"That it wouldn't," laughed a small but active lady, who emerged and shook hands with him. "Hi, Jack, here's Mr. Joe come to see us! Isn't the shack a beauty, just?"
She stood away from the shack, regarding it with a proud eye. And Joe eagerly extolled its magnificence; for this city clerk had built a house which none need be ashamed of.
"Not bad by half, eh?" he grinned, as he came up to Joe. "My cousin, who's farming with me, gave a hand. There's four rooms inside, and a covered way to the stables and the piggeries. It's cost us a heap of labour, but it's done now, and mighty pleased we are. How's the Strikes? Crops showing well, eh? We're doing fine; and the wife is making money with her fowls and eggs and such things. My boy, I wouldn't be back on an office stool for double the pay. I'm free here—free, my boy! I can breathe out in this country. And look at the kids—they're as healthy as we could wish."
Joe took in his surroundings with an observant eye, and heartily congratulated his friends. Here he saw before him an example of what a man from a city can do in the Dominion, if only he have the pluck and the tenacity to face the difficulties and disappointments which are sure to come along at first, and have the perseverance to work.
"How did you manage?" he asked Jack, the owner of the place.
"Manage! Well, now, like this. I was ill back in the Old Country, and I'll say this for the people who employed me—they treated me handsomely. They paid my salary for a whole year; then the doctor recommended Canada, and out we came, drawing all our savings. Tom, my cousin, had been here four years working on the farms, and we went into partnership right away. Of course I knew nothing. I trusted to him, and I've learned steadily. It's been uphill work, my boy. But there you are."
He held out an open palm towards the house, eyeing it with supreme satisfaction. And no wonder. Here was a man who through ill-health had failed, more or less, in England. Canada had given him a new lease of life and new opportunities. But let us remember that the Dominion gives nothing without effort on the side of immigrants. Jack had worked—his elaborate shack showed that distinctly—while he had been aided and abetted by a clever wife who fell in at once with the ways of the country, who did not grumble because she was far outside a town, but set to work to master the intricacies of chicken rearing, or butter making, and a thousand and one things, hidden arts to her till that moment. And the result was success—success and happiness.
Joe shouted a farewell, promised to call in for a meal on his way back, and again whipped up his horses. In half an hour the rough track and his rig brought him to the door of the Hurleys, a tumble-down shack, showing obvious slackness on the part of the owner; and as he climbed out of the rig he heard cries and shouts coming from the interior of the shack.
"A ruction," he told himself. "Perhaps I'd better wait; other people's quarrels have nothing to do with me."
He paused half in and half out of the rig for a little while, till, of a sudden, the door of the shack flew open, and a lad some fifteen years of age dashed out. After him came a burly, bearded fellow, whose knitted brows and scowling face showed that he was in a temper. There was a whip in his hand, and no sooner was he out of the door than he sent the lash curling about the flanks of the lad who had preceded him, causing the latter to give vent to a cry of pain and to take cover by the rig. Then Hurley—for he it was—swung round on our hero.