Seeds of Pine

by Emily F. Murphy

It was in this hospital that "Twelve-Foot" Davis (now in heaven) gave his instructions to his partner, Jim Cornwall, to take his body on a sled to the Peace River and bury it on the height of land.

People in the cities are too busily absorbed in the transactions of peers and politicians to know northern philanthropists like "Twelve-Foot" Davis, the first man to introduce steel-traps into this country and to thus dare the wrath of the omnipotent and indomitable "Company of Gentlemen Adventurers." You may not know it, but the steel trap has done as much for the Indian as the self-binder has for the white man.

But down here every one knows that "Twelve-Foot" Davis was held in high esteem, and any man will tell you, as Bill the driver told me, how it was a full hand this fine frontiersman laid on the Lord's table and that none of the cards were lacking.

Twelve-Foot Davis was so called because, in the days of the Caribou rush, he staked a claim of twelve feet. Each prospector was allowed one hundred feet and there was no claim left when Twelve-Foot appeared on the scene. But to be assured in his mind he was not outdone, he measured the claims and found that two of the prospectors were holding two hundred and twelve feet. Davis wanted those extra twelve feet and the prospectors decided to give him a place directly in the centre of their claims on a spot where a basin of shale lay. From this narrow claim, Twelve-Foot dug up a large quantity of gold, and this was the only spot on the entire creek where the least trace of ore was found, even his neighbours being unable to pan out a grain. It was from this happening that he derived the name which, because of the question it carries on its face, would, as a nom-de-plume, be worth a corresponding amount of gold to an obscure author.

Bill, who is fairly amenable to bribes, takes me over to the further hill where the Church of England Mission stands, which Mission was the spiritual husbandry of the late Bishop Holmes.

It would be pleasant to tell of this place and of the school, but Bill is in haste and will not tarry my leisure. It may be that his swaying motive is another bribe.

It was only three months ago that the Bishop and his family started for England, and soon afterwards came the news that he had died in a London hospital. The teachers tell me the family who went out together on this holiday are never coming back, in that they cannot afford to take the journey now that the bread-winner is gone. The furniture is to be sold and the house will be done-over for another bishop.

As I walk through the home which for many years has been the most hospitable one in the north, it is with a mist in my eyes and a painful tightness in my throat. I touch the chords of Auld Lang Syne on the piano in honour of Madam, the mother; I kiss the house-flowers for the love of the young girls who carried them safely over the long, long winter; I finger the books in the library with affection in memory of the good Bishop who once told me kindly tales of these Indians who were his friends.

And when I, too, have gone, may it happen that some one who understands will touch my books in like manner, and say good-bye to them for me. I could not so endure it of myself....

... It was six days later at the sports that I received a proposal of marriage from Prosper, an Indian who is a trainer of horses. It was not wholly a surprise, in that he had already approached the master of our party with an overture to buy me. The master had hesitated to tell me of this for fear I might be offended. "You see, Lady Jane," he explained, "it is like that case in Patience where the magnet wished to attract the silver churn."