Then the sorrow came. The young husband felt it his duty to join the struggling army and fight for his country. It was in doubtful times.
This queer, rural, primitive settlement knew little about the great causes. Since the new fort had been built and the French repulsed, absolutely driven out of their strongholds, there had been only the infrequent Indian encounters to rouse them. The stern resolves, the mighty enthusiasm of the Eastern Colonies had not inspired them. Even the Declaration of Independence, while it had stirred up their alien and contradictory blood, had not evoked the sturdy patriotism of the larger towns having so much more at stake. They added to their flocks and herds, they hunted game and wild animals, and on the whole enjoyed their rural life.
Sandy Carrick had never known which side to affiliate with the most strongly. There was the brave old Scottish strain that his mother had handed down in many a romantic tale, there was the Irish of his father that had come down almost from royalty itself, from the famous Dukes that had once divided Ireland between them. Why the Carricks had espoused the English side he could not have told. He was glad to come to the new countries. And when, after being a widower for several years, he married pretty buxom widow Boyle, he was well satisfied with his place in life.
He had been in the fateful encounter at Braddock's defeat at his first introduction to the country. The French were well enough in Canada, which seemed not very far from the North Pole, and a land of eternal snow, but when they came farther down with their forts and their claims it was time to drive them out, and nothing gave him greater satisfaction than to think they were mostly out.
He took a great fancy to his next-door neighbor, Marc Bradin, but he fought shy of the old black-eyed Frenchman. Pierre Duvernay had passed through too many vicissitudes and experiences to believe that any one party had all the right; then, too, he was a sweet-natured old man, thinking often of the time when he should rejoin friends and relatives, not a few of whom had died for their faith.
Sandy had not liked his son's marriage with Barbe Bradin, who certainly was more French than Irish, but she had a winsome brightness and vivacity, and indulged in many a laughing tilt with her father-in-law. Nora Boyle openly favored them all. They spun and knit and made lace and wove rugs of rags and compared cookery, and she and Mrs. Bradin were wildly happy over Daffodil.
"If 't had been a boy now!" exclaimed Sandy. "A gal's good for naught when it comes to handin' down the name. Though if its hair'll turn out red, an 't looks so now, it may flout t'other blood," putting a strong expletive to it.
"Don't now, Sandy!" said his wife's coaxing voice. "There's sorts and kinds in the world. The good Lord didn't mean us all to be alike or he'd made 'em so to start with."
"Did make 'em so, woman. There was only two of 'em!"
"Well, some others came from somewhere. And Cain went off an got himself a wife. An' when you think of the baby there's good three parts Irish to the one French. An' I'm sure no one keeps a tidier house, an' the little old man sittin' by the chimney corner hurts no one. And it's handy to have a neebur to play at cards."