"Ou ay!" said the old lady, nodding her head grimly; "he will not be finding so many of yon kind."
"But it must be a great country," went on Brown. "You ought to bear him tell of the rivers with sands of gold, running through beds of coal sixty feet thick."
The old lady shook her cap at him, peering over her glasses. "Ye're a gay callant, and you will be taking your fun off me."
"But it's true. Ask Shock there."
"What?" said Shock, waking up from a deep study. Brown explained.
"Yes," said Shock. "The sands of the Saskatchewan are full of gold, and you know, mother, about the rivers in Cariboo."
"Ay, I remember fine the Cariboo, and Cariboo Cameron and his gold. But not much good did it do him, poor fellow."
"But," said Shock, gazing into the fire, "it was terrible to hear his tales of these men in the mines with their saloons and awful gambling places, and the men and women in their lonely shacks in the foot-hills. My! I could see them all."
Mrs. Macgregor looked sharply into her son's face, then laying her knitting down in her lap she turned to him and said severely, "And what took them out yonder? And did they not know what-na country it was before they went out?"
"Yes," said Shock, still looking into the fire, "but there they are, Mother, there they are, and no living soul to speak a good word to them."