ext summer brought a scourge of frequent visitation to the 'Corner.' Lake fever and ague broke out among the low-lying log-houses, and Zack's highly adulterated and heavily priced drugs came into great demand. He was the farthest west adventurer at that date who took upon him to supply apothecary's wares among the threescore and ten other vendibles of a backwoods store. So the ill wind which blew hot fits and cold fits to everybody else blew profit into Zack's pockets.
The population had swelled somewhat since our first introduction to this little pioneer settlement. The number of wooden huts mottling the cleared space between the forest and the river edge, clustering, like bees round their queen, about the saw and grist mill, had increased during the last two years by some half-score—a slow rate of progression, as villages grow in Canada; but the 'Corner' had a position unfavourable to development. An aguish climate will make inhabitants sheer off speedily to healthier localities. No sensible emigrant will elect to live on a marshy site where he can help it. The value of the 'Corner' was just now as a stage on the upper branch of that great western highway, whose proper terminus lies no nearer than the Pacific, and whose course is through the fertile country of future millions of men.
This summer waggon-loads of emigrants and their chattels began to file each month into the bush beyond. Cedar Creek ceased to be farthest west by a great many outlying stations where the axe was gradually letting in light on the dusky forest soil. To these the 'Corner' must be the emporium, until some enterprising person set up a store and mills deeper in the wilderness.
The shrewd Davidson saw the country opening about him, and resolved to gather to himself the profit which must accrue to somebody. His first measure was to walk down one evening to the Wynns' farm. A thoroughly good understanding had always existed between these neighbours. Even patrician Mr. Wynn relished the company of the hard-headed Lanark-weaver, whose energy and common sense had won him the position of a comfortable landholder in Canada West. Added to which qualifications for the best society, Davidson was totally devoid of vulgar assumption, but had sufficient ballast to retain just his own proper footing anywhere.
He found the family assembled in their summer parlour, beneath the handsome butternut tree which Robert's axe had spared, and which repaid the indulgence by grateful shade and continual beauty of leafage. They were enjoying supper in the open air, the balmy evening air afloat with fragrant odours. I say advisedly supper, and not tea; the beverage was a lady's luxury out here, and ill suited hours of foregoing labour. Milk was the staple draught at Cedar Creek meals for all stout workers.
'Gude even, leddies;' and Davidson doffed his bonnet with European courtesy. 'Fine weather for loggin' this.' Indeed, he bore evident grimy and smoky tokens on his clothes that such had been his day's work. Applepie order was a condition of dress which he rarely knew, though he possessed a faultless homespun suit, in which he would have been happy to gang to the kirk on Sabbath, were that enjoyment practicable.
English papers had come to hand an hour before; among them a bundle of the provincial print nearest Dunore. Linda had learned not to love the arrival of these. It was a pebble thrown in to trouble their still forest life. The yearning of all hearts for home—why did they never dream of calling Canada home?—was intensified perhaps to painfulness. She could interpret the shadow on her father's brow for days after into what it truly signified; that, however the young natures might take root in foreign soil, he was too old an oak for transplantation. Back he looked on fifty-eight years of life, since he could remember being the petted and cherished heir of Dunore; and now—an exile! But he never spoke of the longing for the old land; it was only seen in his poring over every scrap of news from Britain, in his jealous care of things associated with the past, nay, in his very silence.
Now, the dear old gentleman was letting his tea grow cool beyond all remedy, while, with gold double eyeglass in hand, he read aloud various paragraphs of Irish news. Diverging at last into some question of party politics uppermost at the time, though now, in 1861, extinct as the bones of the iguanodon, he tried to get Davidson interested in the subject, and found him so totally ignorant of even the names of public men as to be a most unsatisfactory listener.
''Deed, then, Mr. Wynn, to tell you truth, I hae never fashed my head wi' politics sin' I cam' oot to Canada,' observed the Scotchman a little bluntly. ''Twas nae sae muckle gude I gained by't at hame; though I mind the time that a contested election was ane o' my gran' holidays, an' I thought mair o' what bigwig was to get into Parliament for the borough than I did o' my ain prospects in life, fule that I was; until I found the bairns comin', an' the loom going to the wall a'thegither before machinery and politics wouldna mak' the pot boil, nor gie salt to our parritch. So I came oot here, an' left politics to gentlefolk.'