CHAPTER XLIII.

A BUSH-FLITTING.

Into Robert Wynn's mind, during that sleigh-drive under the northern lights, had entered one or two novel ideas. The first was a plan for frustrating the grasping storekeeper's design. He laid the whole circumstances before Mr. Holt, and asked for the means of redeeming the mortgage, by paying Captain Armytage's debt to Bunting, which was not half the value of the farm.

The gallant officer was not obliged for his friend's officiousness. He had brought himself to anticipate the move to Montreal most pleasurably, notwithstanding the great pecuniary loss to himself. The element of practicality had little place in his mental composition. An atmosphere of vagueness surrounded all his schemes, and coloured them with a seductive halo.

'You see, my dear fellow,' he said to Robert, when the proposition of redeeming the mortgage was made, 'you see, it does not suit my plans to bury myself any longer in these backwoods, eh? There are so few opportunities of relaxation--of intellectual converse, of--a--in short, of any of those refinements required by a man of education and knowledge of the world. You will understand this, my dear Mr. Robert. I--I wish for a more extended field, in fact. Nor is it common justice to the girls to keep them immured, I may say, in an atmosphere of perpetual labour. I am sure my poor dear Edith has lived a slave's life since she came to the bush. Only for your amiable family, I--I positively don't know what might have been the consequence, eh?'

Robert felt himself getting angry, and wisely withdrew. On Mr. Holt's learning the reception of his offer, he briefly remarked that he guessed Sam wouldn't object to own a farm near Cedar Creek, and he should buy it altogether from the captain, which was accordingly done. We refrain from picturing Zack's feelings.

The other idea which had visited Robert under the aurora--why should he not himself become the tenant of Daisy Burn? He took his fur cap and went down there for an answer.

The captain had gone to the 'Corner,' this being post-day, and he expected some letters from the Montreal friends in whom he believed. Reginald was chopping wood; the two sisters were over their daily lessons. What to do with Jay, while the above question was being asked and answered, was a problem tasking Robert's ingenuity, and finally he assumed the office of writing-master, set her a sum in long division, which he assured her would require the deepest abstraction of thought, and advised a withdrawal to some other room for that purpose.

Jay fell into the snare, and went, boasting of her arithmetical powers, which would bring back the sum completed in a few minutes. The instant the door closed,--

'I came down this morning,' said Robert, 'to tell you that I have concluded to take Daisy Burn as tenant to Mr. Holt, from the first of April next. That is,' he added, 'on one condition.'

'What?' she asked, a faint colour rising to her cheek, for his eyes were fixed on her.

'Arthur is much steadier than he was, since that visit to Argent last spring made him see that a penniless proud man has no business to endeavour to live among his equals in social rank, but his superiors in wealth. He is good enough farmer to manage Cedar Creek, with George's increasing help, and Dubois as a sort of steward. Edith, if I come here and settle on this farm, I cannot live alone; will you be my wife?'

He leaned forward, and took her passive hand. The conscious crimson rose for one moment to her throat and averted face, crept even to the finger-tips, then left her of the usual marble paleness again.

'No, Robert,' she answered firmly, withdrawing her hand; 'it cannot be; I cannot leave my father and Jay.'

To this determination she held fast. For she had known that such an option might be offered her, as every woman in like circumstances must know; she had weighed the matter well in the balance of duty, and this was her resolve. Could she have counted the cost accurately, it might not have been; but she hid from her eyes the bright side of the possible future, and tried steadily to do what she deemed right.

Great was Jay's surprise, when she came back with the long division sum triumphantly proved, to find her writing-master gone, and Edith with her eyes very tearful. That occurrence was a puzzle to her for some time afterwards. Crying was so rare with Edith--and what could Robert Wynn have to do with it? But Jay prudently asked no questions after the first astonished ejaculation.

When Robert was walking back to the Creek, feeling his pleasant 'castle in the air' shattered about his ears, blind to the splendour of the sunlit winter world, and deaf to the merry twit of the snow-birds, young Armytage came out of the woods and joined him. He, poor fellow, was preoccupied with his own plans.

'I think, and Edith agrees with me, that my best chance is to get a small lot of wild land, and begin at the beginning, as you did. I want the discipline of all the enforced hard work, Bob. My unfortunate bringing up in every species of self-indulgence was no good education for a settler; but, with God's help, I'll get over it.'

Robert was lifted out of his own trouble for a time by seeing the manful struggle which this other heart had to make against the slavery of habit. He roused himself to speak cheeringly to the young man, and receive his confidence cordially, in an hour when selfishness would rather have been alone.

'Perhaps an application for a Governmental free grant of land would be advisable,' said Reginald. 'I've been thinking of it. You see I would rather like to be bound down, and forced to stay in one spot, as I must if I undertake the hundred acres on Government terms.'

'What are the terms?' asked Robert.

'Well, in the first place, I must be more than eighteen years old; must take possession of the land in a month from the date of allotment; must put twelve acres at least into cultivation within four years, besides building a log-house, twenty feet by eighteen; and must guarantee residence on the lot till these conditions be fulfilled.'

'Hard work, and no mistake,' said Robert. 'I've a mind to go with you.'

'_You!_' exclaimed the other, with unfeigned surprise, looking in Wynn's face.

'Yes, I feel as if I would be the better for a few months of the old difficulties. I'd like to get away from this for awhile.'

'But perhaps you wouldn't like the "while" to extend over four years,' remarked Armytage. 'Of all people, I never expected to find you a rover, Wynn.'

It was the passing fancy of a wounded spirit. Before the captain departed from Daisy Burn, Robert had become wiser. Duty called on him to remain in the home which his labour had created in the bush. After some deliberation, he asked Reginald to work Mr. Holt's newly acquired farm in shares with himself; and Reginald, though looking wistfully on his receding vision of solitary bush life, consented.

'Farming upon shares' signifies that the owner furnishes the land, implements of husbandry, and seed; the other contracting party finds all the labour required; and the produce is divided between them. This agreement was slightly modified in the case of Daisy Burn, for Robert did many a hard day's work on it himself, and was general superintendent. The plan may answer well where ignorance and capital go together, and chance to secure the services of honest industry; but the temptations of the labourer to fraud are strong, and his opportunities unlimited. Many a new settler has been ruined by farming upon shares with dishonest people.

The last sleighing week saw the departure of the Armytage family. Before a thaw imprisoned the back settlements in spring isolation, they had reached the city of Ottawa, where the captain showed a disposition to halt for some days to look about him, he said--a favourite occupation in his lotos-eating life: Edith protested in vain. No; he might fall in with some employment to suit him perchance: though what would suit Captain Armytage, except a handsome salary for keeping his hands in his pockets, he would himself have been puzzled to define.

However, for the purpose of falling in with such employment, he frequented most of the hotel and tavern bars in the town, leaving the girls chiefly to their own devices. So, as the weather was fine, Miss Armytage and Jay walked about a great deal beside the broad brown river, just unchained from ice, and rushing, floe-laden, towards the Chaudière Falls; through the wide rectangular streets, lined with the splendid stores and massive houses of a busy population; through the village-like suburbs, where each cottage was fronted with a garden; and ascended the Major Hill, to behold the unrivalled view of forest, flood, and field from its summit. Far to the right and left stretched a panorama, such as only British North America could furnish; the great Ottawa river gliding by, a hundred and fifty feet below, the long line of cataracts flashing and dashing to the north, a framework of black forest closing into the edge of the streets, and bounded itself on the horizon by high blue mountains.

Here they were overtaken by Mr. Hiram Holt. He had seen them pass as he sat in some lawyer's office near by, and followed them when his business was finished. His first proposition was that they should go with him to Mapleton, while their father chose to idle about Bytown. Miss Armytage declined, for she hoped they might leave for Montreal in a day or two at furthest; but if Mr. Holt commanded any influence there,--and she told him, poor girl, the little plan of teaching which she had formed.

'Come, now,' quoth Hiram, after some conversation on that head, and a promise of writing to friends in Montreal, 'take my arm, young lady, and I'll show you some of our Ottawa lions. Biggest of all, to my fancy, is the town itself--only twenty-five years old, and as large as if it had been growing for centuries. The man is only in the prime of life who felled the first tree on this site, and now the town covers as much ground as Boston. Certainly the site is unrivalled.'

Edith, thinking a good deal of other more personally important things, acquiesced in all he said.

'You see, it's the centre of everything: three magnificent rivers flow together here, the Ottawa, Rideau, and Gatineau; water privilege is unlimited; Chaudière up yonder would turn all the mills in creation. Now, do you know the reason it is called Chaudière, my dear?'

This to Jay, who had to confess her ignorance.

'Because the vapour--do you see the cloud always ascending from the crest of the Falls?--reminded somebody of the steam from a boiling kettle. Hence these are the Kettle Falls, Miss Jay.'

She thought the appellation very undignified.

'The finest building sites are on this Barracks Hill,' observed Mr. Holt, relapsing into contemplation. 'But Government won't give them up: it is to be a sort of Acropolis, commanding the whole position at the fork of the three rivers, and the double mass of houses on both sides. Bytown hasn't seen its best days yet, by a long chalk, I guess.'

'I thought it was called Ottawa,' said Jay inquiringly.

'Well, madam, in this country, when cities arrive at the dignity of ten thousand inhabitants, they are permitted to change their names. So a town named York has very properly become Toronto, and the town founded by Colonel By has become Ottawa. But, as I was saying, its best days are in the future: it must be the capital of the Canadas yet.'

Jay remembered that her geography book assigned that distinction to Quebec and Montreal. Mr. Holt affirmed that the pre-eminence of these must dwindle before this young city at their feet, which could be captured by no _coup-de-main_ in case of war, and was at the head of the natural land avenue to the great Lakes Huron and Superior.

'The ancient Indian route,' said he--'the only safe one if there were war with the United States; and you may depend on it, if railways take in the country, one of the greatest termini will be here, at the headquarters of the lumber trade.'

His vaticination has been fulfilled. Lines of telegraph, rail, and steamers radiate from Ottawa city as a centre, at this day. It has successfully contended for the honour of being acknowledged capital of the Canadas, and has been declared such by the decision of Queen Victoria.

Lions in the way of antiquity it had none to show, being the veriest mushroom of a capital; but Mr. Holt took his friends to see the great sluice-works, the beautiful Suspension Bridge, the chain of locks forming a water staircase on the Rideau canal, and one of the huge sawmills turned by a rill from Chaudière Falls, where Jay admired immensely the glittering machinery of saws, chisels, and planes, and the gay painting of the iron-work. Since then, the vast tubular bridge of the Grand Trunk Railway spans the river, and is a larger lion than all the rest.