Bernard Carrick was deeply interested in the welfare and advancement of the town, and found much work to do outside of the farm that his father-in-law attended to, indeed, had the greater interest in. Sandy Carrick had a great outlying tract. Grain of all kinds, especially wheat, grew for the mere planting in the virgin soil. And the staple product of the time was whiskey. Nearly every farmer had a still. The morality of drinking was not called in question, and the better class of people were temperate. It was the great thing they could exchange for their needs. They sent it over the mountains to Kentucky and Ohio. They built rough sort of tugs, and freighted it through the Ohio to the Mississippi, disposing of it anywhere along the route. The mouth of the great river was still in the hands of the Spanish.
It must be confessed, since the birth of Felix, Barbe had shared her motherhood a good deal with Norah, who laid claim largely to Daffodil. They wandered through the woods together, for the child peopled them with the old stories that Norah's faith made so real. She stopped for her at school, and brought her home to supper. Grandad at times tried to tease her. Strangely enough she was never jealous, even of her father's love for the little brother. And she said to grandad:
"You may love him all you like. He is a boy. Men ought to love boys. And he is named after you, though I don't like the name."
"Oh, you don't! One grandfather is as good as the other, and I'm nearer of kin. It's a good old Scotch name, an' they're good as the French any day."
"I don't like Sandy."
"And I don't like Felix. But I put up with it. You won't make a Frenchman out of him. I'll see to that;" and he gave a funny wink out of his eye.
"And if some day he should want to go to France?"
"I'll see that he doesn't. This place will be big enough and good enough for him. There's fortunes to be made here. I'm going to leave him mine, an' I'll bet you a gallon of whiskey it'll be worth more than your wild land."
"Well, I shan't care!" archly, and with laughing eyes. "I like the woods and the birds and the squirrels. Some day I'll have a house built, and I'll take Norah to live with me."
"You will, hey? I'll have something to say about that. Do you suppose I'll stay here and starve?"