'Rather!' replied Robert, looking equally dubious.

'I like to show the shanty to youngsters,' said Mr. Holt, as he turned from pushing back the shutter, 'that they may see what they have to expect. From such a start as this we Canadians have all waked up into opulence—that is, the hardworking share of us; and there's room enough for tens of thousands to do the same off in the bush.'

'I hope so, sir,' was the least desponding remark of which Robert could think. For the naked reality of a forest life came before him as never previously. The halo of distance had faded, as he stood beside the rude fireplace, fashioned of four upright limestone slabs in a corner, reaching to a hole in the roof, down which the wind was howling just now. It was rather a bleak look-out, notwithstanding the honeyed promises of the old settler pouring on his ear.

'To be sure there is. Fortune's at your back in the bush; and you haven't, as in the mother country, to rise by pushing others down. There's no impassable gulf separating you from anything you choose to aim at. It strikes me that the motto of our capital is as good as a piece of advice to the settler—"Industry, Intelligence, and Integrity"—with a beaver as pattern of the first two principles, anyhow. So recollect the beaver, my young chaps, and work like it.'

'I don't remember the building of this,' he added; 'but every stick was laid by my father's own hands, and my mother chinked between them till all was tight and right. I tell you I'm prouder of it than of a piece of fancy-work, such as I've seen framed and glazed. I love every log in the old timbers.' And Mr. Holt tapped the wall affectionately with his walking-staff. 'It was the farthest west clearing then, and my father chose the site because of the spring yonder, which is covered with a stone and civilised into a well now-a-days.'

'And is the town so modern as all that comes to?' said Robert.

Click to [ENLARGE]

'Twenty years grows a city in Canada,' replied Mr. Holt, somewhat loftily. 'Twenty years between the swamp and the crowded street: while two inches of ivy would be growing round a European ruin, we turn a wilderness into a cultivated country, dotted with villages. The history of Mapleton is easily told. My father was the first who ever built a sawmill on the river down there, and the frame-houses began to gather about it shortly. Then he ventured into the grist line; and I'm the owner of the biggest mills in the place now, with half-a-dozen of others competing, and all doing a fair business in flour, and lumber for exportation. You see in this land we've room enough for all, and no man need scowl down another of the same trade. 'Taint so in England, where you must knock your bread out of somebody else's mouth.'

'Not always, sir,' said Robert, 'nor commonly, I hope.'

'I forgot you were a fresh importation,' observed Mr. Holt with a satisfied chuckle. 'You ain't colonized yet. Well, let's come and look at something else.'