About four or five hours of meandering in a more or less northerly direction, the guide, who was driving the team, in endeavouring to discover his whereabouts, accidentally ran across a survey mound with an iron stake in it. He jumped down to inspect it.
"Fine hay!" he exclaimed, as he read the identification marks on the little tin plate and compared them with his map; "we're only eleven miles from your land," and he was so overjoyed, presumably to find himself still in Canada, that he suggested they should stay where they were for dinner.
Trailey always anticipated his meals rather longingly. He said he thought the suggestion was a very clever one, but upon Martha Trailey informing them that no provisions had been brought along, the guide was so disappointed that he spat out his chew of tobacco in mistake for the juice.
"Wot abaht it nah?" questioned Sam, who wanted to be moving.
The ex-watchman ignored the remark. "Don't Englishmen never eat?" he asked, helping himself to a fresh chew.
Looking very pathetic, Trailey was apparently too broken-hearted to say anything. The loss of a meal was the very worst catastrophe that could happen to him. Martha flashed a withering glance at her husband and said in what she probably thought was a whisper:
"So he thinks this is a picnic, does he? Why don't you speak up like a man and tell him we aren't trapesing all over this wilderness for the joy of it? We've come to see our land, not to get lost. You could have lost us, without bringing him along. We're a pack of fools to come out with a man who can't find his way in his own country. Why, even the rats are laughing at us"—Mrs. Trailey indicated a gopher which sat up cheekily and squeaked at them; then, with an indescribably contemptuous gesture, she regarded the lost guide, who stood at the corner post, a few yards away, and said: "God help Canada if there are many men like him working for it." With this heart-felt invocation on behalf of a heeler-ridden country, she picked one of her husband's loose hairs from off the sleeve of her black coat and threw it to the bottom of the wagon box with great force.
"Hush, Martha!" whispered Trailey, who stood beside his wife in the wagon; "he will hear you."
"Yes, that's always your cry," retorted Mrs. Trailey, raising her voice. "Anything for peace and quietness. If you had a family of squalling children, and a wife that gabbled like two monkeys in a cage turned upside down, I could understand it. All you think about is to be quiet, and sigh, and sleep. You mark my words, you'll die in your sleep one of these afternoons. Men with short, thick necks like you've got always do; at any rate, they generally go off sudden instead of——"
"He may die of shortness of breath, lydy," Sam broke in facetiously, "but you never will"—then, addressing the guide, who was still standing at the corner post very much perplexed, he said: "Come on, driver; tyke us 'ome aht of this."