CHAPTER IV. THE ABSENCE OF THE TRUANT DRAGON.
The cottage of the Bristols had been framed in Burlington, and brought down to Sandy Point on a schooner. As it stood, it was estimated to be worth about three hundred and fifty dollars, which was the cost of it to the poor woman when she invested her all in what was to be a home for the family.
It was a small sum the cottage cost, but to the poor woman it was as big as a million to a millionnaire. She had been well brought up in her father's house, and she could not exist like a Chinaman or a Hottentot, and it had cost the family a struggle to live during the absence of the father.
Now all that she had was to be taken from her. As they had paid no ground rent for the site, the law could do nothing for her. She was a tenant on suffrance rather than a tenant at will, and had no rights whatever. The magnate could tumble the cottage into the lake, and the wind would carry it where it listed. It would probably be broken up on the rocks or shoals, and the major might as well set it on fire as turn it adrift on the lake.
The rich man intended to execute his mandate in the cruelest manner possible. The students were to have a frolic in tumbling it into the lake. The humble structure contained all their household goods, all the little articles they valued far beyond the money they cost. It was hardly possible to remove them in the time allowed for the purpose, for everything would have to be carried by hand or transported in the flatboat.
No team could be driven down to the point, for the major would not allow a tree to be felled to make a road, and the owner had been compelled to leave his saddle-horse at a considerable distance from the lake when he visited it. Of course, the cruel magnate understood all this, and realized that his final mandate doomed the cottage and all it contained to certain destruction, for neither he nor his persecuted tenants could see any means of relief.
Even if they could carry away their goods, they had no place to put them. The brief period of probation given them was not more than enough to enable the poor woman to find another tenement. It was two miles to Westport, and five to Genverres, by water. The situation looked entirely hopeless to Mrs. Bristol; and the more she thought of it, the more bitterly she wept.
"I don't know what will become of us," said she when she had vented her grief for a time.