CHAPTER XLII.

UNDER THE NORTHERN LIGHTS.

For some sufficient reason, the Yankee storekeeper did not at that time prosecute his avowed intention of foreclosing the mortgage on Daisy Burn. Perhaps there was something to be gained by dallying with the captain still--some further value to be sucked out of him in that villainous trap, the tavern bar, whither many a disappointed settler has resorted to drown his cares, and found the intoxicating glass indeed full of 'blue ruin.'

One brilliant day in midwinter, when the sky was like a crystallized sapphire dome, and the earth spotless in snow, a single sleigh came bowling along the smooth road towards the 'Corner.' 'A heavy fall of snow is equivalent to the simultaneous construction of macadamized roads all through Canada,' saith that universally quoted personage, Good Authority. So it is found by thousands of sleighs, then liberated after a rusty summer rest. Then is the season for good fellowship and friendly intercourse: leisure has usurped the place of business, and the sternest utilitarian finds time for relaxation.

The idlers in Bunting's bar heard the sleigh-bells long before they left the arches of the forest; and as the smallest atom of gravel strikes commotion into a still pool, so the lightest event was of consequence in this small stagnant community of the 'Corner.' The idlers speculated concerning those bells, and a dozen pair of eyes witnessed the emergence of the vehicle into the little stumpy street.

Zack's sharp vision knew it for one that had been here last year, as he peered through the store-window, stuffed with goods of all sorts; but the occupant was not the same. Grizzled hair and beard escaped the bounds of the fur cap tied down over his ears, and the face was much older and harder. The mills seemed to attract his attention, frozen up tightly as they were; he slackened his sleigh to a pause, threw his reins on the horse's neck, and walked to the edge of the dam. After a few minutes, Bunting's curiosity stimulated him to follow, and see what attracted the stranger's regard.

'Are you the proprietor of this mill, sir?' called out the tall grey-haired gentleman, in no mild tone. Zack hesitated, weighing the relative advantages of truth and falsehood. 'Wal, I guess'--

'You need guess nothing, sir; but the construction of your dam is a disgrace to civilisation--a murderous construction, sir. Do you see that it is at least twelve feet, perpendicular, sir? and how do you ever expect that salmon can climb over that barrier? I suppose a specimen of the true "salmo salar" has never been caught in these waters since you blocked up the passage with your villainous dam, sir?'

'I warn't ever a-thinkin' o' the salmon at all, I guess,' answered the millowner truly and humbly, because he conceived himself in the authoritative presence of some bigwig, senator, or M.P., capable of calling him, Zack Bunting, to a disagreeable account, perchance.

'But you should have thought,' rejoined the stranger irately. 'Through such wrong-headedness as yours Canada is losing yearly one of her richest possessions in the way of food. What has exterminated the salmon in nearly all rivers west of Quebec? dams like this, which a fish could no more ascend than he could walk on dry land. But I hope to see parliamentary enactments which shall render this a felony, sir,--a felony, if I can. It is robbery and murder both together, sir.'

Mr. Hiram Holt walked rapidly to his sleigh, wrapped himself again in the copious furs, and left the storekeeper staring after the swift gliding cutter, and wondering more than ever who he was.

This matter of the dams had so much occupied his attention of late, that even after he reached Cedar Creek he reverted to it once and anon; for this fine old Canadian had iron opinions welded into his iron character. The capacity of entertaining a conviction, yet being lukewarm about it, was not possible to Hiram Holt. He believed, and practised suitably, with thorough intensity, in everything; even in such a remote subject as the Canadian fisheries.

The squire, who knew what preservation of salmon meant in the rivers of Britain, and who in his time had been a skilful angler, could sympathize with him about the reckless system of extinction going on through the Province, and which, if it be not arrested by the hand of legislative interference, will probably empty the Canadian streams of this most delicious and nutritive of fish.

'A gold-field discovered in Labrador would not be more remunerative than that single item of salmon, if properly worked,' remarked Hiram. 'When the fisheries of the tiny Tweed rent for fifteen thousand a-year, a hundred times that sum would not cover the value of the tributaries of the St. Lawrence. And yet they're systematically killed out, sir, by these abominable dams.'

'Why, Mr. Holt,' said Linda, looking up from her work, 'I think the mills are of more consequence than the salmon.'

'But they're not incompatible, my young lady,' he answered. 'Put steps to the dams--wooden boxes, each five feet high, for the salmon to get upstairs into the still water a-top.' Whereat Miss Linda, in her ignorance, was mightily amused at the idea of a fish ascending a staircase.

'The quantity of salmon was almost infinite twenty years ago,' said Hiram, after condescending to enlighten her on the subject of its leaping powers. 'I remember reading that Ross purchased a ton weight of it from the Esquimaux for a sixpenny knife; and one haul of his own seine net took thirty-three hundred salmon.'

George, manufacturing a sled in the corner, whistled softly, and expressed his incredulity in a low tone; not so low but that Mr. Holt's quick ears caught the doubt, and he became so overflowing with piscatory anecdotes, that Linda declared afterwards the very tea had tasted strongly of salmon on that particular evening.

'It is only a few years since Sir John Macdonald and his party killed four hundred salmon in one week, from a part of l'Esquemain River, called the Lower Pools. Thirty-five such rivers, equally full, flow through Labrador into the St. Lawrence; am I not then right in saying that this source of wealth is prodigious?' asked Mr. Holt. 'But the abominable dams, and the barrier nets, and the Indians' spearing, have already lessened it one-fourth.' A relative comparing of experiences, with reference to fishy subjects, ensued between the squire and his guest; and both agreed that--quitting the major matter of the dams--an enforcement of 'close time,' from the 20th of August till May, would materially tend to preserve the fish.

'Nature keeps them tolerably close most of that time,' remarked Arthur, 'by building a couple of yards of ice over them. From November till April they're under lock and key.'

'And han't you ever fished through holes in the ice?' asked Mr. Holt. 'Capital sport, I can tell you, with a worm for bait.'

'No; but I was going to say, how curiously thin and weak the trout are just when the ice melts. They've been on prison allowance, I presume, and are ready to devour anything.'

During all the evening, though Linda took openly a considerable share in the conversation, her mind would beat back on one question, suggested repeatedly: 'Why did Mr. Sam Holt go to Europe?' for one item of news brought by to-day's arrival was, that his eldest son had suddenly been seized with a wish to visit England, and had gone in the last boat from Halifax.

Glancing up at some remark, she encountered Mrs. Wynn's eyes, and coloured deeply. That sweetest supervision of earth, a mother's loving look, had read more deeply than the daughter imagined. Rising hurriedly, on some slight excuse, she went to the window and looked out.

'Oh, papa! such glorious northern lights!'

Ay, surely. Low arcs of dazzling light stretched from east to west across the whole breadth of the heavens; whence coruscated, in prolonged flashes, gorgeous streamers of every colour, chiefly of pale emerald green, pink, and amber.

'A rich aurora for this season of the year,' remarked Hiram Holt. 'Those that are brightly coloured generally appear in autumn or spring.'

'Oh, yes,' said George; 'do you recollect how magnificent was one we had while the fall-wheat was planting? the sky was all crimson, with yellow streamers.'

'Do you know what the Indians think about auroras?' asked Mr. Holt. 'They believe that these flashes are the spirits of the dead dancing before the throne of the Manitou, or Great Spirit.'

'No wonder they should seek for some supernatural cause of such splendour,' observed Robert.

The aurora borealis exhibited another phase of its wondrous beauty on the ensuing evening. The young people from Cedar Creek had gone to a corn-husking bee at Vernon's, an old gentleman settler, who lived some eight miles off on the concession line; and coming home in the sleighs, the whole magnificent panorama of the skies spread above them. Waves of light rolled slowly from shore to shore of the horizon in vast pulsations, noiselessly ascending to the zenith, and descending all across the stars, like tidal surges of the aerial ocean sweeping over a shallow silver strand.

Three sleighs, a short distance from each other, were running along the canal-like road, through dark walls of forest, towards the 'Corner.' Now, it is a principle in all bringings home from these midwinter bees, that families scatter as much as may be, and no sisters shall be escorted by their own brothers, but by somebody else's brothers. Consequently, Robert Wynn had paired off with Miss Armytage for this drive; and Mr. Holt, greybeard though he was, would not resign Linda to any one, but left young Armytage, Arthur, and Jay to fill the third sleigh.

Of course that sublime aurora overhead formed a main topic of conversation; but irrelevant matter worked in somehow. Blunt Hiram at last furnished a key to what had puzzled his fair companion by asking abruptly, when Captain Argent was expected at Cedar Creek?

'Captain Argent?' she repeated, in surprise; 'he's not expected at all; I believe he has gone to Ireland on a year's leave.'

'Then you are not about to be married to him?' said Mr. Holt, still more bluntly.

'No indeed, sir,' she answered, feeling very red, and thankful for the comparative gloom. Whereupon Mr. Holt shook hands with her, and expressed his conviction that she was the best and prettiest girl in the county; afterwards fell into a brown study, lasting till they got home.

The pair in the hindmost sleigh diverged equally far from the aurora; for heavy upon Edith's heart lay the fact that the mortgage was at last about to be foreclosed, and they should leave Daisy Burn. This very evening, her father coming late to Mrs. Vernon's corn-shelling bee, had told her that Zack would be propitiated no longer; he wanted to get the farm in time for spring operations, and vowed he would have it. They must all go to Montreal, where Captain Armytage had some friends, and where Edith hoped she might be able perhaps to turn her accomplishments to good account by opening a school.

'Papa is not at all suited for a settler's life,' she said. 'He has always lived in cities, and town habits are strong upon him. It is the best we can do.'