'Well, if this is a thick neighbourhood, I should like to know his idea of a thin one,' said Arthur, sotto voce, to Sam Holt. 'We have met only this house for miles.'

'Oh, they ain't many miles, only you thought they was, cos' I guess you ain't used to the stumps,' put in the settler. 'The back lot to ours, of the same number, is took by a Scotchman, and last week I run a blazed line across to his clearing through the bush; for you see I'm often away, trapping or still-hunting, and Mary here thought she'd be a trifle less lonesome if she had a way of going over the hill to her friend Mrs. Macpherson. The other way is round by the "Corner," which makes it five miles full; but now Benny can run across of a message, by minding the marks; can't you, my lad?'

'Yes, father,' answered the boy proudly. 'And I can chop a blaze myself, too.' Benny was not much taller than an axe handle.

Arthur looked from the child round at the wife, who was often left alone in this solitude of woods, and longed for the slender chain of a scarred line of trees between her and some other woman. A healthy, firm outline of face, wholly unacquainted with nervousness; quiet, self-reliant, hard-working; perhaps of a Dutch type of character. Her husband was a sturdy broad-set man, with lithe limbs, and quick senses looking out from his clear-featured countenance: he had a roving unsubdued eye, befitting the hunter more than the farmer.

'I wouldn't desire,' said the latter, seating himself on the end of the table, while his wife superintended a pan of frizzling pork on the coals—'I wouldn't desire, for a feller that wanted to settle down for good, a more promising location than yourn at the Cedars. The high ground grows the very best sorts of hard wood—oak, sugar maple, elm, basswood. Not too many beech, or I'd expect sand; with here and there a big pine and a handful of balsams. The underbrushing ain't much, except in the swamp.'

'I'm glad to hear that,' said Mr. Holt, 'for the fall is going fast, and we'll have to work pretty hard before snow comes.'

'So I'm thinkin'. But you ain't going to settle: you haven't the cut of it: you're settled already.'

'How do you know?'

'Oh, you didn't listen as they did,' pointing his thumb towards the Wynns, 'when I fell to talkin' of the ground. I know'd my men at once. Nor you didn't stare about as they did, as if the house and fixins was a show at a copper ahead.'

'You must excuse our curiosity,' said Robert politely.