Allison Bain; Or, By a Way She Knew Not

by Margaret M. Robertson

“Be you brothers?” said the farmer, as he caught the satisfied look with which John regarded the lad sitting at his ease among them.

“We are fellow-countrymen,” said John, “and that makes brothers of us here in a strange land.”

The evening was one to be remembered by these brothers, who had been strangers less than a month ago. A good many times in the course of his life has John told the story of that first evening in Jacob Strong’s house. He has forgotten many things, and times, and places better worth remembering, perhaps, but he will never forget his first coming into that long, low room, through whose open windows shone in the afterglow from the west, when the first heavy shower was over.

There was a wide fireplace, and on high, brass andirons a bright wood fire was burning. Over it was a mantel-shelf on which were arranged candlesticks of brass and snuffer-trays, and various other things quaint and pretty. There was a tall clock in the corner, and a tall looking-glass between the windows. There was a secretary in another corner, with a book-case above it, and some pictures on the walls. The table was laid for tea, and the room and all that was in it was perfect in neatness. Grandma Strong was there waiting for them, and the farmer’s wife and his “little daughter,” as Jacob Strong called a slender girl of sixteen, who was leaning shyly on her grand mother’s chair. He might well remember it, and his friend also, for it was a good day for them both which brought them there, and Jacob Strong and his household proved true friends to them.

Jacob Strong! John told his mother long afterward, that if the Bible had been searched from end to end to find a good name for a good man, none better than that could have been found for their new friend. Not that either of the patriarch’s names fitted him exactly. He was not a “supplanter,” and though he was on the right side, as no one who knew him well would deny or even doubt, yet if one had wished to tell his character in two words, it would not have been as “a soldier of God” that one would have described him. But he was in many ways very like the patriarch, as we see him in the Bible story. He was wise, he was wily, he was patient. He could bide his time and secure his chance, and when it came to that, that he had to yield, of to humble himself, to meet loss, or to dispense beyond what was pleasing to a man who took reasonable satisfaction in getting and in holding, he could yet do it without wincing visibly. He was fortunate in being in the hands of two good women, his mother and his wife, who knew him well, and loved him well, and who were jealous for his honour before men, and for his singleness of heart before God.

Of course John’s knowledge of his character came later, and by slow degrees. But even on this first night he was greatly interested in his talk, which was at once “worldly wise and heavenly simple,” as he afterward heard one of his neighbours say. And Jacob was strong in nature as in name. He could “hold on.” He had paid every dollar which his farm had originally cost him, by the work of his own hands on other men’s farms. And with the help of his mother first, and then of his wife, “who each carried a good head on her shoulders,” as he told John, he had made it pay. By and by he added another hundred acres to the first hundred, and later, when “the Western fever” set in, and people began to talk about prairie lands, and great wheat farms to be made out there in the Far West, one of his neighbours sold out to him, and Jacob’s two hundred acres became four.

“And that is about as much as I want to have on my hands, till labour comes to cost less, which won’t be for a spell, as things look now,” said he.

All this he told to John while a second heavy shower kept him waiting. Before the rain was over, Willie Bain was at rest for the night, in Mrs Strong’s south chamber. Then John told all that was necessary for them to know about the lad,—how, though he had known friends of his at home, he had never seen the lad himself until he had met him by chance on the lake shore. Finding him alone and ill, he had taken him home and cared for him. Bain was better now, and would soon be well. Yes, he meant to stay in the country. As to himself, John could not say whether he would stay long or not; the chances were he would remain for a time.

Then when the rain seemed over, John rose to go. The folk where they lived might be troubled about them. He had something to do in the morning, but in the course of the day he would come back for his friend. And with many thanks for their kindness to the lad, he took his departure.

Since William Bain had acknowledged his name, John thought it right that Mr Hadden should be informed of his arrival in the town, and next morning he went again to see him, at his place of business. He was a good deal surprised at the manner in which Mr Hadden received him. It was not at all as one receives a stranger, he thought, but the reason was soon made clear to him.