The morrow came. In the blaze of the orb of day Loch Dhu looked more beautiful than it did by moonlight. After a thorough examination of house and grounds, the fur-trader resolved to purchase it, and commissioned his plump little friend to carry out the transaction. Thereafter he and his man retraced their steps to the wilderness, still breathing unutterable things against the entire clan of McLeod.
Chapter Four.
Pioneering.
We turn now to “the enemy”—the McLeods. The father and his two sons sat in a rude shanty, on a bench and an empty keg, drinking tea out of tin cans. They were all stalwart, dark-haired, grave-visaged mountaineers of Scotland. Unitedly they would have measured at least eighteen feet of humanity. The only difference between the father and the sons was that a few silver hairs mingled with the black on the head of the former, and a rougher skin covered his countenance. In other respects he seemed but an elder brother.
“Ian,” he said to his first-born, as he refilled his tin can with tea, “how many more timbers have you to prepare for the dam?”
“Six,” replied the son laconically.
“It seems to me,” observed Kenneth, the second son, “that if the frost holds much longer we shall be thrown idle, for everything is ready now to begin the works.”
“Idle we need not be,” returned the father, “as long as there is timber to fell in the forest. We must prepare logs to be sawn as well as the mill to saw them.”