"Not while there is a homespun shirt around," replied Bearie, who was busily engaged in cutting off part of his shirt-sleeve. The piece was soon smeared with melted gum and fastened securely over the hole, and in a few minutes the frail bark was skipping from wave to wave on the bosom of the mountain torrent till it reached the Gatineau farm.
CHAPTER XIX.
AFTER MANY DAYS.
1827.
It must not be inferred that the wheels of incident in connection with the lives of George Morrison and Chrissy had ceased to move during the twenty-one years of separation. Strange things were happening on the lonely shores of the settlement in the wilderness, where the once bright and joyous Chrissy was pining away her life. Still stranger things were happening to her absent lover.
At first, evil tidings from the Great Lone Land seemed like a dream from which there would be a glad awakening. But as days went by, and still the spell of silence brooded over her heart and life, and as days ripened into weeks—weeks into months—months into years—clouds of disappointment overshadowed her life, and Chrissy began to grow old and careworn. Loved ones watched her with wistful eyes. Why such a true, lovely woman had been destined to live on and on in a dire eclipse was a problem beyond the comprehension of all.
It was a hot, sultry morning in August Chrissy and her father were standing on the south shore of the river with Colonel By, who was superintending a large staff of workmen engaged in the construction of the Rideau Canal. On the eastern point was a pretty villa built of boulders, and surrounded with a low, wide veranda, and which, when completed, was designed to be the residence of the gallant Colonel. Surrounding it were the tents of the officers of two companies of Sappers and Miners, whose smart uniforms added to the picturesqueness of the scene. On the adjacent cliff three stone barracks were being built.
"It is a magnificent site—a magnificent site!" said the Colonel, then dreamily added: "It would not surprise me to see a fortress like the Castle St. Louis on that bluff some day."
A busy scene presented itself between the two cliffs, where scores of men with picks, shovels, hand-drills, wheel-barrows, and stone drays, were busily excavating. Stone-masons, with their mallets and chisels, were compelled to stop every few minutes to wipe the perspiration from their brows with their shirt-sleeves. Irish and Scotch they were mostly, their coarse homespun shirts contrasting with the neat undress uniform of the officers who were supervising the building of the barracks and assisting in the works.
Two men, with muskets, from one of the back settlements then accosted the Chief in an excited state of mind, and asked if it were another American invasion that they were preparing for.