable as such a plot seemed, it was not more extraordinary than
the fact that this intensely practical young man had sought the other
and protected him so long.

"Your friend is in the habit of wandering, is he not?" asked Trenholme,
guardedly.

"Can't say that he is since he came here, Principal. He's just like a
child, coming in when it's dark. I've never"--he spoke with zeal--"I've
never known that good old gentleman out as late as this, and it's
stormy."

"Did you come here under the idea that I knew anything about him?"

"Well, no, I can't say that I did; but I reckoned you knew your Bible
pretty well, and that you were the nearest neighbour of mine that did."
There was an attempt at nervous pleasantry in this, perhaps to hide real
earnestness.

Trenholme frowned. "I don't understand you."

"Well, 'twould be strange if you did, come to think of it; but I'm
mighty uneasy about that old man, and I've come to ask you what the
Bible really does say about the Lord's coming. Whether he's crazed or
not, that old man believes that He's coming to-night. He's been telling
the folks all day that they ought to go out with joy to meet Him. I
never thought of him budging from the house till some _manifestation_
occurred, which I thought _wouldn't_ occur, but when I found just now he
was gone, it struck me all of a heap that he was gone out with that
idea. I do assure you"--he spoke earnestly--"that's what he's after at
this very time. He's gone out to meet Him, and I came to ask
you--well--what sort of a place he'd be likely to choose. He knows his
Bible right off, that old gentleman does; he's got his notions out of
it, whether they're right or wrong."

Trenholme stared at him. It was some time before the young man's ideas
made their way into his mind. Then he wondered if his apparent
earnestness could possibly be real.

"Your application is an extraordinary one," he said stiffly.

Harkness was too sensitive not to perceive the direction the doubt had
taken. "It may be extraordinary, but I do assure you it's genuine."

As he grew to believe in the youth's sincerity, Trenholme thought he
perceived that, although he had asked what would be the probable
direction of the enthusiast's wanderings, the dentist was really
stricken with doubt as to whether the prediction might not possibly be
correct, and longed chiefly to know Trenholme's mind on that important
matter.

"This crazy fellow is astray in his interpretation of Scripture," he
said, "if he believes that it teaches that the Second Advent is now
imminent; and his fixing upon to-night is, of course, quite arbitrary.
God works by growth and development, not by violent miracle. If you
study the account of our Lord's first coming, you see that, not only was
there long preparation, but that the great miracle was hidden in the
beautiful disguise of natural processes. We must interpret all special
parts of the inspired Word by that which we learn of its Author in the
whole of His revelation, otherwise we should not deal as reverently with
it as we deal with the stray words of any human author."

The young man, if he did not understand, was certainly comforted by this
official opinion.

"I'm glad to hear you look upon it in that light," he said approvingly,
"for, to tell the truth, if I thought the millennium was coming to-night
I'd be real scared, although I've lived better than most young men of my
age do; but, some way, the millennium isn't the sort of thing I seem to
hanker after very much. I suppose, though, people as good as you would
like nothing so well as to see it begin at once."

Trenholme looked down at the sheet of paper before him, and absently
made marks upon it with his pen. He was thinking of the spiritual
condition of a soul which had no ardent desire for the advent of its
Lord, but it was not of the young man he was thinking.

"Of course," the latter continued, "I didn't suppose myself there was
anything in it--at least"--candidly--"I didn't in the day-time; but when
I found he'd gone out in the dark, and thought of all the times I'd
heard him praying--" he broke off. "He's real good. I'm a better fellow
for having lived with him so long, but I wish to goodness I'd never
caught him."

The word "caught," so expressive of the American's relation to the
wanderer, roused Trenholme's attention, and he asked now with interest,
"May I inquire why you did take possession of him and bring him here?"

"Well, as to that, I don't know that I'd like to tell," said the young
man, frankly. "Since I've lived with him I've seen my reasons to be none
of the best." He fidgeted now, rising, cap in hand. "I ought to go and
look after him," he said, "if I only knew where to go."

It struck Trenholme that Harkness had an idea where to go, and that his
questioning was really a prelude to its announcement. "Where do _you_
think he has gone?"

"Well, if you ask me what I think, Principal--but, mind, I haven't a
word of proof of it--I think he's gone up the mountain, and that he's
not gone there alone."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I think drunken Job's wife, and old McNider, and some more
of the Second Advent folks, will go with him, expecting to be caught
up."

"Impossible!" cried Trenholme, vehemently. Then more soberly, "Even if
they had such wild intentions, the weather would, of course, put a stop
to it."

Harkness did not look convinced. "Job's threatened to beat his wife to
death if she goes, and it's my belief she'll go."

He twirled his hat as he spoke. He was, in fact, trying to get the
responsibility of his suspicions lightened by sharing them with
Trenholme at this eleventh hour, but his hearer was not so quickly
roused.

"If you believe that," he said coolly, "you ought to give information to
the police."

"The police know all that I know. They've heard the people preaching and
singing in the streets. I can't make them believe the story if they
don't. They'd not go with me one step on a night like this--not one
step."

There was a short silence. Trenholme was weighing probabilities. On the
whole, he thought the police were in the right of it, and that this
young man was probably carried away by a certain liking for novel
excitement.

"In any case," he said aloud, "I don't see what I can do in the matter."

Harkness turned to leave as abruptly as he had come in. "If you don't, I
see what I can do. I'm going along there to see if I can find them."

"As you are in a way responsible for the old man, perhaps that is your
duty," replied Trenholme, secretly thinking that on such roads and under
such skies the volatile youth would not go very far.

A blast of wind entered the house door as Harkness went out of it,
scattering Trenholme's papers, causing his study lamp to flare up
suddenly, and almost extinguishing it.

Trenholme went on with his writing, and now a curious thing happened.
About nine o'clock he again heard steps upon his path, and the bell
rang. Thinking it a visitor, he stepped to the door himself, as he often
did. There was no one there but a small boy, bearing a large box on his
shoulders. He asked for Mrs. Martha. "Have you got a parcel for her?"
said Trenholme, thinking his housekeeper had probably retired, as she
did not come to the door. The boy signified that he had, and made his
way into the light of the study door. Trenholme saw now, by the label on
the box, that he had come from the largest millinery establishment the
place could boast. It rather surprised him that the lean old woman
should have been purchasing new apparel there, but there was nothing to
be done but tell the boy to put out the contents of the box and be gone.
Accordingly, upon a large chair the boy laid a white gown of delicate
material, and went away.

Trenholme stood contemplating the gown; he even touched it lightly with
his hand, so surprised he was. He soon concluded there was some
mistake, and afterwards, when he heard the housekeeper enter the kitchen
from the garden door, he was interested enough to get up with alacrity
and call to her. "A gown has come for you, Mrs. Martha," he cried. Now,
he thought, the mistake would be proved; but she only came in soberly,
and took up the gown as if it was an expected thing. He bade her
good-night. "Good-night," said she, looking at him. There was a red spot
on each of her thin, withered cheeks. He heard her footstep mounting her
bedroom staircase, but no clue to the mystery of her purchase offered
itself to mitigate his surprise. Had she not been his housekeeper now
for six years, and during that time not so much as a trace of any vagary
of mind had he observed in her.

About an hour afterwards, when he had gone into the next room to look
for some papers, he heard quiet sounds going on in the kitchen, which
was just at the rear end of the small hall on which the room doors
opened. A moment more and he surmised that his housekeeper must have
again descended for something. "Are you there, Mrs. Martha?" he called.
There was no answer in words, but hearing the kitchen door open, he
looked into the lobby, and there a strange vision flashed on his sight.
His end of the lobby was dark, but in the kitchen doorway, by the light
of the candles she held, he saw his elderly housekeeper arrayed in the
pure white gown.

He paused in sheer astonishment, looking at her, and he observed she
trembled--trembled all over with the meek courage it cost her to thus
exhibit herself; for she appeared to have opened the door for no other
purpose than to let him see her. She said nothing, and he--most men are
cowards with regard to women--he had a vague sense that it was his duty
to ask her why she wore that dress, but he did not do it. He had no
reason to suppose her mad; she had a perfect right to array herself in
full dress at night if she chose; she was a great deal older than he, a
woman worthy of all respect. This was the tenor of his thought--of his
self-excusing, it might be. He bade her good-night again, somewhat
timidly. Surely, he thought, it was her place to make remark, if remark
were needful; but she stood there silent till he had gone back into the
room. Then she shut the kitchen door.

In a little while, however, as stillness reigned in the house, some
presentiment of evil made him think it would be as well to go and see if
Mrs. Martha had finished trying on her finery and gone to bed as usual.
He found the kitchen dark and empty. He went to the foot of her stairs.
There was no chink of light showing from her room. The stillness of the
place entered into his mind as the thin edge of a wedge of alarm. "Mrs.
Martha!" he called in sonorous voice. "Mrs. Martha!" But no one
answered. He opened the back-door, and swept the dark garden with the
light of his lamp, but she was not there. Lamp in hand, he went
upstairs, and passed rapidly through the different rooms. As he entered
the less frequented ones, he began to fear almost as much to see the
gaily-attired figure as he would have done to see a ghost. He did not
know why this feeling crept over him, but, whether he feared or hoped to
see her, he did not. The house was empty, save for himself. The night
blast beat upon it. The darkness outside was rife with storm, but into
it the old woman must have gone in her festal array.




CHAPTER XX.


Trenholme went out on the verandah. At first, in the night, he saw
nothing but the shadowy forms of the college building and of the trees
upon the road. It was not raining at the moment, but the wind made it
hard to catch any sound continuously. He thought he heard talking of
more than one voice, he could not tell where. Then he heard wheels begin
to move on the road. Presently he saw something passing the trees--some
vehicle, and it was going at a good pace out from the village. Shod
though he was only in slippers, he shut his door behind him, and ran
across the college grounds to the road; but the vehicle was already out
of sight, and on the soft mud he could hear no further sound.

Trenholme stood hardly knowing what to think. He wore no hat; the damp,
cool air was grateful to his head, but he gave no thought to it. Just
then, from the other way of the road, he heard a light, elastic step and
saw a figure that, even in the darkness, he could not fail to know.

"Sophia!" There was fear in his voice.

"Have you seen Winifred?" she cried.

"Winifred? No," he called, back.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, breathless. She never noticed that
he had called her by name. The abruptness of her own question was
evidently atoned for by some necessity the nature of which he had not
yet entirely grasped. Yet a knowledge, gleaned too late from all the
occurrences of the evening, leaped up within him to anticipate her
tidings.

"Winifred has gone out since dark. Whether she is alone or not I don't
know, but she has gone to the mountain. She means to climb it to-night
because they have told her that--that----"

His lady-love stopped. Voice and language seemed alike to fail her when
she essayed to tell him, and he, awed at the thought of hearing such
sacred words from her lips, awed to think that the sword of this
fanaticism had come so near as to strike the pure young girl who was so
dear to them both, took her pause as if it had told him everything.

"How do you know?" His words were brief and stern.

She was walking on, he thought merely from excitement. As he kept up
with her he perceived, more by quickness of sympathy than by any sign,
that, in her effort to speak, she had begun to weep. She walked erect,
giving no heed to her own tears nor lifting a hand to wipe them, only at
first her throat refused to articulate a reply, and when she spoke it
was quickly, a word or two at a time, as though she feared her voice
would be traitor to her.

"She left a paper for me." And then she added, "She wrote on it--what
she was afraid to say--dear child!"

He was silent a moment, listening with bowed head lest she should tell
more. He thought he saw her now dash the tears from her face. She was
walking fast, and he felt that she must not go further, also that he had
no time to lose; so he told her hastily that he thought his housekeeper
had gone also to the mountain, and why he thought so. He said that he
hoped and believed Winifred would be with her, and that it was not many
minutes since they had driven away. He would go at once, hoping to
overtake them on the difficult ascent, and Miss Rexford, he said, must
go home and send her father and brother to aid him in his search.

She never stopped in her steady walk. "You know they are not at home."

He was shocked to remember it. "Never mind!" he cried, "I will go with
your authority. I will bring her back."

Still she did not waver in her walk. She spoke thickly out of her tears.
"You may go to find this woman who has worked for you so long; I will go
for Winifred."

"You must not come," he said almost harshly. "It is far too late; it is
far too wet."

He stopped to make her stop, but she only went on, getting much in
front. Then he ran up to her, laid his hand on her arm, and implored her
not to go.

There was nothing in his words or action that was precisely loverlike,
nor did such likeness occur to her; but in the restraint he put upon the
lover in him, his manner appeared to assume the confidence and ease of a
perfect friendship, and she, scarce noting much how he spoke or acted,
still felt that this advance of his gave her a new liberty to tell him
that she scorned his friendship, for she had something of that sort
seething in her mind concerning him. As to his request just then, she
merely said she would go on.

He was very urgent. "Then I will not go," he said, stopping again. "You
can't go without me, and if my going involves your going, it is better
not to go." He did not mean what he said, but he hoped to move her.

"You can go or stay as you think right," she said. "I am going to get
Winifred, poor lamb. I am not in the least afraid to go alone. I have
got a pistol in my belt."

So he went with her. They both walked fast. The road was wide and muddy,
and the night was very dark.

Trenholme noticed now for the first time that he walked in slippers; he
would as soon have thought of turning back on this account as he would
have thought of stopping if thorns and briars had beset his path. He
felt almost as if it were a dream that he was walking thus, serving the
woman he loved; but even as he brooded on the dreamlike strangeness of
it, his mind was doing its practical work. If Winifred and Mrs. Martha
were in the vehicle he had seen, what time they would gain while driving
on the road they would be apt to lose by their feebleness on the
mountain path, which he and Sophia could ascend so much more lightly.
Wherever their goal, and whatever their purpose, he was sanguine that he
would find and stop them before they joined the main party. He
communicated the grounds of this hope to his companion. His heart was
sore for his lady's tears. He had never before seen her weep. They had
passed the cemetery, and went forward now into the lonelier part of the
road. Then Trenholme thought of the warning Harkness had given him about
the drunkard's violence. The recollection made him hasten on, forgetting
that his speed was almost too great for a woman.

In the stir of events we seldom realise to the full the facts with which
we are dealing, certainly never perceive at first their full import.
Trenholme, however, after some minutes of tramping and thinking, felt
that he had reason for righteous indignation, and became wroth. He gave
vent to strictures upon superficiality of character, modern love of
excitement, and that silly egotism that, causing people to throw off
rightful authority, leaves them an easy prey to false teachers. He was
not angry with Winifred--he excepted her; but against those who were
leading her astray his words were harsh, and they would have flowed more
freely had he not found language inadequate to express his growing
perception of their folly.

When he had talked thus for some time Sophia answered, and he knew
instantly, from the tone of her voice, that her tears had dried
themselves.

"Are you and I able to understand the condition of heart that is not
only resigned, but eager to meet Him Whom they hope to meet--able so
fully to understand that we can judge its worth?"

He knew her face so well that he seemed to see the hint of sarcasm come
in the arching of her handsome eyebrows as she spoke.

"I fear they realise their hope but little," he replied. "The excitement
of some hysterical outbreak is what they seek."

"It seems to me that is an ungenerous and superficial view, especially
as we have never seen the same people courting hysterics before," she
said; but she did not speak as if she cared much which view he took.

Her lack of interest in his opinion, quite as much as her frank reproof,
offended him. They walked in silence for some minutes. Thunder, which
had been rumbling in the distance, came nearer and every now and then a
flash from an approaching storm lit up the dark land with a pale, vivid
light.

"Even setting their motives at the highest estimate," he said, "I do not
know that you, or even I, Miss Rexford, need hold ourselves incapable of
entering into them." This was not exactly what he would have felt if
left to himself, but it was what her upbraiding wrung from him. He
continued: "Even if we had the sure expectation for to-night that they
profess to have, I am of opinion that we should express our devotion
better by patient adherence to our ordinary duties, by doing all we
could for the world up to the moment of His appearing."

"Our ordinary duties!" she cried; "_they_ are always with us! I dare say
you and I might think that the fervour of this night's work had better
have been converted into good works and given to the poor; but our
opinion is not specially likely to be the true one. What do we know?
Walking here in the dark, we can't even see our way along this road."

It was an apt illustration, for their eyes were becoming so dazzled by
the occasional lightning that they could make no use of its brief flash,
or of the faint light of night that was mingled in the darkness of the
intervals.

Although he smarted under the slight she put upon him, he was weary of
opposing her, because he loved her. "I am sorry that nothing I say meets
with your approval," he said sadly.

It was lack of tact that made him use the personal tone when he and she
had so far to travel perforce together, and she, being excited and much
perturbed in spirit, had not the grace to answer wisely.

"Happily it matters little whether what you say pleases me or not."

She meant in earnestness to depreciate herself, and to exalt that higher
tribunal before which all opinions are arraigned; still, there was in
the answer a tinge of spite, telling him by the way that it did not
distress her to differ with him. It was not wonderful that Trenholme,
self-conscious with the love she did not guess at, took the words only
as a challenge to his admiration.

"Indeed you wrong me. It was long ago I proved the value I put upon your
advice by acting