'Do you know to whom you talked at table?' asked Hiram Holt afterwards. He had been sitting some way farther up at the other side. 'One of the most noted land-jobbers in the country—a man who buys wild lands at three shillings an acre, to sell them again at ten or fifteen, if he can; and he never loses an opportunity of driving a trade. His bargain of a cleared farm is probably some worn-out dilapidated location not worth half-a-dollar an acre till hundreds have been spent on it.'
'Then I've gained one benefit by being poor,' said Robert; 'nobody can have a motive for over-reaching me'—which was philosophic consolation.
Mr. Holt's business would not permit him to leave till next evening. And so the Wynns, continuing to lionize, looked into the vast but dreary Romish cathedral, which seats ten thousand people in its nine spacious aisles and seven chapels; clambered to the roof, and viewed the city from a promenade at an elevation of 120 feet; and then drove to that special beauty of Montreal—the mountain. This is a hill more than 500 feet in height, and clothed from head to foot with the richest verdure of woods; among which grow the most delicious apples extant since Paris selected one as a prize. From the summit a landscape of level country stretches below westwards; in middle, distant villages; on the horizon, the Ottawa confluence, bounding Montreal Island and forming others. Southwards, across the St. Lawrence, the hills of Vermont far away; nearer, the fertile valley of the Richelieu.
'Let's go off to one of the habitan villages,' said Arthur suddenly. 'Dismiss the calèche, and we will walk back. I'll ask for a drink of water in one of the cottages just to scrape acquaintance.'
'Furbish up your French, too,' said Robert, 'for they do gabble it fast. I heard a fellow chattering in the steerage, coming up the river yesterday morning: by the way, he and Andy had struck up a friendship: and such bowing as they had to each other's incomprehensible lingo!'
'I wonder what he is doing to-day,' said Arthur reflectively; 'he asked me so particularly whether we should want him again till the evening.'
'Found out a nest of Irish somewhere, I suppose.'
'There's a fellow taking off his hat to us,' remarked Arthur, as they passed a carter. 'Everybody seems to bow to everybody in this country. But did you ever see such an old-fashioned vehicle as he drives? And he keeps talking to himself and his horse all the way, apparently.'
Rapidly walking down the fine road to the plain, they were not long in nearing a group of neat white houses round the invariable shining steeple.
'The village looks as sociable as the people,' said Robert. 'How neat everything seems!—Hallo, Arthur, we've come in for some festivity or other, by all the gay ribbons about.'