I get on well with Mr. O'Kelly because he does not mind answering questions, and I am rather stupid and do not understand irony, a fact now published for the first time.
Mr. Patrick O'Kelly started on "his own" thirty years ago in Manitoba. His name isn't really O'Kelly, but in this country a name is neither here nor there. He homesteaded one hundred and sixty statute acres, but to be a farmer one had to possess a capacity for waiting and he didn't possess it. After this, he became a prospector. Now, in prospecting, a man does not have to wait: his money is always discernible to the eye of faith. Mr. O'Kelly still holds his on this unnegotiable, spiritualistic plane. In the meanwhile he is boss of a big lumber camp over Prince Albert way. He used to be a captain on this river, but he doesn't captain any more. Some of these days he intends to take a wander back home. He hears that northern folk are foreigners in the South. This last remark is made with a rising inflection as if an answer were expected.
Who would have thought such a pathetic fear to be lurking under so confident and so square-shouldered an exterior? I can see now why Mr. O'Kelly finds it hard to get away. Without letting him know that his secret is suspected, I try to explain how it is the northerners who have changed. We pioneers talk of going home but we really never go back—that is the person who went away. This may be equally true of all migrants who go into a far country, whether it be Abraham who went into Ur of Chaldea, or Reginald of Oxford who goes into Saskatchewan.
There are several scribes on board, and one of them, "a editor in human form," gives us greeting and joins our company. He is a thin, straight young fellow with a likeable face, but his hair is shockingly awry.
"So you are an editor," says Mr. O'Kelly. "Your unpeaceable tribe has committed much damage in this country."
"What do you mean by calling us a tribe? I conceive that you are an old fool and perhaps a liberal in politics. Although I am an editor, and by no means proud, I consider myself to be much better than you."
"Young person! you mean you are no worse," answers Mr. O'Kelly, "but, in faith, I meant no offence and I am not a liberal."
Being thus reassured, the editor proceeds to discuss his difficulties with us. He has been treated with great unfairness in one of the northern towns. They gave him a fine mouthful of promises when he went there, but they gave him nothing else. They failed to pay their subscriptions and their advertisements, so that he had to leave the place naked and ashamed. Some day, he is going to write a story in an American magazine and describe this town as a real-estate office in a muskeg. It will be marrow to his bones, and he will let the magazine have the story for nothing.
Or, worse still, he will tell the truth about all the leading citizens; he will set it down without equivocation or shadow of turning.
"But you wouldn't do this latter," I argue; "only a man with ink for blood could do so terrible a thing."