“I should like a paddler as far as Fort George.”
“Well, pick your man.”
“Quonab.”
And when they set out, for the first time Rolf was in the stern, the post of guidance and command. So once more the two were travelling again with Skookum in the bow. It was afternoon when they started and the four-mile passage of the creek was slow, but down the long, glorious vista of the noble George they went at full canoe-flight, five miles an hour, and twenty-five miles of the great fair-way were reeled and past when they lighted their nightly fire.
At dawn-cry of the hawk they sped away, and in spite of a rising wind they made six miles in two hours.
As they approached the familiar landing of Van Trumper's farm, Skookum began to show a most zestful interest that recalled the blackened pages of his past. “Quonab, better use that,” and Rolf handed a line with which Skookum was secured and thus led to make a new record, for this was the first time in his life that he landed at Van Trumper's without sacrificing a chicken in honour of the joyful occasion.
They entered the house as the family were sitting down to breakfast.
“Mein Hemel! mein Hemel! It is Rolf and Quonab; and vere is dot tam dog? Marta, vere is de chickens? Vy, Rolf, you bin now a giant, yah. Mein Gott, it is I am glad! I did tink der cannibals you had eat; is it dem Canadian or cannibal? I tink it all one the same, yah!”
Marta was actually crying, the little ones were climbing over Rolf's knee, and Annette, tall and sixteen now, stood shyly by, awaiting a chance to shake hands. Home is the abiding place of those we love; it may be a castle or a cave, a shanty or a chateau, a moving van, a tepee, or a canal boat, a fortress or the shady side of a bush, but it is home, if there indeed we meet the faces that are ever in the heart, and find the hands whose touch conveys the friendly glow. Was there any other spot on earth where he could sit by the fire and feel that “hereabout are mine own, the people I love?” Rolf knew it now—Van Trumper's was his home.
Talks of the war, of disasters by land, and of glorious victories on the sea, where England, long the unquestioned mistress of the waves, had been humbled again and again by the dauntless seamen of her Western blood; talks of big doings by the nation, and, yet more interesting, small doings by the travellers, and the breakfast passed all too soon. The young scout rose, for he was on-duty, but the long rollers on the lake forbade the going forth. Van's was a pleasant place to wait, but he chafed at the delay; his pride would have him make a record on every journey. But wait he must. Skookum tied safely to his purgatorial post whined indignantly—and with head cocked on one side, picked out the very hen he would like to utilize—as soon as released from his temporary embarrassment. Quonab went out on a rock to bum some tobacco and pray for calm, and Rolf, ever active, followed Van to look over the stock and buildings, and hear of minor troubles. The chimney was unaccountably given to smoking this year. Rolf took an axe and with two blows cut down a vigorous growth shrubbery that stood above the chimney on the west, and the smoking ceased. Buck ox had a lame foot and would allow no one even to examine it. But a skilful ox-handler easily hobbles an ox, throws him near some small tree, and then, by binding the lame foot to the tree, can have a free hand. It proved a simple matter, a deep-sunk, rusty nail. And when the nail was drawn and the place washed clean with hot brine, kind nature was left in confidence to do the rest. They drifted back to the house now. Tomas met them shouting out a mixture of Dutch and English and holding by the cover Annette's book of the “Good Girl.” But its rightful owner rescued the precious volume and put it on the shelf.