“Why, do you see, Pater and I was going to do some work for a new settler at the farther end of the lake, and so we hired a boat to make a short cut—a long cut it’ll be for Pater, seeing he’ll never get there; och, ahone, ahone! Says Pater, ‘We’ll not do without provisions, Pat, and so I’ll be after getting Home, and jist a drop of whiskey to wash them down.’ I axes him if he’d got them all right. ‘All right,’ says he, as we shoved off. All right it wasn’t though, for when I came to axe for some bread and cheese and a slice of pork, he hadn’t got any. Indeed, faith, he’d forgotten all else but a big bottle of the cratur. ‘It’s a bad bargain,’ says I; but I thought we’d make the best of it. We rowed, and we took a pull at the bottle, and we rowed again, and then another pull; but Pater took two pulls for my one—worse luck for him,—and so we went on till somehow or other we both fell asleep. When we woke up, there we were in the middle of a rice-bed. How to get out was a hard job, when Pater, in trying to shove with the oar, fell overboard. I caught him by one leg just as he was going to be drownded entirely, but he was little better than a mass of ice in a few minutes, in spite of the whiskey inside of him. I at last got him on shore, and covered him up with a blanket, but before long he was as stiff as an icicle, and though I shouted as loud as I could, and bate him with a big stick, I couldn’t make him hear or feel. Ahone, ahone! och the whiskey! I’d rather that never a drop should pass my lips again, than to die as Pater Disney.”
Several families of Irish had lately arrived at the settlement, to some of whom Peter Disney was related.
As soon as Pat Honan drew near the shore, where many of them were standing watching the boat, he shouted out that Peter was dead. Forthwith they set up a fearful howl, in which others as they came up joined them, till the whole party were howling away in concert, led by Pat, who cried out, “Ah, it was drink—the cratur,—’twas drink, drink that did it.”
Rob and Susan had arrived safely with the sleigh. As soon as the ground hardened, Rob set off in the canoe, and brought the luggage-sleigh home by the snow road formed through the woods, along the borders of the lake.
Story 3—Chapter 7.
Though most out-of-door work comes to a standstill in winter, chopping can still be carried on, fallen trees cut up and fresh trees cut down. One of the customs of the country is to form a bee when any particular piece of work has to be done in a hurry. Such as a log hut or a barn raised, or some ground cleared.
The bees are the neighbours who come from far and near; they receive no wages, but are fed well, and whiskey is served out too well while they are at work. The more industrious among the settlers employed the time in the house in making household furniture, mending their tools, and in many other ways—not forgetting reading the Bible to their families.
The winter was already some way advanced when most of the inhabitants of Thornhill were invited to chop trees and to put up a log hut, by a gentleman, a Mr Sudbury, who had bought land about three miles off and wished to get in some crops as soon as the snow was off the ground.