FASHIONING A PIPE.

"He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep, cool bed of the river.
* * * * * *
"Hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard, bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf, indeed,
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor, dry, empty thing
In holes as he sat by the river.
'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan,
... 'The only way since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.'
... Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river."
—MRS. BARRETT BROWNING.

JUDITH MOORE;

OR,

FASHIONING A PIPE.

BY

JOANNA E. WOOD.

Author of "The Untempered Wind," etc.

TORONTO:
THE ONTARIO PUBLISHING CO., Limited
1898.

Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one
thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight, by THE ONTARIO PUBLISHING
Co., Limited, at the Department of Agriculture, Ottawa.

JUDITH MOORE.

CHAPTER I.

"Behold a sower went forth to sow."

Andrew Cutler, with his graceful and melancholy red Irish setter at his heels, walked swiftly across his fields to the "clearing" one morning late in spring.

He was clad in the traditional blue jeans of the countryman, and wore neither coat nor vest; a leathern belt was drawn about his middle. His shirt, open a bit at the throat, and guiltless of collar and tie, displayed a neck such as we see modelled in old bronzes, and of much the same colour; for Andrew Cutler was tanned to the point of being swart. His head had a somewhat backward pose, expressive of an independence almost over-accentuated.

His hair was cropped short, and was of a sun-burnt brown, like his long moustache. His eyes were blue-grey, that softened to hazel or hardened to the hue of steel. His nose was aquiline, with the little flattened plateau on the bridge that we call "Spanish." His chin was strong—the chin of a man who "manlike, would have his way."

Mother Nature must laugh in her sleeve at the descriptive names we tack to her models. This man so completely satisfied the appellation "aristocratic," that, with the stubbornness of a much-humoured word, it persists in suggesting itself as the best vehicle to describe this young farmer, and indeed the combination would be entirely to the advantage of the adjective, which is often seen in poor company. A veritable rustic Antinous he was, with broad chest, slim, lithe loins, and muscles strong as steel. Slung athwart his shoulder was a sack of coarse brown canvas that bulged with a heavy load; but he strode on, his balance undisturbed, and presently he stood upon the verge of the clearing. This was simply a part of the woodland that Andrew was taking under cultivation. A somewhat unpromising piece it looked, with its stubborn stumps standing irregularly amid the broken furrows—(for it had been ploughed, in such fashion as ploughing may be done when one has to twist around stumps, over stones, and tear through long strong roots).

Andrew remembered the ploughing, as he walked across to begin his sowing, like the good farmer that he was, at the end-rigg. Here was the stump that had resisted gunpowder, leverage and fire, and that now was being tortured by saltpetre, charged in a deep augur hole. Well, it had been a right brave old tree, but the saltpetre would win to the stout oaken heart yet. It was perhaps a step in the right direction, this clearing of the woodland, but all progress seems cruel at first. Here—as he passed over what seemed a particularly smooth bit—the great stone lay hidden that had broken his ploughshare off with a crash, and sent him flying from between the plough-stilts. He would remember that stone for some time! So doubtless would good old Bess, whose patient brown shoulders had borne the brunt of the shock.

Ploughing a field is like ploughing the sea—one needs must have a chart of each to steer safely. That more formidable sea, "whose waves are years," has no chart. Next winter would see the uprooting of all these stumps, and the felling of more trees beyond. Next spring the plough would pass straight from end to end, and the seed-drill would sow the space which now he was about to sow in the old classic fashion—as they sowed, in intervals of stormy peace, the grain after the wooden ploughs on the Swiss hillsides; as Ulysses sowed the salt upon the seashore; as the sowers sowed the seed in the far-off East, as has been handed down to us in a matchless allegory.

He began his task, hand and foot moving in rhythm, and cadenced by the sharp swish, swish of the grain as it left his hand, spreading fan-wise over the soil. It takes a strong wrist and a peculiar "knack" to sow grain well by hand; he had both.

The dog followed him for a couple of ridges, but, besides the ploughed ground being distasteful to him (for he was a dainty dog and fastidious), the buckwheat hit him in the eyes, and his master paid no heed to him, a combination of circumstances not be borne; hence, he shortly betook himself to the woodland, where he raised a beautiful little wild rabbit and coursed after it, until with a final kick of its furry heels it landed safe beneath a great pile of black walnut logs, built up criss-cross fashion to mellow for the market. Rufus (named from "William the Red, surnamed Rufus") returned to his master, not dejectedly, but with a melancholy contempt for rabbits that would not "run it out," but took shelter in a sneaking way where they could not be come at.

By this time Andrew was well on with his work. The sack beneath his arm was growing limp, he himself was warm. He paused as a bird flew up from a turned sod at his feet, and a little search showed the simple nest of a grey-bird—open to the sun and rain, built guilelessly, without defence of strategy or strength.

There is something amiss with the man or woman whose heart is not touched by a bird's nest—the daintiest possible epitome of love, and home, and honest work, and self-sacrificing patience. Andrew had thrashed many a boy for robbing birds' nests, and had discharged a man in the stress of haying because he knocked down the clay nests of the swallows from beneath the granary eaves with a long pole. Now he bent above this nest with curious-tender eyes, touching the spotted eggs lightly whilst the bird, whose breast had left them warm, flitted to and fro upon the furrows. He remained but a moment (the bird's anxiety was cruel) then, fixing the spot in his memory that he might avoid it in the harrowing, he was about to go on his way, when his ears were assailed by a succession of the sweetest sounds he had ever heard—note after note of purest melody, flung forth unsyllabled, full-throated to the air, inarticulate but eloquent. Again and again it came, liquid, rich, and with that pathos which perfection always touches.

At first he could not fix the direction from whence it came. It was as if the heavens above had opened and showered down music upon his heart as he had flung forth the seed upon the earth: and indeed there were two sowings that morning and from each harvests were garnered—first the bloom and then the fruit thereof. But as he listened longer he knew it issued from the wood before him. At the first note some impulse made him snatch off his old felt hat, and he stood there, bareheaded in the sunshine, as one might stand to whom had come the pang of inspiration.

The singer was voicing no composition, only uttering isolated notes, or short crescendos, terminating in notes of exquisite beauty, but leaving a sense of incompleteness that was so intense us to be almost a physical pain to him—only forgotten when the next utterance robbed him of retrospect and filled him with hope. Any one who has heard a perfect singer practising, knows the sensation. In such fashion the unseen sirens sang, and men willingly risked death to touch the lips that had been parted by such melodious breath.

Andrew still stood, and at last silence fell—a silence he hardly comprehended at first, so filled was it with the dream of sound that had passed, so instinct with expectation: but it forced itself upon him, and then suddenly round him there sounded all the commonplace noises of life—the croaking of a tree toad, the buzzing of a chance fly, the far-off shouting of men, and the sounds of birds—all that had been deadened to his ear by the magic of that voice.

A voice—then whence?

In two strides he was over the ploughed ground and in the woods. He searched through and through it in vain. He looked from its borders at his own far-off farm-house among its trees, at the gables of the village of Ovid clustering together, at the tin on the Baptist Church spire glistening in the midst, at the long low Morris homestead that nestled in a little hollow beyond his wood: but all was as usual, nothing new, nothing strange. No angel's glistening wing was to be seen anywhere.

Andrew's grain was spent, but the clearing was not yet all sown. So he went home leaving his task unfinished. From one thing to another was the rule of his busy life. He gave a cheery word or two to his aunt, Miss Myers, who kept house for him, and then he was off to town with a waggon load of implements to be mended in time for the summer work.

That night a group of typical Ovidians were gathered in the kitchen of old Sam Symmons' house.

Sam Symmons lived in a frame house, just at the foot of the incline which led into the village from the north. Like many of the houses of Ovid, his was distinctly typical of its owner. A new house was such a rare thing in Ovid, that the old ones had time to assimilate the characters of their possessors, and to assume an individuality denied to the factors of a more rapidly growing place.

Old Sam's house was a tumble-down, rakish, brave-looking old house, with shutters erstwhile painted green. They had once given the whole house quite an air, but their painful lapses in the way of broken slats, and uneven or lost hinges, now superimposed upon it a look of indecision. One of the weather-boards at the south corner was loose and, freed from the nails' restraint, bent outward, as though beckoning the gazer in. It was a hospitable old house, but wary, too, the ornate tin tops of the rain troughs round the roof giving it a knowing look.

The native clematis grew better over the weather-beaten gable than anywhere else in Ovid, and the Provence roses, without any care whatever, bloomed better.

It was as if the house and its environs were making a gallant but losing light against encroaching time and adverse circumstances. So it was with old Sam.

He was an old man. Long before, when Canada's farmers were more than prosperous, when foreign wars kept the price of food grains high, when the soil was virgin and unexhausted, when the military spirit still animated the country, when regulars were in barracks at the nearest town, when every able man was an eager volunteer, when to drink heavily and swear deeply upon all occasions marked the man of ease, when the ladies danced in buckled shoes and chéne taffetas, and were worshipped with chivalrous courtesy and high-flown sobriquets—in those days old Sam Symmons had been known as "Gallant Sam Symmons," and had been welcomed by many high in the land.

He had ever been first in a fight, the last upright at the table, a gay dancer and a courtly flirt. But now he was glad to get an audience of tolerant villagers to listen to his old tales. For instead of garnering his money he spent it freely, having ever a generous heart and open hand, and of late years he had fallen upon evil times, and gone steadily down hill. Now he had only a strip of barren acres heavily mortgaged. He married late in life the daughter of a country doctor.

They had one child, a girl, whose mother died when she was four years old. Sam christened his daughter Susanna Matilda.

In the days of his youth—oh, the halcyon time—these two names had been the names of the hour. The Mabels, Lilys and Rubys of to-day were yet unborn.

Susanna Waring had been the belle of the county, and her lovers were willing to stake their honour upon her pre-eminence.

Matilda Buchanan had been called "The Rose of Canada," and when the Consul, her father, returned to England, she footed it bravely at the Court of St. James. She married a nobleman there.

They were long dead, these two beauties. Matilda Buchanan had left all her pomp, and Susanna Waring had passed away from all her unhappiness, for she married an officer who treated her brutally. Well, well, old Sam Symmons, gallant Sam Symmons then, had danced with both of them, had kissed Miss Waring's hand in a minuet, and knocked a man down for saying Matilda Buchanan rouged.

She did—they all did in those days—but it was not for the profane lips of man to say so. Thus Sam christened his daughter Susanna Matilda, and felt he had done his duty by her.

After his wife's death, her cousin, a good enough woman in a negative sort of way, kept house for him, and brought up the little girl. When Susanna was eighteen, this woman died; so Sam and his daughter were left alone.

As has been said, quite a crowd was gathered in old Sam's kitchen that night in the last week of May. There was Sam himself, Jack Mackinnon (a neighbour's hired man and the most noted liar in Ovid), Hiram Green, Oscar Randall, and Susanna. It may be said here that throughout Ovid and its environs Susanna's proper name was a dead letter. She was "Sam Symmons' Suse" to all and sundry. The Ovidian mind was not prone to poetry: still, this alliterative name seemed to have charms for it, and perhaps the poetical element in Ovid only required developing: and it may be that the sibilant triune name found favour because it chimed to some dormant vein of poesy, unsuspected even by its possessors.

The occasion calling forth the conclave in Symmons' kitchen was simply that his old mare was very sick; in fact, dying, as all save Sam thought. As every man in Ovid prided himself upon his knowledge of veterinary science, the whole community stirred when it was spread abroad that there was an equine patient to practise upon.

Oscar Randall took the dim lantern from the table and went out. He returned, and all awaited his opinion.

"Well, Os?" said Jack Mackinnon.

"If that was my horse—which she ain't, of course—I'd shoot her," said Oscar, deliberately.

"Shoot her!" said Jack Mackinnon: "shoot her! Don't you do it, Mister Symmons. Why, there was old Mr. Pierson wot I worked for in Essex, he had an old mare, most dreadful old and most terrible sick—sick for months. One day we drawed her out in a field, to die easy and so's she'd be easy to bury. Well, by George! she got up, and old Mr. Pen—him wot I worked for as has the dairy farm—he came along, and he says to Mr. Pierson, says he, 'Wot'll you take for the mare?' 'Twenty-five dollars,' says the old man. 'She's my mare, then,' says Mr Pen; 'I'll give you my note for her.' So Mr. Pen took her home and drove her in his milk-cart: and that spring he sold her two colts for a hundred dollars apiece, and in the fall he got two hundred dollars for a little black one; and Mr. Ellis, wot keeps tavern, he bought another pair of 'em in winter, and gave a sorrel horse and a double cutter for 'em. I tell you, she was a good old mare that, and we drug her out to die at old Mr. Pierson's, wot I worked for in Essex, and old Mr. Pen, wot keeps the dairy farm, he came along, and says, 'Wot'll you take for the mare?' And—"

"Oh, shut up! Draw it mild, Jack," said Oscar, irascibly.

"Sam," said Hiram Green, slowly, "have you tried Epsom salts? and ginger? and saltpetre? and sweet spirits of nitre? and rye? and asafoetida? and bled her? and given her a bran-mash? and tried turpentine and salt?"

"Yes," said Sam, "I have, and she's no better."

"Now, Sam," said Green, impressively, "did you give her a 'Black's Condition Powder'?"

"No, I didn't," said Sam.

"I thought so," said Green, significantly.

"Do you keep them in the store?" queried Oscar Randall, aggressively. He felt aggrieved with Hiram, having himself intended to ask about the sweet nitre and turpentine.

"Do you keep them?" he asked again.

"Yes, I do," admitted Hiram, "and I've brought one along in case Sam should like to try it."

This rather crushed Oscar's insinuation as to Hiram's business policy in suggesting this remedy, so he sat silent, while old Sam and Hiram Green went out to administer the powder.

Jack Mackinnon, to whom silence was impossible, with the freedom of equality prevalent in Ovid, turned to where Suse sat making rick-rack.

"Wot are you making, Miss Suse?" he began, and without waiting for a reply, continued: "There was Adah Harris, daughter of old man Harris, wot was a carpenter and had a market garden, wot I worked for in Essex, and she was always a-doing things. She was busy every blessed minute, and I tell you she was smart; she married Henry Haynes wot kept a blacksmith's shop, wot I worked for: and when I left there, I left my clothes be, till I got a job, and when I went back after 'em, there was a new shirt, and two paper collars in a box, and my mother's picture gone. Now I knowed pretty clost to where them things went—and I'll have 'em back if I have to steal 'em. Why I thought no end of mother's picture, it was took standing; I wouldn't have lost that picture for a fifty-cent piece, and there 'twas gone and my new shirt and two collars I'd only had two months. I left them at Henry Haynes' wot married Adah Harris. Old man Harris went carpentering and kept a market garden, but, pshaw! Talk about squashes, why we growed one squash there took three men to get it into the waggon, and then we rolled it up a board—why squashes—" but just then Hiram and old Sam came in. Old Sam blew the long-lit lantern out.

"Well, father?" Suse asked.

"She's dead," said Sam.

"Dead's a door nail," added Hiram.

"No!" said Jack, with exaggerated incredulity.

"You don't say!" said Oscar, in a tone which betrayed a distinct conflict between self-satisfaction and proper sympathy. He could not resist adding in a lower key, "I seen as much."

Soon the trio of visitors departed. Old Sam was smoking a last pipe when a knock came to the door. He opened it to find Andrew Cutler without.

"What's this I hear about your mare?" he asked. "Is she dead?"

"Yes—couldn't seem to do anything for her," said old Sam, and brave as he was, his tone was somewhat disheartened.

"Well, it's too bad, she was a good beast. Better have my little bay till you look about for another," said Andrew.

Old Sam's face lightened. "I'll be glad to," he answered. "There's the orchard field to plough and I'm behindhand already, but"—his old pride forbidding him to accept too eagerly—"don't you need him?"

"No, not a bit," said Andrew. "Indeed, I'll be glad if you take him awhile. He's getting above himself."

"Well, I'll come along for him in the morning, then," said Sam, relieved. "What have you been doing to-day?"

"Sowing buckwheat in the clearing, and went to town with some mending," replied Andrew. "I'm just getting home."

"How does the clearing look?" asked Sam. "Free of water?"

"Yes, it's in good condition."

"Hiram Green says that there's a boarder up to the Morris place. Did you see anything of it?"

"Man or woman?" asked Andrew, with sudden interest.

"Hiram didn't say. I took it was a man." (Andrew's heart sank.) "Suse, did Hiram Green say 'twas a man or a woman had come to board with old Mrs. Morris?"

"He didn't say," called Suse from an inner room.

"Well, it's a lonely place to choose, isn't it?" said Andrew. "Good-night, Mr. Symmons."

"Good-night, good-night. Thank you kindly," said old Sam.

The old mare was buried next day in one of Sam's barren fields.

"Did you get the shoes off her?" Mr. Horne asked as he encountered old Sam returning from the obsequies with an earthy spade over his rounding shoulders.

"No, I didn't," said Sam.

"Did you save her tail to make a fly brush?" queried Mr. Horne.

"No," answered old Sam. "I never thought of it."

"Did you skin her?" asked his questioner bending over. "Did you skin her?"

"No," said Sam, thoroughly humiliated.

"Well," said Mr. Horne with exuberant sarcasm, as he shook his reins over his team of fat Clydesdales, "It's well you can afford such such waste. I couldn't."

CHAPTER II.

"Say where
In upper air
Dost hope to find fulfilment of thy dream?
On what far peak seest thou a morning gleam?
Why shall the stars still blind thee unaware?
Why needst thou mount to sing?
Why seek the sun's fierce-tempered glow and glare?
Why shall a soulless impulse prompt thy wing?"

The next day Andrew Cutler went to complete the sowing of the clearing. It was somewhat chill, and he wore an old velveteen coat whose ribbed surface was sadly rubbed and faded to a dingy russet. More than that, it was burnt through in several round spots by ashes from his pipes and cigars. As usual, Rufus followed him, and a very picturesque pair the two made.

The air was very clear, the smoke from the village curling bluely up high to the clouds, no shred of it lingering about the roof trees. He could see some white pigeons flying about the church spire; and off to the right, where the river ran, he could see lines of white flashing a moment in the sun, then falling beyond the trees, and these he knew were flashes from the shining breasts and wings of the gulls. The ground had not yet lost the elasticity of spring, and the new grass had not yet quite overcome the dead growth of the year before.

It was a buoyant day, and Andrew was in a buoyant mood. He had not come out without the expectation of hearing more singing, and he promised himself he would not wait so long before beginning his search for the singer, whom he took to be the boarder at the Morris house. However, it seemed as if he was to be disappointed, for the sun grew strong, the air warm, and no music came to him.

His sowing was done, and he was just about leaving, when, sweet, clear, full, the voice of yesterday shook out a few high notes, and then taking up the words of a song began to sing it in such fashion that Andrew (who knew the song well) could hardly believe that the sound issued from mortal lips—it was so flute-like, so liquid.

Now, Andrew's life had not been one of much dissipation; still, there were hours in it he did not care to dwell upon, and the memory of every one of these unworthy hours suddenly smote him with shame. They say that at death's approach one sees in a second all the sins of his soul stand forth in crimson blazonry, and perhaps, in that moment, Andrew's old self died.

The singer's voice had taken up another song, one he did not know—

"Out from yourself!
For your broken heart's vest;
For the peace which you crave;
For the end of your quest;
For the love which can save;
Come! Come to me!"

In springing over the fence and making towards where the sound came from, Andrew hardly seemed as if acting upon his own volition. He had been summoned: he went.

After all, there is not much mystery about a girl singing among the trees, yet Andrew's heart throbbed with something of that hushed tumult with which we approach some sacred shrine of feeling, or enter upon some new intense delight.

He soon saw her, standing with her back against a rough shell-bark hickory. The cloudy greyness of its rugged stem seemed to intensify the pallor and accentuate the delicacy of her face. For she was a very pale-faced, fragile-looking woman who stood there singing: her eyes were wide and wistful, but not unhappy-looking, only pitiable from the intense eagerness that seemed to have consumed her. And, in fact, she was like an overtuned instrument whose tense strings quiver continually.

She was clad in a dull red gown made in one of the quaint fashions which la mode has revived of late years. It had many bizarre broideries of blues and black, touched here and there with gold—Russian embroidery, its wearer would have called it. As she sang she made little dramatic gestures with slender hands, and at the last words of her song's refrain, she stretched forth her arms with a gesture expressing the infinitude of yearning.

Her face, so mobile as to be in itself speech, seconded her words by an inarticulate but powerful plea. It was as though she pleaded with Fate to manifest its decree at once, and not hold her longer in suspense. And it was for singing such as this, and for acting such as this, that the world had crowned her great—Fools who could not see that the head they crowned was already drooping beneath its lonely burden. Blind fools who could not see it was the passion of an empty heart, the yearning of a solitary soul, the unutterable longing of a woman's nature for love, that rendered her marvellous voice so passionately and painfully sweet. She herself never suspected it; only she believed what the doctors had told her manager and teacher, the good man who wore such big diamonds and used such bad language, that she must have rest, quiet, complete and absolute change. So she and this man had come to Canada, and had driven on and on into the heart of the country till they came to this village in the valley, and there she had elected to stay—a caprice not nearly so extravagant, and certainly more sweet and wholesome than the freaks indulged in by some others of her ilk. So here she was, lying perdu, whilst her picture was in every paper in the country, with marvellous tales of her triumphs abroad and whispers of the wonderful treat in store for the music-lovers of America. And her little, good-hearted manager flashed out his biggest diamonds, swore his worst oaths, hoped the child was getting strong, and never dreamed he was killing her.

The "Great God Pan" was all unconscious of his cruelty, was he not, when he fashioned the pipe out of a river reed? And as he blew through it the music of the gods, doubtless had good reason for thinking that never reed had been honoured like unto this reed.

There are moments in real life, so exotic to the lives into which they have entered, that one hardly realizes the verity of them till long after, when the meaning of his own actions struggles through the mists and confronts him with their consequences. In such moments the most absurd things in the world seem quite in order, and the commonplace actions of life assume grotesque importance. So it is in dreams, which reconcile with magnificent disregard of possibilities, the most wonderful conditions of person, place and time. Well—

"Dreams are true whilst they last
And do we not live in dreams?"

This is Andrew's only excuse for accepting so promptly the musical invitation extended with such feeling!

"I have come," he said, half dreamily—stepping out from the shelter of the trees.

The pale-faced singing siren changed to a startled, blushing girl, and in swift sequence Andrew's rapt gaze altered to one not altogether without daring.

"Oh, so I see," she half gasped, then laughed outright, looking at him with shy eyes, but mutinously curving lips. The laugh robbed the scene of its last illusion of mystery.

Andrew advanced, raising his old felt hat with an instinct of deference that made the commonplace courtesy charming.

"I hope I didn't scare you," he said; "but I was working in a field near here yesterday and heard you singing. To-day I made up my mind to find you. Do you mind?"

"Do you know who I am?" she asked.

"No," he answered; "but I suspect you are the 'Boarder up at old Mis' Morris's.'"

"Oh, so a rumour has gone abroad in the land? Yes, I am the boarder; one would think a boarder was a kind of animal."

"Yes," assented Andrew. "Old Sam Symmons said he wasn't sure if it was a man or a woman."

"I won't be called an 'It'; my name is Judith Moore."

"How do you do, Miss Judith Moore. My name is Andrew Cutler."

He had come close to her by this time, and as he looked down upon her he began to feel an irritating sense of shyness creep over him. She was such a fantastic little figure in his eyes. And what a queer frock she had on! Surely on any one else it would be horrid. It didn't look so bad on her, though; and what a belt for her to wear, this great burden of metal—a flexible band of silver with, it seemed to him, dozens of silver ornaments hanging to it by chains of varying lengths! What nonsense! It seemed to weigh her down. (Andrew was not up in chatelaines.) Then her feet! But here his masculine horse sense and the instinct of protection which had awakened in him at the first startled look from her big wide eyes, made him overstep all polite bounds and render himself odious to Miss Moore.

"Why in the world do you wear shoes like these?" he asked. "And such stockings! and standing on that damp moss! You had better go right into the house and get on decently heavy shoes."

This was too much. Miss Judith Moore fancied her own feet, and fancied open-work silk hose, and high-heeled wisps of shoes. Most of all, she liked the combination. In fact, in a harmless little way, she rather liked people to have a chance to appreciate these beauties, and at the very moment Andrew spoke, she had noted his downward glance and felt a righteous peace settle upon her. To be well shod is such moral support, and, lo, this heathen, this wretch, this abominable, conceited, brazen young farmer, had actually dared to suggest a change; more than that, he had spoken of "stockings"—disgusting!

So, with a dignity that reduced Andrew to despair, even whilst it roused his ire (she was so slight to be such a "defiant little cat" he told himself), she drew herself up, in a manner to do the traditional Duchess credit, and left him, saying:

"Since you don't approve of my feet I'll take them out of your way."

"You mean they'll take you," said Andrew, wrathfully conscious that she was, to use a good old figure of speech, "turning up her nose at him."

"You are extremely rude," she called back.

"And you are a bad-tempered little thing," he answered.

So he and his siren, calling names at each other, parted for the first time.

Miss Moore went into the little apple orchard behind the Morris homestead, and watched a tiny chipmunk gathering leaves to line its nest—at least Judith supposed it was for that. At any rate, it picked out the dry brown leaves from beneath a maple tree near the gate, sat up on its hind legs, and pleated the leaf into its mouth deftly. It took two or three at a time, and looked very comical with the brown leaves sticking out like fans on each side of its face. She laughed so long and loudly at this, that Mrs. Morris came to the door to see if she had hysterics.

"I met a young man in the woods, Mrs. Morris," said Judith, going up to her; "a rude, long-legged young man, named Cutler. Who is he?"

"For the land's sake!" said Mrs. Morris. "Did you meet Andrew Cutler? I warrant he'd be took down if he heard you say that. He's thought a good deal of by some people, being on the school board and the council, for all he's unmarried and young; but he's too big feeling to suit me! And he don't profess religion, and is forever smokin' and shootin', and he's got a crank on books—took that off his mother; she was a Myers. They was U. E. Loyalist stock; got their farms for nothing, of course, and hung on to them. Andrew owns a fine place, and he's full of cranks about college farming. Well, 'long-legged'—that's a good one! He is long-legged, there's no mistake about that. All the Myerses are tall. There's Hannah Myers as keeps house for Andrew, and she's tall as my old man, and—for the land's sake, that milk's boiling over!" and Mrs. Morris departed indoors. Presently, out flew two chickens, a collie dog, and a cat, wild-eyed and spitting, from which signs Judith diagnosed that Mrs. Morris had made "things" fly around when she got inside—a miracle she was an adept at performing.

Andrew went home to dinner, and came back in the afternoon to harrow down the grain he had sowed. Mr. Morris came out to talk to him.

"Who is the girl you've got boarding with you?" asked Andrew.

"Oh," said Mr. Morris, "I don't just rightly know, but she's a singing woman of some kind: in the opery, she said. She and a little black-a-vised chap came driving up the lane one day last week, and before I just rightly could make out what they were, he was driving off and she was there for keeps. Next day there came a whole waggon load of trunks. Going to stay all summer, she says. She's greatly took up with the country. She wanted to tie ribbons on the cows' horns, and is bound to learn to make butter. She was going to churn the other day, and worked the dash about a dozen times, and then she scolded right sharp at the butter for not coming. Then she got a spoon and tasted the cream, and she up and says to Mother, 'Why, Mrs. Morris, you've given me sour cream to churn!' and she was real huffy. She wouldn't believe that sweet butter came off sour cream, and she just sat, and never took her eye off that churn till Mother was done with it. She was bound she wasn't going to be fooled. She's real smart some ways, though, only she don't eat a mite, and Mother's dreadful afraid her religion is kind of heathenish. She was looking out the door the other day, and she says, says she, 'It's a perfect idol!' Mother never let on, but soon as she went away Mother came out and looked about, and there was nothing like an idol, except maybe them big queer-marked stones I got down by the lime springs. What did you call 'em?"

"Petrifactions," said Andrew.

"Yes. Well, Mother always had 'em set up against the door steps kind of tasty, but Mother ain't the one to have no sich temptations around in any one's way, if they be given to sich, so she just rolled 'em along and dropped 'em into the cistern."

Mr. Morris was notoriously long-winded, and sometimes Andrew was not over-eager to encounter him, but this day Andrew was more than civil.

"What's she here for, anyhow?" asked he.

"Her health; she's all drug down, Mother says, and she's full of cranks. Yesterday she would weed in the garden, and she started out with as good a pair of gloves on as you ever seen. Well, she stayed and stayed, and Mother she went out to see if she wanted to come in, because Mrs. Horne was there (them Hornes are a bad lot!) and she wanted to visit a spell. Well, she'd got up about two handfuls of chick-weed, and then sat down and gone sound asleep. All wore out, Mother says."

After a bit Mr. Morris departed. He had detailed with great gusto all the "news" told by Mrs. Horne, or deduced by himself from her conversation; but Andrew's interest flagged, so presently Mr. Morris went on his way, if not rejoicing, at least relieved, for it was a boon to him to get a good listener.

Andrew went home reflectively. His last conscious thought that night must have been in some way relative to Miss Judith Moore, her feet and her temper, for he muttered to himself, half sleeping, half waking: "Her eyes didn't look like the eyes of a bad-tempered girl:" then "They were so little I could have held both of them in one hand;" later still, "I was pretty bad to her about the shoes, women are such dear little fools." Then this judicially-minded young man slept the sleep of the just.

CHAPTER III.

"If thou art worn and hard beset
With sorrows that thou wouldst forget;
If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills; no tears
Dim the sweet looks that nature wears."

The village of Ovid lay in a valley hollowed out of an otherwise level country into a shallow basin. It called those who dwelt to the north of it, Mountain Hayseeds; and those to the south of it, Swamp Angels—compliments returned in kind, for the youths of the sections thus flattered by Ovidian attention always referred to the villagers as Ovid Idiots.

For the most part the houses in Ovid clustered closely together. Some few of them were scattered half way up the sloping hill-sides, but these dwellings were all built facing the village proper, and besides being absurdly fore-shortened always wore a deprecating look as if mutely conscious of their invidious positions. These hills of Ovid were not very formidable, and from a short distance off, say, from Andrew Cutler's clearing, one could see over their crests the gables of the village.

There were but two long streets in the village, denominated the Front Street and the Back Street.

Upon the Front Street stood the two churches, facing each other, being, however, only in physical juxtaposition, for spiritually they were as far as the poles apart. The one was a Methodist Church, and bore high above its door the inscription, Eva Methodist Church, A.D. 1860. This legend must once have been very glaring, seemingly jet black upon a white surface, but some painter, well disposed to mankind evidently, had swept his brush laden with white paint over this inscription. The result was grateful to the eye, even if it did give rise to some uncertainty as to what the words actually were. Great truths often come home to one intuitively; perhaps that is how every one knew what was writ above that door.

The Baptist Church was stone, and bore only a date, 1854 A.D., but it rejoiced in a tin-clad spire that glimmered gayly in the sunlight or shone cold and chill beneath the wintry moon.

Between these two churches and the members thereof there was no animosity, but there was a "feeling." A "feeling" is one of those intangible, elusive things, of which no acceptable definition can be given; but every new-comer to Ovid grew into that "feeling" before he had been there a week. Perhaps some perception of this peculiar condition may be gathered by considering the various improvements which took place in the two churches during one autumn in Ovid.

They were inaugurated by Hiram Green, who presented a stone tie-post to the Methodist Church. Hiram kept the village grocery store, and had accepted six stone tie-posts in lieu of certain goods supplied to the boarding-house at the stone quarries. The boarding-house keeper had taken them in default of cash from his quarryman boarders. Hiram erected three of the posts before his shop door, at such short distances from each other that it precluded the tying up of more than two horses at a time, and then only to the end posts and facing each other. Having adorned the path before his house with two others, he, at the instigation of his wife, presented the sixth to the Methodist Church. This post was adorned with an iron ring at the top and a somewhat frisky damsel in rude carving on the side.

It was a matter of grave consideration whether this carving should be turned to the street or towards the sidewalk, it being debatable in which position she would do the most harm. She was finally turned towards the street, upon the reasonable supposition that persons driving past would pass more swiftly than persons walking; hence, their exposure to evil would be briefer. To further mitigate the demoralizing effect of this bit of stonework, Solomon Ware took a chisel and carefully obliterated the outlines of the figure, missing only one foot, which, in terpsichorean fashion, pointed skyward in a meaningless, disjointed way from a chaos of chisel marks.

The week following, the Baptists put up two wooden tie-posts, each surmounted by an iron horse's head.

Two weeks later a block of wooden steps appeared beside the stone tie-post, to facilitate those driving to church in alighting from, or mounting to, their conveyances. This was on Wednesday. By the Sunday following, its duplicate stood between the wooden tie-posts, with the additional glory of drab paint.

A month later a new fence encircled the Methodist temple, and the Baptist sanctuary was re-shingled.

As the autumn advanced the Methodist Church had sheds for its horses erected in the rear of the church. Ere the first snow flew, the Baptist Church was similarly adorned, and its shed rejoiced in elaborate scroll work brackets at the dividing posts.

In November the Baptists held a series of revival meetings, and the Methodists commenced a weekly service of song. At New Year's the Methodists raised their pastor's salary fifty dollars a year. In February the Baptists held a memorial service, and had four ministers preach upon one Sunday. It is true, as Hester Green took occasion to remark, that two of them were only students, but the Baptist Church had vindicated the priority of its establishment, and rested on its laurels,—besides the spring work was coming on.

The speech of the Ovidians was not in any sense a dialect peculiar to themselves. There were, of course, certain words and phrases which were regular stand-bys, and from which no Ovidian speech was free. For example, when an Ovidian was out of conversational matter, he did not let the talk die away, or the argument fall to pieces whilst waiting for the tardy ideas of his friends to evolve themselves. Far from it. He simply said, in a tone suitable to the occasion, "Well, it beats all!" Closer scrutiny will reveal the resources of this phrase. Did an Ovidian attend a funeral? Then this expression formed the chief staple of his conversation, and its enunciation ran the gamut of emotion, from grief to amazement. Did an Ovidian hear a more than usually spicy piece of gossip? Then he ejaculated the same phrase in a tone of scandalized enjoyment. Was a subject upon which he could not, or would not, give a direct opinion under discussion? Then this non-committal formula answered admirably, entailing no after responsibility upon the speaker, and yet giving him a pleasant sense of conversational duty properly performed.

There were a few idioms, also, dear to the Ovidian mind. To be "ambitious" meant simply to be energetic; to be "big feeling," "stuck up," or "toney," meant to be proud (in the sense of despising one's neighbours); to "conjure," with the accent strongly upon the first syllable, meant to think over a thing.

Apart, however, from a dozen or two of these lingual idiosyncrasies, the Ovidian speech was the ordinary English of Canadian rural districts, delivered in a peculiar drawling, nasal style, with a clinging to the last syllable of a word and the last word of a sentence. The only interest Ovidians had, apart from Ovid and the dwellers therein, was in watching the progress of the world, as shown by the trend of Canadian politics; and as Ovid they had always with them, and the world only when the weekly papers came in, it was natural they should know Ovid best—and they did. Every one's pet hobby, every one's worst weakness, every one's ambition, every one's circumstances, everyone's antipathies, every one's preferences, every one's record and family record—all this was known and well known, aye, even to the third generation back.

But of all Ovidians none knew so much of his fellows' history as did old Sam Symmons. The one attribute that assured Sam a welcome wherever he went, was his knowledge of the generation passed away, the fathers of the present Ovidians: not that his stories were flattering (far from it), but they were never ill-natured, at least upon Sam's part. It was true they were illustrative of the weak points of their heroes rather than their virtues, but then Sam did not make history; he only repeated it, and he was very impartial. So where a dozen Ovidians were gathered together, there Sam would be in the midst.

There was a perilous stimulus about their anticipation. He was sure to evolve some personal reminiscence from the chaotic mass of his old memories, and each of the expectant auditors felt that his forebears might be the subject of it. When Sam did choose a victim, and plunged into some old tale about his grandfather or father, then all the others drew in their breath with swift enjoyment of the various points of the story. There was something Druidical and bard-like in this oral handing down of history, and it differed from more pretentious history in one respect. Sam's stories might be oft-repeated, but he never altered a syllable, never deepened the shading to suit some different element in his audience, never swerved from the first intent of the recital, never slurred the truth to let any one off lightly. Perhaps the reason Sam's stories preserved their identity so well was because they were tacitly copyrighted; no one ever tried to tell them but himself, and indeed they would not have sounded the same from other lips, for Sam spoke of the past as one having authority.

The loss of his old mare was quite a serious one to Sam, and he went about a shade more irresolute than he was before. Poor old Sam! He had had so many blows, big and little, from fate, that it is not to be wondered at if he did become a little haphazard in his methods of work and business.

It is hardly worth while making plans when some evil chance seems to thwart them every time; even if one works till his stiff old limbs are trembling with fatigue, it doesn't seem to make much headway against adverse circumstances; and when fate buffets down even the strongest guard, how can one poor old man fend off its blows? But if his brave old heart was shaken a little within him, Sam still turned a resolute face to the foe. The week after the mare's death, and before he had got used to the blind horse he had bought to replace her, he found his way to Hiram Green's store.

The talk turned on drinking.

"Yes," said Sam, "there's many a way of drinking"—in a reminiscent tone—"many a way! When I was young, there were three brothers with their three wives, doing settlement duty on a grant of land given one of the officers, in Bruce County. Well, they were fine big fellows, and their wives were big, strapping, healthy women. Strong, too, they were, and had good judgment. Why, one of them went one morning to the wood-pile to get some wood, and when she came back there was a wolf, lean and hungry (for it had been a bitter winter), standing over the cradle where her baby lay. Now, what did she do? Run away and yowl? Not she. Hit it a clip with a billet of wood, and killed it where it stood. Well, the lads used to drive off forty miles with an ox team for provisions, and each would bring his keg of rye back with him; but the women always drank more than their share, and it got to be that there was mostly no meals ready when the lads got back from felling the timber. So the lads hit on the plan of tying the kegs to the roof, where the women could not get at them, and they went away well pleased with themselves. But they were finely taken down when they got back, for the women shot holes in the kegs, and caught the whiskey in a washtub. Yes, yes, there's many a way of drinking. There was your wife's grand-uncle, now"—suddenly becoming personal in his memory, and addressing Hiram—"'twas when he was running for reeve the first time, and he came into Fossil's tavern, and not seeing James Lawson, the younger, and me, where we sat on the settle by the door, he went up to the bar to get a drink. He called for whiskey. He had his drink and laid down the five cents to pay for it. Now, 'twas his way to fill his glass very full, and Fossil, being a close man, was very grouty at that. So, out of the five cents, he pushed back a penny. 'Here,' says he, 'is your change, Mr. Mowbray. I don't charge as much wholesale as I do for single drinks.' Your wife's grand-uncle did not like that. 'Twas just before the polling day when he got overtaken in liquor one night at old Squire Fraser's. 'Twas a bright moonlight night, and some of the lads going home late, also, heard a noise at the village pump, which, coming at, they saw was your wife's grand-uncle, pulling at the pump-handle, and saying, with many oaths, 'Come home, Jack: come home. There will be a sore broil for thee if Mrs. Mowbray see thee. Come home, Jack: come home.' To which persuasion he put many threats and moral advisements to Jack to cease from liquor. Jack was his nephew, a quiet youth, being bred to the pulpit. Well, the boys got hold of both these tales, and when the voting came on, they would seize at anything, a tree, a post, or the fence, when your wife's grand-uncle came by, and, straining at it manfully, would beseech Jack to come home, using many moral persuasions and many oaths also, as he had done to the pump, and feigning to weep sore over the stubbornness of Jack's heart. Then they would say, 'Come home, Jack, and I'll buy thee a drink wholesale at good, generous Master Fossil's.' Yes, yes"—Sam's voice began to weaken—"yes, there's many a way of drinking."

There was a pause. No one ever commented upon Sam's stories; there was no need. To deprecate them would be to stir up, who knew what, of oblique reflection upon one's ancestors. For any of those not immediately interested to interfere would be to invite Sam's attention to their cases.

"Did you hear that the school-teacher leaves next week?" asked Hiram.

"No. Why?" asked Jack Mackinnon, glad of a chance of hearing his own voice.

"Because he says he can't afford to keep himself here and his wife in Toronto on three hundred a year."

"Then he'd better get," said old Mrs. Slick, as she took the packet of cream of tartar Hiram was weighing. "He'd better get." She hobbled out, giving malevolent sniffs at the thought of the teacher's extravagant ideas.

"Yes, he's going," continued Hiram. "He's going, and there's a school meeting to-morrow."

Andrew Cutler, Hiram Green and Ben Braddon were school trustees, and it had occurred to each of them that Sam Symmons' Suse would be sure to apply for the position. She held a county certificate permitting her to teach for three years.

"I wonder," Andrew said that morning to his aunt, Miss Hannah Myers, "I wonder if Suse will know enough to apply for the place."

"Not she! too empty-headed," said Miss Myers, briskly. "I'll go down this afternoon and tell her what I think of her, and make her apply."

"Do," said Andrew, heartily.

Andrew liked old Sam, and he was a special favourite of the old man's. Many a long story of election fights and tricks, secrets Sam kept even yet, of how votes had been gained and lost, many tales of drinking bouts and more gallant adventures, did old Sam retell for Andrew's benefit.

Andrew was not at all worried by Miss Myers' brusqueness of speech. He knew how kind she was to everybody in her own vinegary way. Tall, angular, hatchet-faced and sharp-tongued, Hannah Myers had a heart full of love for every living creature that needed help, only, 'the beggar at her door had first abuse and then a shilling.'

And how well the tramps knew the way up to that quaint old kitchen door, with the uneven flag-stones set in a little court-yard round it! A table always covered with glistening tin milk-pans stood outside, and many a good meal had the gentlemen of the road had off that table; scolded vigorously by Miss Myers whilst they ate, the tirade only interrupted by sudden journeys she made to find perhaps a pair of socks, a shirt, or something else she saw they needed: now and then a surly tramp would answer her back, and she would laugh at him in her grim way and say, "Hear the man! Why, don't you see, I like to scold as much as you like to eat; so if you enjoy the one, why mayn't I the other?" Upon one memorable occasion an ungrateful tramp, (and however much he may be idealized nowadays, there are instances of the ingratitude of tramps) attempted to impose upon her, thinking her alone. He had, unfortunately for him, reckoned without his host. Andrew suddenly appeared upon the scene, seized his trampship by the most convenient portion of his attire, and dropped him with quiet, but forcible, precision into a somewhat unappetizing duck pond near by, giving him at the same time a picturesque, but somewhat profane, bit of advice. The fellow took himself off, and Andrew turned his attention to poor Miss Hannah, who was quivering and trembling and crying as the meekest and mildest woman might do. Miss Myers' tongue was a deception, and, as a matter of fact, that and her vinegary aspect were the only defences she had against imposition, for whilst always vaunting her hard-heartedness, she was, in reality, the most gullible of women.

She never could resist a pedlar: she always bought their trashy wares. And once, she never forgot it, she burdened herself with a lot of cheap brassy hairpins and extraordinary glass breast pins. That purchase fairly haunted her. Get rid of it she couldn't. Did she try to burn it? Some one came and caught her. Did she intend to throw it away? She did not dare, she knew some one would find it. She did manage finally to find a watery hiding-place for it in the horse pond. Even then its meretricious sparkle assailed her from the mud when the pond went dry. She related this to Judith Moore, and told her with all soberness that she should always pity a murderer trying to get rid of the corpse.

As Mrs. Morris had told Judith, Miss Myers was of U. E. Loyalist stock. She might have added that the Cutlers were also. Both families had been given grants of land in Canada. The property in the Myers family had been divided and sub-divided amongst a big family connection. Miss Myers had a little fifty-acre farm as her share of it; it lay some fifteen miles from Ovid.

Andrew's farm at Ovid had descended to him through his father and grandfather, old Captain Cutler, the stern old fighter whose sword, with its woven crimson sash, hung in the hall of Andrew's house, with some quaint old pistols and a clumsy musket, relics from Canadian battle fields. Besides the property in Ovid, Andrew owned another fine farm and a wide stretch of woodland in Muskoka. These properties accrued to him through the death of some of his father's relatives. So Andrew was very well off, in a modest way. The Muskoka property bore much fine timber, and an enthusiastic "prospector" assailed Andrew, month in and month out, with tales of the "indications" of minerals he had found beneath the ferns and mosses of his Muskoka woods. But Andrew was content with them as they were, with the trees growing solemnly upward, aspiring to the blue: the wandering streams, a network of silver tracery, starred here and there by broad discs where one widened to a little placid lake or where two or more streams, meeting, gushed together. The sound of their soft confluence and the soughing of the wind, that without moving the leaves seemed ever to sigh between the tree trunks, blent into a soft sensation, half sound, half stir, something perceived nowhere but in the woods, seeming indeed as if there we were very close to Nature's sweet and beautiful breast, hearing in this mysterious pulsation the beating of her kindly heart.

Andrew had grown to be in very close touch with Nature during many solitary weeks spent in hunting: in long tramps through the Muskoka woods, shooting the fawn-coloured deers, and the wild fowl that nested in the tiny lakes; and in many a long night when he lay perdu watching for lynx, forgetting his quest in the marvel of the stars, or in wakeful watches, seeing the resinous camp-fire die down to embers and hearing the shrill laughing of the loon, the weird wail of the lynx, the cry of the great owl or the call of the coon. Andrew was past-master of all woodland lore. He had hunted Muskoka through and through. Many a wild duck's breast and fox's mask, and many a pair of antlers proved his prowess.

Besides, he had spent many a winter in northern Quebec, snow-shoeing over its silent white wastes upon the traces of moose; the intense cold parching his throat, his half-breed guide padding* along at his side; sometimes faring royally upon juicy steaks and birds, broiled as only hunters can broil—not scorched, yet savoured with fire; sometimes upon a long trail with a bit of frozen bacon in one pocket and a lump of frozen bread in the other, gnawing a morsel off each with care, so that he might not break off his moustache which was frozen in a solid mass with the moisture of his breath.

* "Padding" is a term applied by hunters to the silent flat-footed gait of Indian guides.

Andrew often heard people say that one did not feel the intense cold in these northern regions; he always longed to have them there and let them try it. He had felt pretty cold up there, only he never remembered the time when he couldn't hold his gun with naked hands. That, though, as every one knows, is the mark of a mighty Nimrod. So soon as his half-breed guide discovered this, he grunted out a guttural prophecy that the shoot would be good.

Strange mixtures these guides were; the combination of French suavity and redskin cunning being a continual wonder to Andrew, accustomed as he was to less complex types.

This man who slept sometimes rolled close in the same blankets with him for warmth, whose woodcraft made his less intuitive knowledge seem absolute ignorance, whose judgment in matters of the chase was almost flawless, whose strength and agility would not have shamed a Greek—this man cooked his meals, washed the dishes, waited upon him deferentially, and was not to be persuaded to eat at the same time. In the chase, a hero; in the camp, a slave.

What tramps those were through the silent solitudes of these untrodden woods! What moments had been his, when, leaving his guide preparing the camp for the night, Andrew had gained some high ridge, and pausing, looked far across the peaks of graduated hills, clad in sombre cedars weighted down with snow, white, silent, yet instinct with that mystery which presses upon us pleading for elucidation, and never so strongly as when we are alone with the unblotted world before us, away from the signs of man's desecration. There is something very pitiful in that mute appeal of nature to be understood—like some sweet woman, smitten into a spell of suffering silence, till such time as the magic word shall release her. A word she knows, yet cannot, of her own power, speak. What magical mysteries shall not be revealed when speech is restored to her! And how her eyes plead and accuse at once! Of a verity, having ears we hear not: truly, having eyes to see, yet are we blind!

For there is some great open secret surely in the universe, that being deciphered will set all our jangling dreams in chime. It is about us, around us, above us; the tiniest leaf tells it, the stars of heaven proclaim it, the water manifests it and the earth declares it, and yet we do not see it. When we do, it will be some simple vital principle that we have breathed with the breath of our lips, and handled with the familiar fingers of the flesh. We will be so unable to conceive of the world moving on in ignorance of it, that all the wisdom of the ages past will seem but as the howling of wolves in waste places, or at best, as the babbling of children that play with dry sand, now letting it slip through their fingers, leaving them with empty hands, now getting it in their eyes to torture them, or treading on it with vague discomfort and unease.

We have all seen these childish puzzles with hidden faces concealed in the traceries. How hard it is to find these faces, although we know they are there! And yet, when found, it is impossible to see anything else in the picture. They obtrude themselves upon us, and what was formerly the picture becomes now only the background for what at first it completely concealed. So everything will but subserve to show us how palpable the great Central Truth has always been if we could but find it, and some one will. So let us go on bravely, each resolving "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." There is indeed within us some spark of the Divine Fire. Let it but once flame fairly up and we shall be gods indeed, moving in the glory of our own transfiguration.

There is no destiny too great for man.

* * * * * *

The northern stars are very clear and cold, the northern skies are very blue and chill, the snowy plains are places meant for thought, and in the silence of those scenes the soul awakes.

Andrew bore away with him some reflex of their austerity and intensity, which tempered his mind as the steel is strengthened.

His mother's story had been a sad one. She was Miss Myers' elder sister—Isabella Myers; very like Miss Myers yet very unlike; with all those resemblances which pronounce two near of kin, yet all those variations of the type which constitute the difference between beauty and every-day flesh and blood.

Isabella had been engaged to a minister's son named Harkness. He was a young man who justified in every respect the many pleasing proverbs about ministers' sons: yet, in spite of all, had a leal heart, a handsome form and face, a tender touch, and a personal magnetism that enabled him to wring an unwilling consent out of stern old Abraham Myers to his betrothal with his daughter Isabella.

These two young folk worshipped each other, and the wedding day was set. Isabella was to wear a white taffeta frock and white thread mitts. But troublous times had come to Canada. Young Harkness went to the war. Isabella and he had a sad, sad parting, for the imaginative girl was fey of her fate, and clung to him till his heart melted within him. And as he rode away with a long tress of her dark hair on his breast, it was not the sunshine alone that made his eyes so bright and his vision so uncertain.

It was but a puny affray that in the history of the world's wars, but it does not take big battles to make men brave and women's hearts ache. The dark braid had hardly warmed in its place before it was soaked with the blood of the heart on which it lay. The real Isabella Myers died then, too. But a pale apathetic woman in her shape and semblance still went wearily on her way.

Ten years later they married her to Andrew Cutler, a man considerably older than herself, and as her father said, "of the old true blue stock." She gave him a boy and died, well rid of the world. Miss Hannah Myers came to keep house for her brother-in-law. She brought up the baby and took charge of the little hide-covered chest which was full of the books ("poetry books and such," Miss Myers called them) that young Harkness had given Isabella long before. Andrew Cutler lived on after his wife's death to a good old age, being killed at last by falling through the trap-door in his hay-loft. Then Andrew was head of his house.

As Andrew grew up, he developed such a strange resemblance to one long dead, that sometimes, when a movement, gesture, or expression of his brought it more clearly to Miss Myers' eyes, she felt an eerie thrill creep over her. She described the sensation as "cold chills." For it was not a resemblance to his father, or his grandfather, or even to his mother (although he resembled her, too), but he imaged forth the brave, handsome, devil-may-care lover of his mother's girlhood, he who had died ten years before Andrew's birth. Surely the image of that long-lost lover had been deeply graven on that broken heart.

"The Cutler house on the hill," as the villagers described it, was quite a pretentious one in its way. Old Captain Cutler, he of the sword and sash, had not been penniless, by any means, when he left the United States, although he left behind him much valuable property. So when the Canadian Government made him a generous grant, he promptly spent his money in building a house. Now, the forebears of this Captain Cutler had come from England, and many a tale his grandfather had told him of the old farm homestead there, of the garden with brick-paven walks, and brick-built walls upon which grew the espaliered fruit, of the old sun-dial beside the larch tree, and the oaken beams that traversed the plaster of the ceilings, of the flagged kitchen, and the big fire-places. So here on the hill-top overlooking the valley, where later Ovid was to be built, Captain Cutler erected his house, a big stone one with oaken floors, stairways and doors, with heavy rafters of the same sturdy growth, a wide-flagged kitchen, and a hall sheathed in wood half way to the roof, with huge open fire-places. He put a brick wall about his gardens, and over it trained the sprawling branches of currant bushes—red ones, and white and black. Later on, hop vines had been planted here and there along the wall; still later, a row of grape vines had superseded them, and clad the old bricks with fresh festoons of leaves. This made, when the grapes were ripe, a beautiful Bacchanal arabesque of purple fruit and brown stem, twisted tendril and green leaf.

He laid down narrow brick walks, too, and by them planted horse-chestnut trees. He put a sun-dial up, a grey stone column with a round top, whereon was rudely carven the symbols of the hours and a lob-sided hour-glass; for lack of a larch tree he filched a linden from the hill-side.

The garden took in the level plateau on top of the hill, and some of the slope upon the side farthest from Ovid. The hill-side next the village was laden with lindens, which in spring were covered in blossom. Old Captain Cutler sent to England for English ox-heart cherry trees, and for boxwood, and for hawthorns to plant hedges.

The cherry trees flourished and perpetuated themselves in generations of younger trees, the box grew and multiplied, but the hawthorn hedges were failures. All that remained of them was a few scattered hawthorns that had long outgrown the status of the hedge row, and become old gnarled trees.

Miss Myers was very proud of her flower garden, which was a mass of circular, oval and diamond-shaped flower beds, bordered by box, spaced off by narrow bricked walks. There were honeysuckles growing over old-fashioned wooden trellises; and roses, crown imperials and lemon lilies; huge clumps of peonies, pink, white and the common crimson; clove pinks and thyme; lilies of the valley and violets, with bushes of rosemary and patches of balm; spotted tiger lilies, and a fragrant white lily called the day lily; little shrubs of the pink flowering almond, "snow on the mountain," "mist on the hill" and acacia shrubs. And beside these, many more old-fashioned perennial plants, like queen of the meadow and thrift; and every summer Andrew brought her heliotropes, and scented geraniums, and mignonette from town.

The barns were away down at the foot of the hill. Andrew's men usually all lived in the village, unless he happened to have hired strangers for the stress of harvest or haying, or in winter time when they were needed about the house.

Miss Myers, as the village phrased it, "kep' help regular," and often had up old Mrs. Greer from the village, for there was a deal of work to be done in that house.

For the rest, Andrew was a practical farmer; it had not occurred to him that he did not need to work so hard, and the active life did him no harm. He was up at daylight in summer, and by candle-light in winter.

He ploughed, sowed, reaped and threshed his grain. And when at the threshings he sat at the head of the long table, lined on each side with men "feeding like horses, when you hear them feed," he looked like some young chief among his serfs, albeit he wore blue jeans and flannel shirts as they did.

He did not know himself to be so different from his neighbours as he was, only he never seemed to contemplate marrying one of their women, and he pitied them. For they did not recognize the pathos of their own narrow lives. They did not see their surroundings as he did—the beauties of the skies above, and of the earth beneath, and the marvel and mystery of the water.

Andrew could not have said this was what made him pity them, for he was one of the inarticulate ones, whose speech is shackled; one of those, too, who know their own limitations in this way, and feel their fetters. At times they seemed to weigh his spirit down.

CHAPTER IV.

Andrew was eager to see Miss Moore again,—although he felt a masculine irritation against her for taking umbrage at well-meant and thoroughly sensible advice. Perhaps at the bottom of this there lay a soupçon of annoyance with himself, that he had spoken so abruptly to her upon the subject, mingled with a compassionate remembrance of what Mr. Morris had told him of her delicacy. He was very glad to find an excuse to go up to his woods, where they stretched past the Morris house; and a pretence that he was looking for suitable trees to cut down for foundations for his hay-stacks, justified him in his own eyes for strolling among his trees in very leisurely, but apparently disinterested fashion. He must, however, have been paying some attention to the house on his right, for when Mrs. Morris ran out from the old orchard behind the house to the barns, calling, "Father, Father, where are you? Come here, quick, do, hey Father!" Andrew promptly responded, leaping over the fence and speedily reaching her side.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Land of love! But I'm glad you've come, if she did call you long-legged: all the better for her now if you be. I hope she ain't fell by this time. Wonder where Father is. I never seen such a man; always gone when he's wanted. I declare it beats me where he gets to. It's enough to drive—"

"What is it, Mrs. Morris?" demanded Andrew, his heart misgiving him. "Can't I help?"

"'Deed you can! And to think of her calling you long-legged, and the very next day having to depend on you for her life, may be, or to save one of her own legs being broke—"

Mrs. Morris got no further. A little faint cry struck Andrew's ears, coming from the direction of the orchard.

"For heaven's sake, come on, and show me what's wrong," he cried. "Don't stand there palavering."

"Why, sakes alive! Don't you know? Miss Moore got up in a tree and—"

But by this time they were in the orchard. A glance explained the situation to Andrew.

High up on an apple-tree branch stood Miss Moore, clinging with both arms round a limb above her, her face white as death, her eyes dilated with fear. A ladder's head was within six inches of her feet. Andrew was up it in an instant. He knew the trouble. Only last year a hired man of his had ascended a tree to pick fruit. He was seized with this ague of dizzy fear, and flinging himself against a stout limb, had held on like grim death. It took two men to get him down; his terror made him clasp the tree convulsively. It was days before he was well again.

Miss Moore had evidently not seen him, nor heard his coming. As he slipped his arms about her, she gave a great start, and turned to look at him with eyes which seemed to expect some tangible shape of horror, evolved out of her illogical and intangible fear.

When she saw who it was, her eyes filled and her lips trembled.

"Oh, take me down. Do take me down."

"Yes, indeed, I will," said Andrew, with quiet assurance. "Let go of the branch."

She shuddered. The spell of the vertigo was yet upon her. Her arms tightened upon the bough.

"Do take me down," she pleaded childishly. "I'm frightened."

"My dear, you must loose your hold," said Andrew, steadily.

Then, with one arm about her, he reached up and one by one undid the clinging fingers, gathering them into his palm as he did so. With a force that seemed cruel, he pulled down the slender wrist and placed her hand upon his shoulder. Her face expressed the agony of dizziness. With blind instinct she put her other arm about his neck and clasped it close. He felt her form relax, and braced himself in time to sustain her dead weight as she fainted.

The descent of the ladder was easy enough. Andrew had carried many a bag of wheat up and down his steep granary stairs. The principle of balancing an inert woman is much the same. He carried her into the house and laid her down upon the broad home-made couch, covered with dark brown calico, that stood in the kitchen. Mrs. Morris had talked volubly during these proceedings, but only after he laid Judith down, did Andrew begin to hear what she was saying.

"She does look gashly!" said Mrs. Morris. "Whatever would I do if she was to be took! And this minute she looks fit for laying out."

"Goodness alive," said Andrew. "Can't you do anything to bring her to? Bathe her face, or something?"

Mrs. Morris flew for water and brought it, trembling. "I say, Andrew, can't you do it? I'm so shook—I never could bear to touch corpses, and—"

Andrew gave her a venomous look, dipped his handkerchief in the water, and began clumsily to bathe the girl's brow. Her senses were already reasserting themselves. She put up her hands to her face: they fluttered nervously. Andrew caught one of them and held it between his own brown ones, noting that her wrists were red, almost bruised, creased in rough outline of the apple-tree's bark.

"Will you give me some water?" she asked.

Mrs. Morris brought a blue and white cup. Andrew, kneeling on the braided mat before the couch, slipped his arm under Judith and put the cup to her lips. She took a mouthful, and fell into a shivering fit of cold.

Mrs. Morris rose to this emergency. Ague was an old familiar friend; "shakes" had no terrors for her. In a moment she had found a thick coverlet and placed it over Judith.

"You stay by her," she said to Andrew, "and I'll make her a draught of hot elderberry syrup in two shakes."

Then she was off to the lean-to kitchen, and they heard her rattling among her kettles. Andrew still knelt upon the mat holding Judith's hand with praiseworthy absent-mindedness.

"Are you better now?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, her chin quivering as she tried to keep her teeth from chattering. "It was so good of you to take me down. So awfully good. I'm very stupid, but I couldn't help it."

"Of course you couldn't. I had a man who behaved much worse than you did in the same situation. Ever so much. Indeed, you behaved very well."

There was silence; then Judith began: "Mr. Cutler, I—er—called you a name to Mrs. Morris the other day."

"Did you? What did you call me?"

"Will you forgive me?"

"Tell me what you called me first."

"Oh!"

"Forgiveness is worth that, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes. I called you—long-legged, and—I think, I said you were rude."

Andrew suppressed an inclination to laugh, being minded not to belittle the value of his absolution.

"Well," he said, "I'll forgive the first part of it because you see it's so awfully true, and as for the second, well—I think you meant 'sensible'; anyhow, I forgive you for it all."

Miss Moore experienced a mental sensation she would have called "curling up." A pretty cool specimen, this young farmer! She had thought he would have fallen into faltering excuses. She was really ill, though faint—cold. Mrs. Morris came in with the steaming cup of black syrup. Judith had forgotten till that moment that Andrew held her hand: of course, Andrew had been unconscious of it all along. But as Mrs. Morris appeared in the door a swift intuition of the state of affairs came to Judith. She gave a little gesture of withdrawal, and Andrew released her lingers slowly, rising with praiseworthy calmness to get himself a chair.

While Judith tried to drink the hot syrup, Mrs. Morris explained that Miss Moore had never seen a bird's nest with eggs in it, and there being an oriole's nest in the apple-tree, "Father" had put up the ladder for her to see it, and—Andrew knew the rest.

"Tree fright is a lot worse than stage fright," said Miss Moore: oracularly, but this was a dark saying to both her listeners. Mrs. Morris talked and talked. Miss Moore had long since lain back on the big brown pillow; her face was flushed, her eyes sleepy. Andrew would have listened to Mrs. Morris forever, provided he could have watched Miss Moore at the same time. But at length Mrs. Morris rose and moved towards her summer kitchen, intimating that her chores needed tending to, so Andrew perforce had to take his leave.

"Good-bye, just now," he said. "May I come back and take you to see some birds' nests nearer the ground?"

"Oh, do," she said. "And I haven't thanked you half enough for helping me to-day."

"Indeed you have. Good-bye, just now."

"Good-bye," she said softly.

He was just at the door, when a soft but interrogative "Ahem" from the couch attracted his attention. He turned. Miss Judith Moore did not look at him, but with cautious precision she drew the dark blue coverlet up a tiny bit. His eyes became riveted upon the point of a bronze slipper that gradually grew from the shadow of the covering until a whole foot was revealed—a foot at a defiant pose and wearing a little bronze slipper with an exaggeratedly high heel. Andrew's eyes grew daring, and he half turned.

Miss Moore seemed to telescope, for head and foot disappeared beneath the coverlet at once. He paused a moment, and then departed.

As he went across the fields he thought of the little scene he had left, and, more shame to him, his thoughts were not concerned wholly with the bad effects of wearing high heels, nor yet of the impropriety of Miss Moore's retaliation for his high and mighty granting of forgiveness. Indeed, as he sat for a moment kicking his heels on the top bar of the first fence, he was speculating solely as to whether "they" were open-work or not! He was thinking he would have given his best gun to be able to tell, and summed up his reflections with a dissatisfied little growl, "Of all the mean, miserable, stingy glimpses!"

As he walked along, his face changed. After climbing the hill-side to his garden wall, he passed an apple-tree in hill bloom at the gate. He paused beneath it. His face was pale and serious, his eyes tender. He thought of Judith's russet head as it had leaned upon his shoulder: he looked down at his old velvet coat, where it had rested, and fancied some vague perfume rose from it to his face. He remembered he had held her in his arms, and recalled the red marks upon her delicate wrists. Those wrists had been curved about his neck.

He could not realize the full height and depth of what had come to him, but his whole being groped for the truth even as he stood beneath the tree.

As he walked slowly up the narrow bricked walk to the house, he noticed how the chestnut roots and the frost together had heaved up the bricks and rendered the walk irregular. He wondered anxiously if she could walk over it in those shoes, and as he reached his door, which stood open under its old-fashioned porch, revealing a dusky cool vista beyond, he suddenly saw, as in a vision, a woman's shape stand between the lintels, waiting for him!—a woman with slender hands outstretched in welcome, grave grey eyes, soft hair, tender lips: the woman he loved: his own. As this last thought, the sweetest thought man's heart holds, formulated itself in his mind, Andrew knew the truth. He turned down the path, past the apple-tree, through the lindens again, and across his fields, until once more he looked upon the house wherein she rested. He looked at it long from the shelter of his trees, his whole existence resolved into a chaos of uncertain self-communings, until a voice like an angel's seemed to whisper of comfort and to sing of hope.

Then he went home, and at four o'clock betook himself to the school-house to attend the meeting in regard to appointing a new teacher.

The village school-house stood at the end of the street farthest away from the Cutler homestead. It was a bleak, stone building, with a wooden porch—a gaunt, bare, uninviting-looking building, with none of those picturesque adjuncts of climbing vines and overarching trees, associated so often with thoughts of a country school.

It had a perky, self-satisfied little bell-house on top, and its date, 1865, was rudely carved on a big stone in the peak of the north gable. It had eight windows—three at each side, two at one end. In winter, the wood for the box stove was always piled up outside before these. There were always complaints of the school-house being dark in winter, yet it never occurred to any one to select a different site for the wood-pile.

The interior of the school-house corresponded in dinginess to the outside. The plaster walls were sadly soiled, particularly beneath the broad window seats, where the children sat kicking their heels whilst they ate their lunches at noon, for the scholars were drawn principally from the outlying farm-houses. A long length of irregularly jointed pipes led the smoke from the box stove at the end to an exit over the teacher's desk. Little tin pails were hung at intervals along this, to catch the black liquid distilled from the soot. The other adornments of the room consisted of a long blackboard, a globe, and some big lettered tablets, round which the teacher was wont to gather the infant class and teach them their letters.

In the politics of a little village like Ovid, the smallest public measures became magnified to grotesque importance. The usual custom was for the school trustees to sit in private session first, when any particular business was to be arranged, say, the selection of a teacher, and when this was arranged the doors were flung wide and the meeting was "open." These open school meetings were always well attended. They were the classes in which embryotic statesmen acquired the political alphabet, the ABC of political procedure, the manner of putting a motion, taking a vote, making a nomination, and the correct order of precedence governing the motions and amendments. There too, was acquired the first great requisite of a politician,—the art of saying non-committal things in a most convincing tone of voice, and of treating with much politeness those whom one held in secret abhorrence.

There were two offices, those of school trustee and pathmaster, and these two were equal in power and glory. True, they were barren honours, but they ofttimes led to better things. The school trustee had the higher position in one respect: he was chosen by the people at first hand. The pathmaster, upon the contrary, was appointed by the Council. It is needless to say the school trustee smiled in calm superiority at the pathmaster, and the latter in turn felt the making of the roads wherein the whole community walked, was as holy an office as the task of guiding the juvenile wanderers into the school, and seeing that when there, they trod the common road to knowledge, it being well known that there is no royal road thereto.

When Andrew arrived at the school-house, the other two trustees, Hiram Green who kept the village store, and Hen Braddon, were present. They immediately entered upon a discussion of the teacher question. The application of Sam Symmons' Suse lay upon the table, written out upon foolscap paper, in big round hand, with many flourishing capitals, rejoicing in "shaded" heads and beautifully involved tails.

"I tell you Suse is a good list with a pen," said Hen Braddon, with conviction, and the other two agreed. "She ain't no slouch at spelling either," said Hiram Green. The other two agreed with this also. Then Andrew took up his parable.

"Yes," he said, "Suse is quite smart, and being bred right here in Ovid seems to give her a claim to the school. I suggest we just appoint her."

"Well, it's as well to be cautious," said Hiram Green.

"It'll save advertising," said Hen Braddon.

"Suppose we just decide on it then," said Andrew.

"Well," said Hiram Green, "well, I ain't got no objections to Suse as Suse, but what I think is, two hundred and fifty is enough to pay a woman for what a man got three hundred."

Andrew sneered. He didn't have a sweet expression when he did that.

"Don't you think," he said, gravely—"don't you think Suse might include cleaning the school-house and lighting the fires in winter for the two-fifty, being she's a woman?"

"No," said Hiram, reflectively; "old Mrs. Slick has done it so long."

"But it would save twenty-five dollars," argued Andrew, with meek persuasion.

"Well," said Hiram, "Mrs. Slick needs that. She's owin' already, and she might's well draw the money off the school taxes as off the council."

"Oh, Mrs. Slick is owing, is she?" queried Andrew, with solicitude. "I hope she pays you all right. Well, about Suse. Being she's a woman, don't you think you could fix it so's she'd chop the wood for winter? That would save twelve dollars."

A nasty red flickered up to Hiram's face. He had thought Andrew's proposition about the taking care of the school thoroughly genuine.

"Oh," he said, "I ain't particular whether she gets the three hundred or the two-fifty, though I hope you won't deny when nomination comes round that you deliberately threw away fifty dollars of the people's money."

"You maybe quite sure I won't deny anything that's true," said Andrew, hotly. "And as for throwing away the people's money, well—some of the teachers, so far as I can recollect, got their salaries raised pretty frequently. Of course, I wasn't on the School Board then, so I only heard why it was done. I can't say of my own knowledge."

The fact was that Mr. Hiram Green had several unappetizing daughters, and, as he had been school trustee almost ever since any one remembered, it seemed good in his sight that the teachers, over whom he wielded such paternal authority in such a parental way, should return the compliment by adopting a filial rôle, and become sons not only in spirit but in name. But, alas, for the vanity of human wishes! the perfidious teachers had accepted all Hiram's kindness, had slept in the best bedroom and partaken of his best fruit, had ridden by him to town and accompanied the Misses Green to tea-meetings and festivals, had abode in the Green household over Sundays, had gone with them to church, and at choir practice had faithfully served them, and then, with the extra money they had been able to save through Hiram's hospitality and the fortuitous "raise" in their salaries, they had shaken the dust of Ovid from off their feet, and departed to fresh fields and pastures new, to marry the girls they had been engaged to all along or to study for one of the higher professions. Never a one of them all left a love gauge with a Miss Green, and in the bosom of the Green family many were the revilings cast upon those teachers, who, with a goodly countenance and a better appetite, had devoured Mrs. Green's layer cakes and preserves, feasted upon Hiram's peaches and driven his horses upon the false pretences of "intentions." However, in fairness to the teachers, one must remember that "some have greatness thrust upon them." Foolish, indeed, would be the man who deliberately offended his trustees, and Hiram's hospitality was usually somewhat pressingly proffered.

This last teacher—bad luck to him!—had described himself in his application as a single man, when at the beginning of the summer vacation he sent in his certificates for consideration in response to Hiram's advertisement, and before these holidays had passed he married and came alone to Ovid to take up school in the autumn, and had eaten five teas and two dinners at Hiram Green's before he asked the eldest daughter, with whom he frequently found himself alone, where she thought he could rent a suitable house for himself and wife.

"This is very sudden," murmured Miss Green.

"Well, I don't know," he said, in a practical tone of voice, "I've been nearly two weeks away from her now, and I can't stand it much longer."

Miss Green gathered his meaning then, and never another tea did that teacher sit down to in Hiram Green's, and indeed the atmosphere of Ovid had been made so frigid for the little smooth-haired, blue-eyed girl he had married, that he soon sent her away, and finding he could not do without her, finally sent in his own resignation. The Greens had a big family connection, and Ovid was made a cold place for those whom they did not like. The Cutler house on the hill and poor old Sam's stubborn door were about the only portals in Ovid that an enemy of the Greens might pass.

Henry Braddon acted as a soft, effective buffer between Hiram and Andrew, who both always wanted their own way, and wanted it at once.

"Best let Suse have the three hundred," said he: "old Reilly will be foreclosing on Sam soon if he don't raise the money somehow." Now, Reilly was the local usurer, the one hard-hearted, close-fisted old Shylock so often found in rural districts; the one man within a radius of twenty miles who had made a fortune. He was reputedly worth seventy or eighty thousand dollars; possibly he was worth fifty thousand. But when that is divided into mortgages, ranging from two or three hundred dollars up to, perhaps, one or two of five thousand, one can realize what a power he was in the country side; how many heart-strings he had tangled in his grasping fingers; from how many couches his shadowy outstretched hand banished sleep; at how many tables his hollow, gaping palm was seen, as the children put out their hands for food; before how many hearths his spectral presence ever sat with a look of anticipatory proprietorship. He was as cruel as the grave, and as relentless as time. Not one ten minutes of grace did ever any one get from old Reilly. The children looked at him with awe as he drove past in his old-fashioned buggy, a hatchet-faced old man, thin, cold-blooded, with big knuckly hands holding the reins. Hen Braddon knew what he was doing when he referred to him. The week before, Hiram Green's brother had been turned neck and crop out of his farm by this same Reilly. No fear that Hiram would let him get another "haul" off old Sam if he could help it.