Only those who have lived in a cold country like Canada can fully realize the pleasurable sensations which attend the opening of spring. The weary monotony of winter, with its unvarying aspect of white fields, and steady frost, often so intense as to make exposure painful, gives way to freedom and life, and with some such feelings as stir the heart of the prisoner, when he exchanges his darksome cell for sunshine and green fields, does the dweller of Canada hail the time when the snowbanks disappear and when he can, without wraps, move whether he will in the genial atmosphere. It was at that period of the year when the simple incidents I am going to relate took place.
Amid the unbroken forest which covered the county of Huntingdon in the year 1820, a log shanty stood on the west bank of Oak creek, at a point where the beavers had by their industry formed a small meadow. The shanty was rude as might be, of unsquared logs, with a roof of basswood split into slabs, and a stick chimney. The interior consisted of a single room, and a small one at that. The inmates were a mother and daughter. The mother, engaged in spinning, sat in the sunshine which streamed through the open door, brightening the few pieces of furniture it fell upon and whitening still more the heaps of ashes in the open fire-place, behind which smouldered a huge backlog. She had evidently passed her fiftieth year, while the pressed lips and look of patient reserve told of the endurance of a lifelong sorrow.
“Dae ye no see or hear ocht?” she asked, looking through the doorway to the woods beyond, to which she often turned her eyes.
“No, mother,” replied the girl addressed, who was sitting on the doorstep.
“What can hae come ower him!” said the woman in a low voice.
“Dinna fret; he’ll be here soon,” said Jeanie in a tone that spoke more of a desire to comfort her mother than faith in her statement.
As if not heeding her, the mother resumed, “He said he would be back last nicht, and he should hae been. I sair misdoot ill has befaen him.”
It was of her husband of whom she spoke. He had worked all winter for a party of Americans, who were cutting the best of the timber along the banks of the creek, and had gone Monday morning to aid them in driving the logs to the point on the Chateaugay where they were to be formed into rafts and thence taken to Quebec. His last words had been that he would, at the latest, be back the following evening and it was now the third day.
Jeanie strained her eyes and ears to catch the faintest sign of her father’s approach. The quaver of the grey-bird and the chirrup of the chipmunk came occasionally from the recesses of the woods, which lay sleeping in the April sunshine that glorified everything, but no rustle of branch or cracking of dried stick that would indicate an approaching footstep. The usually silent creek, now swollen by melted snow, lapped its banks in pursuing its tortuous course, murmuring a soothing lullaby to the genial day; and that great peace, to be found only in mountain recess or forest depth, brooded over the scene. But there, where all the influences of nature were so soothing, were two hearts filled with anxious care.
“Jeanie,” suddenly exclaimed the mother, after a long pause, and staying the whirr of the wheel, “you maun gang and seek your father. Gae down to Palmer’s and there you’ll find the rafts, and the men will tell you whether he left for hame or no.”