'Didn't you?' put in the driver, with a small sneer. Andy had deemed him too far distant to catch his words, as he walked beside his horse.
'Why, then, you've long ears, my man; but sure it's kind for ye,' retorted Mr. Callaghan, his eye twinkling wickedly. I fear that his subtle irony was lost upon its subject. 'Of coorse I'm not used to ye're foreign food. Our vittles at home are a dale dacenter, though not so common.'
And Arthur, through his half-drowsy ears, was amused by the colloquy that ensued, in the course of which Andy completely floored the Canadian by a glowing description of Dunore, delivered in the present tense, but referring, alas! to a period of sixteen or twenty years previously. But the smart black-eyed backwoodsman wound up with the utterly incredulous speech,—
'They left all them riches to come and settle in our bush! whew!' He jerked his whip resoundingly upon the frying-pan and tin-kettle in the rear, which produced a noise so curiously illustrative of his argument, that Arthur laughed heartily, and shook off his fit of blues.
The aspect of nature would have helped him to do that. The thousand dyes of the woods were brilliant, as if the richest sunset had gushed from the heavens, and painted the earth with a permanent glory of colour. A drapery of crimson and gold endued the maples; the wild bines and briars were covered with orange and scarlet berries; the black-plumed pine trees rose solemnly behind. A flat country, for the most part; and, as the travellers slowly receded westward, settlements became sparse and small; the grand forests closed more densely round them; solitary clearings broke the monotony of trees.
The first of anything that one sees or experiences remains stronger than all after impressions on the memory. With what interest did the embryo settlers regard the first veritable log-hut that presented itself, surrounded by half an acre of stumps, among which struggled potatoes and big yellow squashes. A dozen hens pecked about; a consumptive-looking cow suspended her chewing, as also did her master his hoeing, to gaze after the waggon, till it disappeared beyond the square frame of forest which shut in the little clearing.
Again the long lines of stately oaks and firs, with a straight and apparently endless road between them, like the examples of perspective in beginners' drawing-books, but with the vanishing point always receding.
'I see they've turnpiked this road since I was on it before,' observed the driver.
'Where?' asked Andy, looking about. 'I don't see a turnpike—an' sure I ought to know a tollman's dirty face in any place. Sorra house here at all at all, or a gate; or a ha'porth except trees,' he added in a disgusted manner.
'There,' said the Canadian, pointing to a ploughed line along each side of the road, whence the earth had been thrown up in the centre by a scraper; 'that's turnpiking.'