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Un des symboles suivants apparattra sur la derniire image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbole —»> signifie "A SUIVRE ", le symbols V signifie "FIN". Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmte A des taux de reduction diff^rents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour Atre reproduit en un seul clichA, 11 est filmA A partir de I'angle supArieur geuche, de gauche A droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'imeges nAcesseire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mAthode. 1 2 3 1 « • [■ ■ , ■ i • ■ . .■■ ^ • . 4 5 6 < n 'ill • I |»ip^— i"W»w^^»^p^^~ What Necessity Knows BY L. DOUGALL Author of " Beggars All," ktc. >J^o NEW YORK LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. IS EAST SIXTEENTH STREET 1893 Copyright, 1898, By L. DOUGALL. L Cop , % Typographv by J. S. Gushing & Co., Bostok. JOHN REDPATH DOUGALL THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED WITH REVERENCE AND AFFECTION 1 1 0729 ■W" i^ ■ f • ..V PREFACE. One episode of this story may need a word of explana- tion. It is reported that while the " Millerite " or Advent- ist excitement of 1843 was agitating certain parts of North Ameri(ni, in one place at least a little band of white-robed I)eople ascended a hill in sure expectation of the Second Advent, and patiently returned to be the laughing stock of their neighbours. This tradition, as I heard it in my childhood, was repeated as if it embodied notliing but eccentricity and absurdity, yet it naturally struck a child's miud with peculiar feelings of awe and pathos. Such an event api)eared picturesque matter for a story. It was not easy to deal with; for in setting it, as was necessary, in close relation to the gain-getting, marrying and giving in marriage, of the people among whom it might occur, it was difficult to avoid either giving it a poetic emphasis which it Avould not appear to have in reality or degrading it by that superficial truth often called realism, which belittles men. Any unworthiness in the working out of the incident is vii viii PREFACE. due, not so much to lack of dignity in the subject, or to hick of nuitcrial, as to the limitations of the writer's capacity. Lest any of my countrymen should feel tliat this story is wanting in sympatliy with them, I may j)oint out tiiat it does not haj)pen to deal witli Canadians proper, but with immigrants, most of whom are slow to identify themselves with their adopted country; hence their point of view is here necessarily set forth. I would take this opportunity to express my obligation to my fellow-worker. Miss ]\I. S. Earp, for her constant and sympathetic criticism and help in composition. L. D. Edinburgh, June, 1893. subject, or to the writer's t til is story is 't out that it ptT, hut with y tliuiiiselves it of view is ij obligation l»er constant :iou. L. D. BOOK I. "Necessity knows no LavoP \ f WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS. CJIArTEU I. INTKODUCTION. "It is not ofton tliat wliat we call tlio 'great sorrows of litVi ' causo lis tlie greatest sorrow. Death, acute disease, sudden and great losses — these are sonuitinies easily borne compared witli those intricate ditiiculties wliich, without name and without appearauce, work themselves into the web of our daily life, and, if not rightly met, corrode and tarnish all its brightness." So spoke Robert Trculiolme, Principal of the New College and Hector of the English church at Chellaston, in the I'rovinoe of Quebec. He sat in his comfortable library. The light of a centre lamp glowed with shaded ray on books in their shelves, but shone sti-ongly on the faces near it. As Trenholme spoke his words had all the charm lent by modulated voice and manner, and a face that, though strong, could light itself easily with a winning smile. He Avas a tall, rather muscular man; his face had that look of battle that indicates the nervous temperament. He was talking to a member of his congregation who had called to ask advice and sympathy concerning some carking domestic care. The advice had already been given, and the clergy- man proceeded to give the sympathy in the form above. His listener was a sickly-looking man, who held by the hand a little boy of live or six years. The child, pale and 3 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I ,1 sober, iT'garded with incessant interest the prosperous and energetic man wlio was talking to its father. "Yes, yes," replied the troubled visitor, "yes, there's some help for the big troubles, but none for the small — you're right there." "No," said the other, "1 did not say there was no help. It is just those complex difficulties for which we feel the help of our fellow-men is inadequate that ought to teach us to find out how adequate is the help of the Divine Man, our Saviour, to all our needs." " Yes, yes," said the poor man again, " yes, I suppose what you say is true." But he evidently did not suppose so. He sidled to the door, cap in hand. The clergyman said no more. He was one of those sensitive men who often know instinctively whether or not their words find response in the heart of the hearer, and to whom it is always a pain to siiy anything, even the most trivial, which awakes no feeling common to both. Trenholme himself showed the visitors out of his house with a genial, kindly manner, and when the departing foot- steps had ceased to crunch the garden path he still stood on his verandah, looking after the retreating figures and feel- ing somewhat depressed — not as we might suppose St. Paul would have felt depressed, had he, in like manner, taken the Name for which he lived upon his lips in vain — and to render that name futile by reason of our spiritual insignifi- cance is surely the worst form of profanity — but he felt depressed in the way that a gentleman might who, having various interests at heart, had failed in a slight attempt to promote one of them. It was the evening of one of the balmy days of a late Indian summer. The stars of the Canadian sky had faded and become invisible in the light of a moon that hung low and glorious, giving light to the dr}?, sweet-scented haze of autumn air. T)-enholme looked out on a neat garden plot, and beyond, in the same enclosure, upon lawns of ragged, dry-looking grass, in the centre of which stood an ugly CHAP. l] WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOllS \\\)t ate led ow of ot, 3(1, brick liouse, built apparently for some public purpose. This was the iniiuediate outlook. Around, tlie land was un(hilatins^; trees were abundant, and were more apparent in the moonliglit than the flat field spaces between them. The graceful lines of leatiess elms at the side of the main road were ch^arly seen. About half a mile away the liglits of a large vilhige were visible, but bits of walls ;ind gable ends of white houses stood out brighter in tlu^ moonlight than the yellow lights within the windows. Where the houses stret(!hed themselves up on a low hill, a little white chur(!h showed clear against the broken shadow of low- growing pines. As Trenholme was surveying the place dreamily in the wonderful light, that light fell also upon him and his habi- tation. He was ai)i)arently intellectual, and had in him something of the idealist. For the rest, lu; was a good- sized, good-looking man, between thirty and forty years of age, and even by the moonlight one might see, from the form of his clothes, that he was dressed with fastidious care. The walls and verandah of his house, which were of wood, glistened almost as brightly with white paint as the knocker and doorplate did with brass lacquer. After a few minutes, Trenholme's housekeeper, a wiry, sad-eyed woman, came to see why the door was left open. "When she saw the master of the house she retired in abru[)t, angular fashion, but the suggestion of her errand recalled him from his brief relaxation. In his study he again sat down before the table where he had been talking to his visitors. From the leaves of his blotting-paper he took a letter which he had apparently been interrupted in writing. He took it out in a quick, business- like way, and dipped his pen in the ink as though to finish rapidly; but then he sat still until the pen dried, and no further word had been added. Again he dipped his pen, and again let it dry. If the first sentence of the letter had taken as long to compose as the second, it was no wonder that a caller had caused an interruption. IVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I The letter, as it lay before liim, had about a third of its page written in a neat, forcible hand. The arms of his young college were printed at the top. He had written : — My dear brother, — I am very much concerned not to have heard from you for so long, I have written to your old address in Montreal, but received no answer. Here came the stop. At last he put pen to j)aper and went on : — Even though we have disagreed as to what occupation is best for you to follow, and also as to the degree of reserve that is desirable as to what our father did, you nuist surely know that there is nothing I desire more than your highest welfare. After looking at this sentence for a little while he struck his pen through tlie word "highest," and tlien, offended with tlie appearance of tlie obliteration, he copied this much of tlie letter on a fresh sheet and again stopped. When he continued, it was on tlie old slieet. He made a rough copy of the letter — writing, crossing out, and rewrit- ing. It seemed that the task to which he had set himself was almost harder than could appear possible, for, as lie became more absorbed in it, there was evidence of discom- fort in his attitude, and although the room was not warm, the moisture on his forehead became visilde in the strong light of the lamp above him. At length, after preliminary pauses had been followed by a lengthened period of vigor- ous writing, the letter was copied, and the writer sealed it with an air of obvious relief. That done, he wrote another letter, the composition of which, although it engaged his care, was apparently so much pleasanter, that perhaps the doing of it was chosen on the same principle as one hears a farce after a tragedy, in order to sleep the more easily. This second letter was to a lady. When it was written, Trenholme pulled an album from a private drawer, and looked long and with interested attention at the face of the CHAI . l] ll'HAT NECESSITY KNOWS lady to whom lie had written. Tt was the face of a young, handsome girl, who bore herself proudly. The fashion of the dress would have suggested to a caloulating mind that the portrait liad been taken some years before; but what man who imagines himself a lover, in regarding the face of the absent dear one in the well-known picture, adds in thought the marks of time? If he had been impartial he would have asked the portrait if the face from which it was tak(Ui had grown more proud and cold as the years went by, or more sad and gentle — for, surely, in this work-a-day world of ours, fate would not be likely to have gifts in store that would wholly satisfy those eager, ambitious eyes; but, being a man no wiser than many other men, he looked at the rather faded photograph with considerable pleasure, and asked no questions. It grew late as he contemplated the lady's picture, and, moreover, he was not one, under any excuse, to spend much time in idleness. He ^jut away his album, and then, having personally locked up his house and said good-night to his housekeeper, he went upstairs. Yet, in spite of all that Trenholme's pleasure in the letter and the possession of the photograph might betoken, the missive, addressed to a lady named Miss liexford, was not a love-letter. It ran thus : — I cannot even feign anger against "Dame Fortune," that, by so unexpected a turn of her wheel, she should be even. now bringing you to the remote village where for some time I have been forced to make my home, and where it is very probable I shall remain for some years longer. I do, of course, unfeignedly regret the financial misfortune which, as I understand, has made it necessary for Captain Rexford to bring you all out to this young country ; yet to me the pleasure of expecting such neighbours must far exceed any other feeling with which I regard your advent. I am exceedingly glad if I have been able to be of service to Cap- tain Kexford in making his business arrangements here, and hope all will prove satisfactory. I have only to add that, although you must be prepared for nuich that you will find different from English life, much that is rough and ungainly and uncomfortable, you may feel 8 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [hook I confident that, with a little patience, the worst roughness of colonial life will soon be overconu', and that you will find compensation a thousand times over in the ghn-ious climate and cheerful prospects of this new land. As I have never had the pleasure of meeting Captain and Mrs. Rcxford, I trust you will excuse me for addressing this note of wel- come to you, whom I trust I may still look upon as a friend. I have not forgotten the winter when I received encouragement .and counsel from you, who had so many to admire and occupy you that, looking back now, I feel it strange that you should have found time to bestow in mere kindness. Here there followed courteous salutatious to the lady's father and mother, brothers and sisters. The letter was signed in friendly style and addressed to an hotel in Hali- fax, where apparently it was to await the arrival of the fair stranger from some other shore. It is probable that, in tlie intorlacings of human lives, events are hajjpening every moment which, although bearing according to present knowledge no possible relation to our own lives, are yet to have an influence on our future and make havoc witli our expectations. The train is laid, the fuse is lit, long before we know it. That niglit, as Kobert Trenholme sealed his letters, an event took place that Avas to test by a strange intiuence the lives of these three people — llobert Trenholme, the lady of whom he thought so pleasantly, and the young brother to whom he had written so laboriously. And the event was that an old settler, wdio dwelt in a remote part of the coun- try, went out of his cabin in the delusive moonlight, slipped on a steep place, and fell, thereby receiving an inward hurt that was to bring him death. CHAPTER II The Indian summer, that lingers in the Canadian forest after the fall of the leaves, had passed away. The earth lay frozen, ready to bear the snow. The rivers, with edge of CHAP. Il] in LIT NEC ESS/TV K'JVOU'S thin ice upon their quiet places, rolled, gatliering into the surfiuic of their waters the cold that would so soon create their crystal prison. Tlie bright sun of a late November day was shining upon a snial) hike that lay in the h^nely region to the west of the (raspe Peninsula near tlie JVIatapediac Valley. There was one farm clearing on a sl()[»e of the wild hills tliat encircled tlie lake. The place was very lonely. An eagle that rose from the lir-clad ridge above the clearing might from its eminence, have seen other human habitations, but such siglit was denied to the dwellers in the rude log-house on the clearing. The eagle wheeled in the air and flew southward. A girl standing near the log-house watched it with discon- tented eyes. The blue \v ater of the lake, with ceaseless lapping, cast up glinting reflections of the cold sunlight. JJown the liillside a stream ran to join the lake, and it was on the more sheltered slope by this stream, where grey-limbed maple trees grew, that the cabin stood. Above and around, the steeper slopes bore only flr trees, whose cone-shaped or spiky forms, sometimes burnt and charred, sometimes dead and grey, but for the most part green and glossy, from shore and slope and ridge pointed always to the blue zenith. Tlie log-house, with its rougher sheds, was hard by the stream's ravine. About the other sides of it stretched a few acres of tilled land. Hound this land the maple wood closed, and under its grey trees there was a tawny brown carpet of fallen leaves from which the brighter autumn colours had already faded. Up the hillside in the fir wood there were gaps where the trees had been felled for lumber, and about a quarter of a mile from the house a rudely built lumber slide descended to the lake. It was about an hour before sundown when the eagle had risen and fled, and the sunset light found the girl who had watched it still standing in the same place. All that time a man had been talking to her; but she herself had not been talking, she had given him little reply. The two were not lO IVHAT NECESSirV KNOWS [hook I oloso to tlio lioiiso; largo, squaro-built ])iles of lo{,'s, sawn and s|)lit for Avi liter fncl, separated them from it. The man leaned aj^'ainst tlie wood now j the girl stood upright, leaning on nothing. Her face, wliich was healthy, was at the same time pale. Her hair was very red, and she had much of it. She was a large, strong young woman. She looked larger and stronger than tlie man with whom she was conversing. He was a thin, liaggard fellow, not at first noticeable in the landscape, for his clothes and beard were faded and worn into colours of earth and wood, so that Nature seemed to have dealt with him as she deals witli her most defenceless creatures, caus- ing them to grow so like their surroundings that even their enemies do not easily observe them. This man. however, was not lacking in a certain wiry physical sti -iigth, nor in power of thought or of will. And these latter powers, if the girl possessed them, were as yet only latent in her, for she had tlie heavy and undeveloped appearance of backward youth. The man was speaking earnestly. At last he said : — "Come now, Sissy, be a good lassie and say that ye're content to stay. Ye've always been a good lassie and done what I told ye before." His accent was Scotch, but not the broad Scotch of an entirely uneducated man. There was sobriety written in the traits of his face, and more — a certain quality of intel- lectual virtue of the higher stamp. He was not young, but he was not yet old. "I haven't," said the girl sullenly. He sighed at her perverseness. " That's not the way I remember it. I'm sure, from the time ye were quite a wee one, ye have always tried to please me. We all come short sometimes; the thing is, what we are trying to do." He spoke as if her antagonism to what he had been saying, to what he was yet saying, had had a painful effect upon him which he was endeavouring to hide. The girl looked over his head at the smoke that was CHAP. Il] IVIIAT NECESSITY KiVOlVS II en iCt as proceeding from tlio log-house eliinuiey. Slie saw it curl and wreathe itself against the cold blue east. It was white wood smoke, and as she watched it began to turn yellow in the liglit from the sunset. She did not turn to see whence the yellow ray came. "Now that father's dead, I won't stay here, Mr. Bates." Slie said " I won't " just as a sullen, naughty girl would speak. " 'Twas hateful enough to stay while he lived, but now you and Miss Bates are nothing to me." "Nothing to ye. Sissy? " The words seemed to come out of him in pained surprise. " I know you've brouglit me up, and taught me, and been far kinder to me than father ever was; but I'm not to stay here all my life because of that." " Bairn, I have just been telling ye there is nothing else ye can do just now. I have no ready money. Your father ]iad nothing to leave ye but his share of this place; and, so far, we've just got along year by year, and tiiat's all. I'll work it as well as I can, and, if ye like, ye're welcome to live free and lay by your share year by year till ye have something to take with ye and are old enough to go away. But if ye go off now ye'll have to live as a servant, and ye couldn't thole that, and I couldn't for ye. Ye have no one to protect ye now but me. I've no friends to send ye to. What do ye know of the world? It's unkind — ay, and it's wicked too." "How's it so wicked? You're not wicked, nor father, nor me, nor the men — how's people outside so much wickeder?" Bates's mouth — it was a rather broad, powerful mouth — began to grow hard at her continued contention, perhaps also at the thought of the evils of which he dreamed. " It's a very evil world," he said, just as he would have safd that two and two made four to a child who had dared to question that fact. " Ye're too young to understand it now : ye must take my word for it." She made no sort of answer; she gave no sign of yield- la WHAT NECIiSS/TV KNOll'S [book r iiig; but, because she liad made no answer, he, self-wiUed and 0{)inion.ited man that he was, felt assured that she liad no an.iwer to give, and went on to talk as if that one point were settled. "Ye can be happy here if ye will only think so. If we seem liard on ye in the house about the meals and that, I'll try to be better tempered. Ye haven't read all the books we have yet, but I'll get more the first chance if ye like. Come, Sissy, tliink how lonesome I'd be without ye! " He moved his shoulders nervously while he spoke, as if the effort to coax was a greater strain than the effort to teach or command. His manner might have been that of a father who wheedled a child to do right, or a lover who sued on his own behalf; the better love, for that matter, is much the same in all relations of life. This last plea evidently moved her just a little. " I'm sorry, Mr. Bates," she said. " What are ye sorry for. Sissy?" "That I'm to leave you." "But ye're not going. Can't ye get that out of your head? How will ye go? " "In the boat, when they take father." At that the first flash of anger came from him. "Ye won't go, if I have to hold ye by main force. I can't go to bury your father. I have to stay here and earn bread and butter for you and me, or we'll come short of it. If ye think I'm going to let ye go with a man I know little about " His voice broke off in indignation, and as for the girl, whether from sudden anger at being thus spoken to, or from the conviction of disappointment which had been slowly forcing itself upon her, she began to cry. His anger van- ished^ leaving an evident discomfort behind. He stood before her with a weary look of effort on his face, as if he were casting all things in heaven and earth about in his mind to find which of them would be most likely to afford her comfort, or at least, to put an end to tears which, per- CHAP. II] WHAT jv/ic/iss/ry Awoirs •3 'ly r- iKips for a reason unknown to himself, gave him excessive auao^'anee. "Come. Sissy" — feebly — "give over." But the girl went on crying, not loudly or passionately, but with no sign of discontinuance, as she stood tliere, large and miserable, before him. lie f-ettled his shoulders obsti- nately against the wood j)ile, thinking to wait till she should speak or make some further sign. Nothing but strength t)f will kept him in his place, for he woidd gladly have fled from her. He had now less guidance than before to what was i)assing in her mind, for her face was more hidden from his sight as the light of the sinking sun focussed more exclusively in the Holds of western sky behind her. Then the sun went down behind the rugged hills of the lake's other shore; and, as it sank below their sharp out- lines, their sides, which had been clear and green, became dim and purple; the blue went out of the waters of the lake, they became the hue of steel touched with iridescence of gold; and above the hills, vajjour that had before been almost invisible in the sky, now hung in upright layers of purple mist, blossoming into primrose yellow on the lower edges. A few moments more and grey bloom, such as one sees on purple fruit, was on these vast hangings of cloud that grouped themselves more largely, and gold flames burned on their fringes. Behind them there were great empty reaches of lambent blue, and on the sharp edge of the shadowed hills there was a line of fire. It produced in Bates unthinking irritation that Nature should quietly go on outspreading her evening magniticence in face of his discomfort. In ordinary light or darkness one accepts the annoyances of life as coming all in the day's work; but Nature has her sublime moments in which, if the sensitive mind may not yield itself to her delight, it is forced into extreme antagonism, either to her or to that which withholds from joining in her ecstasy. Bates was a man sensitive to many forces, the response to which within him was not openly acknowledged to himself. He was 14 WHAT XECKss/ry Kxoirs [IJOOK I familiiir with tho inaccnitirunice of sunsets in this iv^noii, l)iit his mind was not diiHod to the niarvtd of the colourod glory in wliioh tlui daylii,dit so often eulniinated. He h)ok(Ml off at the western sky, at first ohiefly eonseious of the uniiap})y girl who stood in front of him and irritated by tliat intcu'vening shape; but, as liis vision wandered ahmg tlu; vast reac'lies of illimitabh» clouds and the glorious gulfs of sky, liis mind yi(dded itself tlie rather to the beauty and light. iVlore dusky grew the pur[)l(^ of the uppcu* mists wiiose u})right layers, like league-long wings of softest feaiher held edge downward to the earth, ever changed in forni without api)arent movement. More sparkling glowed the gold upon their edges. The sky beneath the cloud was now like emerald. The soft darkness of iiurjde slate was on the hills. The lake took on a darker shade, and daylight began to fade from the upper blue. It was only perhaps a monu^nt — one of those moments for which time has no measurement — that the soul of this man had gone out of him, as it were, into the vastness of the sunset; and when he recalled it his situation took on for him a somewhat different aspect. He experienced some- thing of that temporary relief from personal responsibility that moments of religious sentiment often give to minds that are unaccustomed to religion. He had been free for the time to disj)ort himself in something infinitely larger and wider than his little world, and he took up his duty at the point at which he liad left it with something of this sense of freedom lingering with him. He was a good man — that is, a man whose face would have made it clear to any true observer that he habitually did the right in contradistinction to the wrong. He was, moreover, religious, and would not have been likely to fall into any delusion of mere sentiment in the region of re- ligious emotion. But that which deludes a man commonly comes through a safe channel. As a matter of fact, the excitement which the delight of the eye had produced in him was a perfectly wholesome feeling, but the largeness of heart it gave him at that moment was unfortunate. CHAl'. Ilj liJ/AT ATLChSS/ri' A'jvoirs '5 The girl stood just as before, unj^Miiily .'lud witliout powi'r «tl" expression because muleveloped, but excitation of thought made what slie niiglit become ai)[)arent to him in that wliieh h\u' was. lie became more generous towards lier, more loving. "Don't greet, that's a good lassie," he said soothingly. ''There's truth in what ye have said — that it's dull for ye here because ye have nothing to look ahead to. Widl, I'll tell ye what I didn't mean to tell ye while ye are so young — whenye're older, if ye're a good lassie and go on learning your lessons as ye have been doing, I will ask ye to marry me, and then (we hope of course to get more beforehand wi' money as years go) ye will have mor(^ interest and " "Marry! " interrupted the girl, not strongly, but sj)eaking in faint wonder, as if echoing a word she did not quite understand. "Yes," he went on with great kindliness, "I talked it over with your father before he went, and he was pleased. I told him that, in a year or two, if he liked it, I would marry ye — it's only if ye like, of course; and ye'd better not think about it now, for ye're too young." " IVIarry me ! " This time the exclamation came from her with a force that was appalling to him. The coarse hand- kerchief which she had been holding to her eyes was with- drawn, and with lips and eyes open she exclaimed again: " Marry me ! You ! " It was remarkable how this man, who so far was using, and through long years had always used, only the tone of mentor, now suddenly began to try to justify himself with almost childlike timidity. " Your father and I didn't know of any one else here- abouts that would suit, and of course we knew ye would naturally be disappointed if ye didn't marry." He went on muttering various things about the convenience of such an arrangement. She listened to nothing more than his first sentence, and began to move away from him slowly a few steps backwards : i6 in/ AT A7:C/iSS//T KNOn'S [hook I then, percoiviii},' tliat sln^ liad coino to tlie brink of tlic level j^rouiid, slu! turned and suddenly stret(died out her arm with almost i'ranti(? lonj^'inj,' toward the cold, ^'rey lake and the dark hills behind, when^ the lires of the west still struggled with the eneroacdiing November night. As slu^ turned there was light enough for him to see how bright th(! burning colour of her hair was — bright as the burning co|>[)er glow on the lower feathers of those great shadowy wings of cloud — the wings of night that were enfolding the dying day. Some idea, gathered indefinittdy from both the tierci'uess of her gesture and his transient observation of tlie colour of her hair, suggested to him that he had trodden on the sacuvd ground of a passionate heart. Poor man! li(^ would have been only too glad just then to have effaced his foot-prints if he had had the least idea how to do it. The small shawl she wore fell from her unnoticed as she went quickly into the house. He picked it up, and folded it awkwardly, but with meditative care. It was a scpiare of orange-coloured merino, such as pedlars who deal witli the s(puiws always carry, an ordinary thing for a settler's child to possess. As he held it, ]3ates felt compunction that it Avas not something finer and to his idea prettier, for lie did not like the colour. He decided that he would purchase something better for her as soon as possible. He followed her into the house. CHAPTER III NioHT, black and cold, settled over the house that had that day for the first time been visited by death. Besides the dead man, there were now three people to sleep in it: an old woman, whose failing brain had little of intelligence left, except such as showed itself in the everyday habits of a long and orderly life; the young girl, whose mind slow by nature in reaching nuiturity and retarded by the monotony of her life, had not yet gained the power of realising its [hook I CHAI*. UlJ in I AT NECESSITY KNOWS «r of the level •r arm with k(* and the 1 struggled to SCO how gilt as tho tlioso great til at were iidelinitely ■i transiiMit ;o him that iiate heart. 1 just then ! least idea from her He picked itive care, fis pedlars lary thing ]iates felt o his idea d that he possible. ;hat had Besides ^p in it: dligence labits of slow by onotony sing its own deejx'r thoughts, still less of explaining them to another; and tliis man, Jiates, who, being by natural con- stitution peculiarly suscc[»til»lc to the strain of the sight of illness and de;ith whicii he iiad just undergone, was not in the best condition to resist the morbid intlucnces of unhappy c()ni[)anionsiiip. The girl shed tears as she moved about sullenly. She would nots[icak to Jiates, and he did not in the least under- stand that, sullen as due was, her speechlessness did not result from that, but from iuiibility to reduce to any form the chaotic emotions witliin her, or to find any expression which might represent her distress. He could not realise that the childish miml that had [)()wer to converse for trivial things had, as yet, no word for the not-trivial; that the blind womanly emotion on which he had trodcU'n had as yet no counterpart in womanly thought, which might have formed excuses for his conduct, or at least have compre- hended its simplicity. He only felt uneasily that her former cause of contention with '''im, her determination, sudden as her father's death, to leave the only home she possessed, was now enforced by her antagonism to the suggestion he had made of a future marriage, and he felt increasing annoy- ance that it should be so. Naturally enough, a deep under- current of vexation was settling in his mind towards her for feeling that antagonism, bnt he was vexed also with himself for having suggested the fresh source of contest just now to comi)licate the issue between them as to whether she should remain where she was, at any rate for the present. Remain she nmst; he was clear upon that point. The form of his religious theories, long held in comparative isoLation from mankind, convinced him, whether truly or not, that hu- manity was a very bad thing; she should not leave his ju'otection, and he was considerate enough to desire that, when the time came for launching the boat which was to take her father's body to burial, he should not need to detain her by force. The girl set an ill-cooked supper before Bates and the i8 WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOirS [hook I hired man, and would not lierself eat. As Bates sat at his supper he felt drearily that his position "was hard; and, being a man whose training disposed liim to vaguely look for the cause of trial in sin, wondered what he had done that it had thus befallen him. His memory reverted to the time when, on an emigrant ship, he had made friends witli the man Cameron who that day had died, and tliey had agreed to choose their place and cast in tlieir lot together. It had been i)art of tlie agreement that tlie aunt who accom- pani':id liates should do the woman's work of the new home until she was too old, and that Cameron's child should do it when she was old enough. The girl was a little fat thing then, wearing a red hood. Bates, uneasy in his mind both as to his offer of marriage and her resentment, asked himself if he was to blame that he had begun by being kind to \\i\v then, that he had played with her upon the ship's deck, tliat on their land journey lie had often carried her in his arms, or that, in the years of the hard isolated life Avhich since then they had all lived, he had taught and trained the girl with far more care than her father had bestowed on her. Or Avas he to blame that he had so often been strict and severe with her? Or was he unjust in feeling now that he had a rigliteous claim to respect and consideration from her to an almost greater extent than the dead father Avhose hard, silent life had showed forth little of the proper attributes of fatherhood? Or did the sin for which he was now being punisijed lie in the fact that, in spite of her constant wilfulness and frecpient stupidity, he still felt such affection for his pupil as made him unwilling, as he phrr^sed it, to seek a wife elsewhere and thus thrust her from her place in the household. Bates had a certain latent contempt for women; wives he thought were easily found and not altogether desirable; and with that inconsistency common to men, he looked upon his pro- posal to the girl now as the result of a much more unselfish impulse than he had done an hour ago, before she exclaimed at it so scornfully. He did not know how to answer him- CHAP. Ill] WHAT A'/XLSS/ry KNoirs 19 pro- fisli ned im- self. In all honesty he could not accuse liimself of not liaving done his duty by the girl or of any desire to shirk it in the future; and that being the case, he grew every minute more inclined to believe that the fact that his duty was now being made so disagreeable to him was owing, not to any fault of his, but to tlie naughtiness of her disposition. The hired man slept in an outer shed. When he had gone, and IJates went up to his own bed in the loft of the log-house, the last sound that he heard was the girl sobbing where she lay beside the old woman in the room below. The sound was not cheering. The next day was sunless and colder. Twice that morn- ing Sissy Cameron stopped Bates at his Avork to urge her determination to leave the place, and twice he again set his reasons for refusal before her with what patience lie could command. He told her, what she knew without telling, that the winter was close upon them, that the winter's work at the lumber was necessary for their livelihood, that it was not in his power to find her an escort for a journey at this season or to seek another home for her. Then, when she came to him again a third time, his anger broke out, and he treated her with neither patience nor good sense. It was in the afternoon, and a chill north breeze ruffled the leaden surface of the lake and seemed to curdle the water with its breath; patches of soft ice already mottled it. The sky was white, and leafless maple and evergreen seemed ahnost alike colourless in the dull, cold air. r>att?s had turned from his work to stand for a fcAV moments on the hard trodden level in front of the house and survey the weather. He had reason to survey it with anxiety. He was anxious to send the dead man's body to the nearest graveyard for decent burial, and the messenger and cart sent on this errand were to bring back another man to work with him at felling the timber that was to be sold next spring. The only way between his house and other houses lay across the lake and through a gaji in the hills, a way tliat was passable now, and passable in calm days when winter had 20 117/ AT NECESSITY KNOWS [nooK I fully come, but iinpassal)le at the time of forming ice and of falling and drifting snow, lie hoped that the snow and ice would liold off until his plan could l)e carried out, but he held his face to the keen coh^ breeze and looked at the mottled surface of the lake with irritable anxiety. It was not iiis way to coniide his anxiety to any one; he was bearing it alone when tlie girl, who had been sauntering aimlessly about, came to him. "If I don't go with the boat to-morrow," she said, "I'll walk across as so(m as the ice'll bear." With that he turned upon lier. " And if I was a worse man than I am I'd let ye. It would be a comfort to me to be rid of ye. WJiere would ye go, or what would ye do? Ye ought to be only too thankful to have a comfortable home wliere ye're kept from harm. It's a cruel and bad world, I tell ye; it's going to destruction as fast as it can, and ye'd go with it." The girl shook with passion. "I'd do nothing of the sort," she choked. All the anger and dignity of lier being were aroused, but it did not follow that she had any power to give them ade- quate utterance. She turned from him, and, as she stood, the attitude of her whole figure spoke such incredulity, scorn, and anger, that the flow of hot-tempered arguments with Avliich he was still ready to seek to persuade her reason, died on his lips. He lost all self-control in increas- ing ill-temper. " Ye may prance and ye may dance " — he jerked the phrase between his teeth, using words wholly inapplicable to her attitude because he could not analyse its offensiveness sufficiently to find words that applied to it. " Yes, prance and dance as much as ye like, but ye'll not go in the boat to-morrow if ye'd six fathers to bury instead of one, and ye'll not set foot out of this clearing, where I can look after ye. I said to the dead I'd take care of ye, and I'll do it — ungrateful lass though ye are." He hurled the last words at her as lie turned and went CHAP. Ill] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 21 I'll the able iiess ranee boat , and after 3 it — went into a slied at the side of the house in which he had before been working. The girl stood quite still as long as he was within sight. She seemed conscious of his presence though she was not looking towards him, for as soon as he had stepped within the low opening of the shed, she moved away, walking in a wavering track across the tilled land, walking as if move- im'ut was the end of her purpose, not as if she had destina- tion. The frozen furrows of the ploughed land crumbled beneath lier heavy tread. The north wind grew stronger. When she reached the edge of the maple wood and looked up with swollen, tear-l)lurred eyes, she saw the grey branches moved by the wind, and the red squirrels leaped from branch to branch and tree to tree as if blown by tlie same air. She wandered up one side of the clearing and down the other, sometimes wading knee-deep in loud rustling maple leaves gathered in dry hollows within the wood, sometimes stum- bling over frozen furrows as she crossed corners of tlie l)loughed land, walking all the time in helpless, hopeless anger. When, however, she came back behind the house to that part of the clearing bounded by the narrow and not very deep ravine which running water had cut into the side of the hill, she seemed to gather some reviving sensations from the variety which the bed of the brook presented to her vi(;w. Here, on some dozen feet of steeply sloping rock and earth, which on either side formed the trough of the l)ro(jk, vegetable life was evidently more delicate and luxu- riant than elsewhere, in the season when it had sway. Even now, when the reign of the frost held all such life in abeyance, this grave of the dead summer lacked neither fretted tomb nor wreathing garland; for above, the bitter- sweet hung out heavy festoons of coral berries over the pall of its faded leaves, and beneath, o" ■)nd of fern and stalk of aster, and on rough surface c. lien-covered rock, the frost had turned the spray of water to white crystals, 22 IVIIAT Nice ESS IT V KNOIVS [P.OOK I and the stream, with imprisoned far-off murmur, nuide its little leaps witliin fairy palaces of icicles, and spread itself in pools whose leafy contents gave colours of mottled mar- ble to the ice that had grov/n u[)on them. It was on the nearer bank of this stream, where, a little below, it curved closer to the house, that her father, falling with a frost- loosened rock, had received his fatal injury. Out of the pure idleness of despondency it occurred to the girl that, from the point at which she had now arrived, she might obtain a new view of the small landslip which had caused the calamity. She cast her arms round a lithe young birch whose silver trunk bent from the top of the l^ank, and thus bridging the tangle of shrub and vine she hung over the short precipice to examine the spot with sad curiosity. She herself could hardly have told what thoughts passed through her mind as, childlike, she thus lapsed from hard anger into temporary amusement. But greater activity of mind did come with the cessation of movement and the examination of objects which stimulated such fancy as she possessed. She looked at the beauty in the ravine beneath her, and at the rude destruction tliat falling earth and rock had wrought in it a few yards further down. She began to wonder wliether, if tlie roots of the tree on which she was at full length stretched should give way in the same manner, and such a fall prove fatal to her also, Mr. Bates would be sorry. It gave her a sensation of pleasure to know that such a mishap would annoy and distress him very much; and, at the very moment of this sensation, she drew back and tested the firmness of the ground about its roots before resigning herself unreservedly to '-.he tree again. When she had resumed her former position with a feeling of perfect safety, she continued for a few minutes to dilate in fancy upon the suffering that would be caused by the death her whim had suggested. She was not a cruel girl, not on the whole ill-natured, yet such is human nature that this idea was actually the first that had given her sat- 1; CHAr. Ill] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 23 isfactioii for many hours. How sorry Mr. Bates would be, when he found her dead, that he had dared to speak so angrily to her! It was, in a way, luxurious to contemplate the i)athos of such an artistic death for herself, and its I fine effect, by way of revenge, upon the guardian who had made himself intolerable to her. From her post of observation she now saw, what had not Ix'fore been observed by any one, that wliere rock and earth liad fallen treacherously under her fatlier's tread, another ])()rti()n of the bank was loosened ready to fall. Where tliis loosening — the work no doubt of the frost — had taken l)lace, there was but a narrow passage between the ravine ;; and tlie house, and she was startled to be the first to dis- i cover what was so essential for all in the house to know. For many days the myriad leaves of the forest had lain everywhere in the dry atmosphere peculiar to a Canadian autumn, till it seemed now that all weij^ht and moisture liad left them. They were curled and puckered into half balloons, ready for the wind to toss and drift into every available gap. So strewn was this passage with such dry leaves, which even now the wind was drifting upon it more thickly, that the danger might easily have remained unseen. Tlien, as fancy is fickle, her mind darted from the pleas- urable idea of her own death to consider how it would be if she did not make known her discovery and allowed her enemy to walk into the snare. This idea was not quite as attractive as the former, for it is sweeter to think of oneself as innocently dead and mourned, than as guilty and perform- ing the office of mourner for another; and it was of herself only, whether as pictured in Bates's sufferings or as left libenited by his death, that tlie girl was thinking. Still it afforded relaxation to imagine what she mip'it do if she were thus left mistress of the situation; and she devised a scheme of action for these circumstances that, in its clever adaptation to what would be required, would have greatly amazed tlie man who looked upon her as an unthinking child. The difference between a strong and a weak mind is not 24 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [lU)OK I that the strong mind does not indulge itself in wild fancies, but that it never gives to su(!h fancy the power of capri- cious sway over the centres of purpose. This young woman was strong in mind as in body. No flickering intention of actually performing thtit which slie had imagined had place within her. She i)layed with the idea of death as she might have played with a toy, wliile resting herself from the angry question into which her whole being had for two days concentrated itself, as to how she could thwart tlie will of the man who had assumed authority over her, and gain the freedom that she felt was necessary to life itself. She had not lain many minutes upon the out-growing birch before she had again forgotten her gust of revengeful fancy, f nd yielded herself to her former serious mood with a reaction of greater earnestness. The winter beauty of the brook, the grey, silent trees above, and the waste of dry curled leaves all round — these faded from her observa- tion because tlie eye of her mind was again turned inwards to confront the circumstances of her difficulty. As she leaned thus in childlike attitude and Avomanly size, her arms twined round the tree and her cheek resting on its smooth surface, that clumsiness which in all young animals seems inseparable from the period when recent physical growth is not yet entirely permeated by the char- acter-life which gives it individual expression, was not apparent, and any intelligent eye seeing her would have seen large beauty in her figure, which, like a Venus in the years when art was young, had no cramped proportions. Her rough, grey dress hung heavily about her; the mocca- sins that encased her feet v/ere half hidden in the loose pile of dry leaves which had drifted high against the root of the tree. There was, however, no visible eye there to observe her youthful comeliness or her youthful distress. If some angel was near, regarding her, she did not know it, and if she had, she would not have been much inter- ested; there was nothing in her mood to respond to angelic CHAP. Ill] irJIAT JV£'C7iSS//y k'NQirS 25 pity or appreciation. As it was, the strong tree was im- potent to return her embrace; its dd bark liad no response lor the caress of her cheek; the north wind tliat liowled, the trees that swayed, the dead leaves that rustling Hed, and the stream that murmured under its ice, gave but drear companionship. Had she yielded her mind to their in- Huonce, the desires of her heart might have been numbed to a transient despair more nearly akin to a virtuous resig- nation to circumstance tlian the revolt that was now ram- pant within her. She did not yield; she was not now observing them; they only effected upon her inattentive senses an impression of misery which fed the strength of revolt. A minute or two more and the recumbent position had become unendurable as too passive to correspond with the inward energy. She clambered back, and, standing upon level ground, turned, facing the width of the bare clearing and the rough Imildings on it, and looked toward the down- ward slope and the wild lake, whose cold breath of water was agitated by the wind. The sky was full of cloud. She stood up with folded arms, strength and energy in the stillness of her attitude. She heard the sound of car- penter's tools coming from the shed into which ]3ates had retired. No other hint of humanity was in the world to which she listened, which she surveyed. As she folded her arms she folded her bright coloured old sliawl about her, and seemed to gather within its folds all warmth of colour, all warmth of feeling, that was in that wild, deso- late i)lace. A tiake of snow fell on the shawl; she did not notice it. Another rested upon her cheek; then she started. She did not move much, but her face lifted itself slightly; her tear- swollen eyes were wide open; her lips were parted, as if her breath could hardly pass to and fro quickly enough to keep pace with agitated thought. The snow had begun to come. She knew well that it would go on falling, not to- day perhaps, nor to-morrow, but as certainly as time would 26 WHAT NECESSITY KNOIVS [book i bring the following days, so certainly the snow would fall, covering the frozen surface of the earth and water with foot above foot of powdery whiteness. Far as she now was from the gay, active throng of fellow-creatures which she conceived as existing in the outer world, and with whom she longed to l)e, the snow would make that distance not only great, but impassable to her, unaided. It was true that she had threatened Bates with flight by foot across the frozen lake; but she knew in truth that sucli dei)arture was as dependent on the submission of his will to hers as was her going in the more natural way by boat th(! next day, for the track of her snow-shoes and tl»e slowntiss of her journey u})on them would always keep her within his power. The girl contemplated the falling flakes and her own immediate future at the same moment. The one notion clear to her mind was, that she must get away from that place before the cold had time to enchain the lake, or these flakes to turn the earth into a frozen sea. Her one hope was in the boat that would be launched to carry her dead father. She must go. She must go ! Youth would not be strong if it did not seek for happi- ness with all its strength, if it did not spurn pain with violence. All the notions that went to make up this girl's idea of pain were gathered from her present life of monot- ony and loneliness. All the notions that went to make up her idea of happiness were culled from what she had heard and dreamed of life beyond her wilderness. Added to this there was the fact that the man who had presumed to stand between her and tlie accomplishment of the first strong vo- lition of her life had become intolerable to her — whether more by his severity or by his kindliness she could not tell. She folded her shawl-draped arms more strongly across her breast, and hugged to herself all the dreams and desires, hopes and dislikes, that had grown within her as she liad grown in mind and stature in that isolated place. How could she accomplish her will? CHAP. Ill] IVJIAT NECESSITY KNOWS 27 The fliikos fell upon the co[)pei' gloss of her uncombed hair, on face and hands that reddened to the cold, and gathered in tlie folds of the shawl. She stood as still as a waxen figure, if waxen figure (tould ever be true to the power of will which her pose betrayed. "When the ground was white witli small dry flakes she moved again. Ifer reverie, for lack of material, seemed to luive come to noth- ing fresh. She determined to prefer her request again to r>ates. She walked round the house and came to the shed door. In this shed large kettles and other vessels for potash- making were set up, but in front of tliese Bates and his man were at work making a rude j)inewood cofHn, The servant was the elder of the two. He had a giant-like, sinewy frame and a grotesc^uely snuiU head; his cheeks were round and red like apples, and his long wliiskers evidently received some attention from his vanity; it seemed an odd freak for vanity to take, for all the rest of him was rough and dirty. He wriggled when tlie girl darkened the doorway, but did not look straight at her. "There's more of the bank going to slip where father fell — it's loose," she said. They both heard. The servant answered her, comment- ing on the information. These were the only words that were said for some time. The girl stood and pressed her- self against the side of the door. Bates did not look at her. At last she addressed him again. Her voice was low and gentle, perhaps from fear, perhaps from desire to per- suade, perhaps merely from repression of feeling. "Mr. Bates," she said, "you'll let me go in the boat with that?" — she made a gesture toward the unfinished coffin. His anger had cooled since he had last seen her, not lessening but hardening, as molten metal loses malleability as it cools. Much had been needed to fan his rage to flame, but now the will fused by it had taken tlie mould of a hard de(dsion that nothing but the l)lowing of another fire wou-ld melt. 28 WHAT /viiCKssrry knoivs [mook r " Ye'll not go unless you go in a cottiu instoad of along- side of it." The course! humour of his refusal was analogous to the laugli of a (^hidden (diild; it expressed not amusement, but an attempt to conceal nervous diseomposun;. The other man laughcnl; his mind was low enough to be amused. "It's no place for me liere," she urged, "and I ouglit by riglits to go to the burying of my father." "There's no place for ye neither where he'll be buried; and as to ye being at the funeral, it's only because I'm a long siglit better tlian other men about the country that I don't shovel him in where he fell. I'm getting out the boat, and sending Saul here and the ox-cart two days' jour- ney, to have him put decently in a churchyard. I don't b'lieve, if I'd died, you and your father would have done as much by me." As he lauded his own righteousness his voice was less hard for the moment, and, like a child, she caught some hope. " Yes, it's good of you, and in the end you'll be good and let me go too, Mr. Bates." "Oh yes." There was no assent in his voice. "And I'll go too, to see that ye're not murdered when Saul gets drunk at the first house; and we'll take my aunt too, as we can't leave her behind; and we'll take the cow tliat has to be milked, and the pigs and hens that have to be fed; and when we get there, we'll siettle down without any house to live in, and feed on air." His sarcasm came from him like the sweat of anger; he did not seem to take any voluntary interest in the i)lay of his words. His manner was cool, but it was noticeable that he had stopped his work and was merely cutting a piece of wood with his jack-knife. As she looked at hiui steadily he whittled the more savagely. The other man laughed again, and wriggled as he laughed. "No," she replied, "you can't come, I know; but I can take care of myself." ( IIAI'. Ill] It 7/1/' iV/x/jss/rr a'JVOWs 29 "It's a iliievin.u;, dniiiki'ii lot of fellows Saul will fall in with. Ve may jiivfor thoir society to mine, but I'll not risk it." "1 can go to the minister." "And liis wife would ni;ike a kitchon-girl of ye, and yc^'d run off from her in a week. If ye'd not stay here, where yo. have it all your own way, it's not long that ye'd put up \vi' my lady's fault-finding; and ministers and their wives isn't nnudi better than other folks — I've told ye before what 1 think of that sort of truck." There was a glitter in her eyes that would have startled him, but he did not see it. He was looking only at the wood he was cutting, but he never observed that he was cutting it. After a miimte he uttered his conclusion. " Ye'll stay wi' me." ''^ Stay with you," she cried, her breath catching at her words — " for how long? " "I don't know." Complete indifference was in his t(me. "Till ye're old, I suppose; for I'm not likely to find a better place for ye." All the force of her nature was in the words she cast at him. ''ini not stay.'' "No?" he sneered in heavy, even irony. "Will ye cry on the neighbours to fetch ye away?" She did not need to turn her head to see the wild loneli- ness of hill and lake. It was present to her mind as she leaned on the rough wooden lintel, looking into the shed. "Or," continued he, "will ye go a-visiting. There's the Indians camping other side o' the mountain here " — he jerked his head backward to denote the direction — "and one that came down to the tree-cutting two weeks ago said there were a couple of wolves on the other hill. I dare say either Indians or wolves would be quite glad of the pleasure o' your company. " She raised herself up and seemed suddenly to fill the doorway, so that both men looked up because much of their light was withdrawn. 30 ll'J/AT NIiCKSS/rv KNOirS [llOOK ! "You'd not have dared to speak to me like this wliile lather was Jilivo." As a matter of fact the aceiisation was not true. Tlie father's presence or absence wouhl \k\\\\ made no ditTereuee to J*)ates had lie been wrouglit uj* to the sann; ])itch of an^'(U'; but ncitlier he nor tiie girl was in a condition to know this. lie only replied: "That's the reason I waited till he was dead." "If he hadn't been hurt so sudden he wouldn't have left mo here." "lUit he icas hurt sudden, and he did leave ye here." She made as if to answer, but did not. Both men were h)oking at her now. The snow was white on her hair. Her tears had so long been dry that the swollen look was passing from her face. It had been until now at best a heavy face, but feeling that is strong enough works like a master's swift ehis(d to make tlu^ features the vehicle of the soul. Both men were relieved when she suddenly took her eyes from them and her shadow from their work and went away. Saul stretched his head and looked after her. There was no pity in his little apple face and ])eady eyes, only a sort of cunning curiosity, and the rest was dulness and weak- ness. Bates did not look after her. He shut his knife and fell to joining the coffin. CHAPTER IV. The girl lifted the latch of the house-door, and went in. She was in the living-room. The old woman sat in a chair that was built of wood against the log wall. She was look- ing discontentedly before her at an iron stove, which had grown nearly cold for lack of attention. Some chairs, a table, a bed, and a ladder which led to the room above, made the chief part of the furniture. A large mongrel CIIAI'. ivj ll'J/AT MXKSS/I)- kXOllS 3' doj,', wliicli lookod as if lie luid some blood of tlu» ^Tcy soiilliorii sli(H'i) dog in him, rose from In'foiH' tlio stove and grcrted the in-eomer silently. Tlie (log liad blue eyes, and \\(\ held up his face wistfully, as if he knew something was the matter. The old woman cuiiiphiincd of eold. It was plain that she did not remem- ber anything eoneerning death or tears. Tliero was one other door in the si(h; of the room whitdi led to the only inner chamber. The girl went into this ('liand)er, and the heed she gave to the dog's symi)athy was to hold the door and let him f(dlow her. Then sht; bolted it. There were two narrow beds built against the wall; in u\w of these the eor[)se of a grey-haired man was lying. Th(? dog had seen death before, and he evidently under- stood what it was. ]fe did not move quickly or snilf about; he laid his head on the edge of the winding-sheet and moaned a little. The girl did not moan. She knelt down some way from the bed, with a desire to pray. She did not pray; she whis- pered her anger, her unhai)piness, her desires, to the air of the eold, still room, repe.ating the same phrases again and again with clenched hands and the convulsive gestures of haU'-eontrolled passion. The reason she did not pray was that she believed that she could only pray when she w\as "good," and after fall- ing on her knees she became aware that goodness, as she understood it, was not in her just then, nor did she even (h'sire it. The giving vent to her misery in half-audible whis])ers followed involuntiirily on her intention to pray. She knew not why she thus poured out her heart; she hardly realised what she said or Avished to say; yet, be- cause some expression of her helph;ss need was necessary, and because, through fear and a rugged sense of her own evil, she sedulously averted her mind from the thought of (Jod, her action had, more than anything else, the sem- blance of an invocation to the dead man to arise and save her, and take vengeance on her enemy. 32 WHAT NEC ESS/TV KISTOWS [nooK I Daylight was in the room. The girl had knelt at first upright; then, as her passion seemed to avail nothing, but only to weary her, she sank back, sitting on her feet, buried her locked hands deeply in lier lap, and with head bowed over tliem, continued to stab the air with short, almost inaudible, com})laints. The dead man lay still. The dog, after standing long in subdued silence, came and with his tongue softly lapped some of the snow-water from her hair. After that, she got up and went with him back into the kitchen, and lit the lire, and cooked food, and the day waned. There is never in Nature that purpose to thwart which man in his peevishness is apt to attribute to her. Just because he desired so nmch that the winter should hold off a few days longer, i3ates, on seeing tlie snow falling from tlie white opaque sky, took for granted that the downfall would continue and the ice upon the lake increase. Instead of that, the snow stopped falling at twilight without appar- ent cause, and niglit set in more mildly. Darkness fell upon the place, as darkness can only fall upon solitudes, with a lonesome dreariness that seemed to touch and press. Night is not always dark, but with this night came darkness. There was no star nor glimmer of light; the pine-clad hills ceased to have form; the water in the lake was lost to all sense but that of hearing; and upon nearer objects the thinly sprinkled snow bestowed no dis- tinctness of outline,, but only a weird show of whitish shapes. The water gave forth fitful sobs. At intervals there were sounds round the house, as of stealthy feet, or of quick pattering feet, or of trailing garments — this was the wind busy among the drifting leaves. The two men, who had finished the coffin by the light of a lantern, carried it into the house and set it up against the wall while they ate their evening meal. Tlien they took it to a table in the next room to put the dead man in it. The girl and the dog went with them. They had cushioned tlie box with coarse sacking filled with fragrant CHAP. IV] WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOWS 33 I upon dis- liitish irvals % or was ht of lainst jtlioy m in had rrant pine tassels, but the girl took a thickly (piilted cloth from lier own bed and lined it more carefully. They did not hinder her. ''We've made it a bit too big," said Saul; "that'll stop the shaking." The corpse, according to American custom, was dressed in its clothes — a suit of light grey home-spun, such as is to be bought everywhere from French-Canadian weavers. When they had lifted the body and put it in the box, they stopped involuntarily to look, before the girl laid a hand- kerchief upon tlie face. There lay a stalwart, grey-haired man — dead. Perhaps he had sinned deeply in his life; perhaps he had lived as nobly as his place and knowledge would permit — they could not tell. Probably they each estimated what they knew of his life from a different standpoint. The face was as ashen as the grey hair about it, as the grey clothes the body wore. They stood and looked at it — those three, wlio were bound to each other by no tie except such as the accident of time and place had wrought. The dog, who understood what death was, exhibited no excitement, no curiosity; his tail drooped; he moaned (piietly against the coffin. Bates made an impatient exclamation and kicked him. The kick was a subdued one. The wind-swept solitude without and the insistent presence of death within had its effect upon them all. Saul looked uneasily over his shoulder at the shadows which tlie guttering candle cast on the wall. Bates handled the coffin-lid with that s^lirinking from noise which is peculiar to such occasions. "Ye'd better go in the other room," said he to Sissy. "It's unfortunate we haven't a screw left — we'll have to nail it." Sissy did not go. They had made holes in the wood for the nails as well as they could, but tliey had to be ham- mered in. It was very disagreeable — the sound and the jar. With each stroke of Saul's l}ammer it seemed to the two Avorkmen that the deaa man jumped. i i 34 IVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [IJOOK I "There, man," cried Bates angrily; "that'll do." Only four nails liad been put in their places — one in each side. With irritation that amounted to anger against Saul, Bates took the hammer from him and shoved it on to a high shelf. "Ye can get screws at the village, ye know," he said, still indignantly, as if some fault had appertained to Saul. Then, endeavouring to calm an ill-temper which he felt to be wholly unreasonable, he crossed his arms and sat down on a chair by the wall. His sitting in that room at all perhaps betokened something of the same sensation which in Saul produced those glances before and behind, indicating that he did not like to turn his back upon any object of awe. In Bates this motive, if it existed, was probably unconscious or short-lived; but while he still sat there Saul spoke, with a short, silly laugh which was by way of preface. "Don't you think, now, Mr. Bates, it 'ud be better to have a prayer, or a hymn, or something of that sort? We'd go to bed easier." To look at the man it would not have been easy to attri- bute any just notion of the claims of religion to him. He looked as if all his motions, except those of physical strength, were vapid and paltry. Still, this was what he said, and Bates replied stiffly : "I've no objections." Then, as if assuming proper position for the ceremony that was to ease his mind, the big lumberman sat down. The girl also sat down. Bates, wiry, intelligent Scot that he was, sat, his arms crossed and his broad jaw firmly set, regarding them both with contempt in his mind. What did they eitl cr of them know about the religion they seemed at this juncture to feel after as vaguely as animals feel after something they want and have not? But as for him, he understood relig- ion ; he was quite capable of being priest of his household, and he felt that its weak demand for a form of worship at OOK I CHAP. IV] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 35 each ;ainst on to said, Saul, e felt id sat om at Lsation eliind, )n any d, was bill sat was by itter to t sort? attri- , He physical hat he remony down. Is arms Im both )f them Iture to ig they relig- [sehold, ship at this time was legitimate. In a minute, therefore, he got up, and fetching a large Bible from the living-room he sat down again and turned over its leaves with great precision and reverence. He read one of the more trenchant of the Psalms, a long psalm that had much in it about enemies and slaughter. It had a very strong meaning for him, for he put himself in the place of the writer. The enemies mentioned were, in the first place, sins — by which he denoted the more open forms of evil; and, in the second place, wicked men who might interfere with him; and under the head of wicked men he classed all whom he knew to be wicked, and most other men, wliom he supposed to be so. He was not a self-righteous man — at least, not more self-righteous than most men, for he read with as great fervour the adju- rations against sins into which he might fall as against those which seemed to him pointed more especially at other sinners who might persecute him for his innocence. He was only a suspicious man made narrower by isolation, and the liighest idea lie had of what God required of him was a life of innocence. There was better in him than this — nuich of impulse and action that was positively good ; but he did not conceive that it was of the workings of good that seemed so natural that God took account. Upon Saul also the psalm had adequate effect, for it sounded to him pious, and that was all he desired. The girl, however, could not listen to a word of it. She fidgeted, not with movement of hands or feet, but with the restlessness of mind and eyes. She gazed at the boards of the ceiling, at the boards of the floor, at the log walls on which each shadow had a scalloped edge because of tlie form of tree-trunks laid one above another. At length her eyes rested on the lid of the coffin, and, with nervous strain, she made them follow the grain of the wood up and down, up and down. There was an irregular knot-hole in the lid, and on his her eyes fixed themselves, and the focus of lier sight seemed to eddy round and round its darkened edge till, with an effort, she turned from it. 36 IVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I The boards used for making tlie coffin liad been by no means perfect. They were merely the best that could be chosen from among the bits of sawn lumber at hand. There was a tiny hole in one side, at the foot, and this larger one in the lid above the dead man's breast, where knots had fallen out with rough handling, leaving oval apertures. The temptation Sissy felt to let her eyes labour painfully over every marking in the wood and round these two holes — playing a sort of sad mechanical game therewith — and her efforts to resist the impulse, made up the only memory she had of the time the reading occupied. There was a printed prayer upon a piece of paper kept inside the lid of the Bible, and when Bates had read the psalm, he read this also. He knelt while he did so, and the others did the same. Then that was finished. "I'll move your bed into the kitchen, Sissy," said Bates. He had made the same offer the night before, and she had accepted it tlien, but now she replied that she would sooner sleep in that room than near the stove. He was in no mood to contest such a point with her. Saul went out to his shed. Bates shut the house door, and went up the ladder to his loft. Both were soon in the sound slumber that is the lot of men who do much outdoor labour. The girl helped the old woman to bed in the kitchen. Then she went back and sat in the chamber of death. Outside, the wind hustled the fallen leaves. CHAPTER V. At dawn Bates came down the ladder again, and went out quietly. The new day was fair, and calm; none of his fears were fulfilled. The dead man might start upon his journey, and Bates knew that the start must be an early one. He and Saul, taking long-handled oars and poles, went down to the water's edge, where a big, flat-bottomed boat CHAP. V] IVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 37 bchen. went )ne of upon Ibe an went boat was lying drawn np on the shore to avoid the autumn storms. The stones of the beach looked black: liere and tliere were bits of bright green moss upon them: both stones and moss had a coating of thin ice that glistened in the morning ligh^-. It was by dint of great exertion that they got the clumsy vessel into the water and fastened her to a small wooden landing. They used more strength than time in their work. There was none of that care and skill required in the handling of the scow that a well-built craft would have needed. When she was afloat and tied, they went up the hill again, and harnessed a yoke of oxen to a rough wooden cart. Neither did this take them long. Bates worked with a nervousness that almost amounted to trembling. He had in his mind the dispute with the girl which he felt sure awaited him. In this fear also he was destined to be disappointed. "When he went to the inner room the coffin lay as he had left it, ready for its journey, and on the girl's bed in the corner the thick quilts were heaped as though the sleeper had tossed restlessly. But now there was no restlessness ; he only saw her night-cap beyond the quilts; it seemed that, having perhaps turned her face to the wall to weep, she had at last fallen into exhausted and dreamless slumber. Bates and Saul carried out the coffin eagerly, quietly. Even to the callous and shallow mind of Saul it was a relief to escape a conicst with an angry woman. They set the coffin on the cart, and steadied it with a barrel of pot- ash and sacks of buckwheat, which went to make up the load. By a winding way, where the slope was easiest, tliey drove the oxen between the trees, using tiie goad more and their voices as little as might be, till they were a dis- tance from the house. Some trees had been felled, and cut off close to the ground, so that a cart might pass through the wood; this was the only sign of an artificial road. The fine powdered snow of the night before had blown away. 38 WHAT NEC ESS /TV K'/VOIVS [JJOOK I Wlien tliey readied the beacli again, the eastern sky, which had been grey, was all dappled with cold pink, and the grey water reflected it somewhat. There was clearer light on the dark green of the pine-covered hills, and the fine ice coating on stone and weed at the water-side had sharper glints of brilliancy. Bates observed the change in light and colour; Saul did not; neitlier was disposed to dally for a moment. They were obliged to give fortli their voices now in hoarse ejacu- lations, to make the patient beasts understand that they were to step off the rough log landing-place into the boat. The boat was almost rectangular in shape, but slightly narrower at the ends than in the middle, and deeper in the middle than at the ends ; it was of rough wood, unpainted. The men disposed the oxen in the middle of the boat; the cart they unloaded, and distrilnited its contents as they best might. With long stout poles they tlien pushed off from the shore. Men and oxen were reflected in the quiet water. They were not bound on a long or perilous voyage. The boat was merely to act as a ferry round a precipitous cliff where the shore was impassable, and across the head of the gashing river that formed the lake's outlet, for the only road through the hills lay along the further shore of this stream. The men kept the boat in shallow water, poling and row- ing by turns. There was a thin coating of ice, like white silk, forming on the water. As they went. Bates often looked anxiously where the log house stood on the slope above him, fearing to see the girl come running frantic to the water's edge, but he did not see her. The door of the house remained shut, and no smoke rose from its chimney. They had left the childish old woman sitting on the edge of her bed ; Bates knew that she would be in need of fire and food, yet he could not wish that the girl should wake yet. "Let her sleep," he muttered to himself. "It will do CHAP. V] WHAT NEC ESS/ TV KiVOll'S 39 licr good." Yet it was not for lier good lie wished her to sleep, but for his own peace. The pink faded from the sky, but the sun did not shine forth brightly. It remained wan and cold, like a moon behind grey vapours. "I'll not get back in a week, or on wheels," said Saul. He spoke mure cheerfully than was pleasing to his em- ployer. " If it snows ye'll have to hire a sleigh and get back the iirst minute you can." The reply was stern. The elder and bigger man made no further comment. However much he might desire to be kept in the gay world by the weather, the stronger will and intellect, for the hour at least, dominated his intention. They rowed their boat past the head of th^ river. In an hour they had reached that part of the shore from which the inland road might be gained. They again loaded the cart. It, like the boat, was of the roughest description; its two wheels were broad and heavy; a long pole was mor- tised into their axle. The coffin and the potash barrel filled the cart's breadth; the sacks of buckwheat steadied the barrel before and behind. The meek red oxen were once more fastened to it on either side of the long pole. The men parted without farewells. Saul turned his back on the water. The large, cold morning rang to his voice — "Gee. Yo-hoi-ist. Yo-hoi- eest. Gee." The oxen, answering to his voice and his goad, laboured onward over the sandy strip that bound the beach, up the hill among the maple trees that grew thickly in the vale of the small river. Bates watched till he saw the cattle, the cart, and Saul's stalwart form only indistinctly through the numerous grey tree-stems that broke the view in something the way that ripples in water break a reflection. When the monotonous shouting of Saul's voice — "Gee, gee, there. Haw, wo, haw. Yo-hoi- eest," was somewhat mellowed by the widening space, Bates stepped into the boat, and, pushing off, laboured alone to propel her back across the lake. 40 WHAT NEC ESS /TV KI^OWS [hook I It took him longor to got back now that ho was singh- handod. The ciirreiit of tlio hike towards its outlet tended to push the great (dunisy scow against the shore. He worked his craft with one oar near the stern, Imt very often he was obliged to drop it and i)usli out from shore with his pole. It was arduous, but all sense of the cold, bleak ; weather was lost, and the interest and excitement of the | task were refreshing. To many men, as to many dogs, f there is an inexplicable and unreasoning pleasure in deal- k ing with water that no operation upon land can yield. Bates was one of these ; he would hardly have chosen his present lot if it had not been so; but, like many a dry character of his stamp, he did not give his more agreeable |: sensations the name of pleasure, and therefore could afford I; to look upon pleasure as an element unnecessary to a sober life. Mid pushings and splashings, from the management of his scow, from air and sky, hill and water, he was in reality, deriving as great pleasure as any millionaire might from the sailing of a choice yacht; but he was aware only that, as he neared the end of his double journey, he felt in better trim in mind and body to face his lugubrious and rebellious ward. When, however, he had toiled round the black rock cliff which hid the clearing from the river's head, and was again in full sight of his own house, all remembrance of the girl and his dread of meeting her passed from him in his excessive surprise at seeing several men near his dwell- ing. His dog was barking and leaping in great excite- ment. He heard the voices of other dogs. It took but the first glance to show him that the men were not Indians. Full of excited astonishment he pushed his boat to the shore. His dog, having darted with noisy scatter of dry leaves down the hill to meet him, stood on the shore expectant with mouth open, excitement in his eyes and tail, saying as clearly as aught can be said without words — " This is li- very agreeable event in our lives. Visitors have come.'' CHAP. V] IVHAT NECESSITY AWOIVS 41 rock [l was ce of m in Avell- cite- t the iaiis. the is ^ ime.'"' The moniont liates ]nit his foot on land the dog bonnded barking up the liill, then turned again to Uates, then again Ixmnded oft' toward the visitors. Even a watchdog may be ghid to see strangers if the ph'asure is only rare enough. r>ates mounted the slope as a man may mount stairs — two steps at a time. Had he seen the strangers, as the saying is, dropping from thc^ clouds, he could hardly have been more surprised than he was to see civilised people liad reached his place otherwise than by the lake, for the rugged hills afforded nothing but a much longer and more arduous way to any settlement within reach. When he got up, however, he saw that these men carried with them implements of camp-life and also surveying instru- ments, by which he judged, and rightly, that his guests were ranging the lonely hills upon some tour of official survey. That the travellers ivere his guests neither he nor they had the slightest doubt. They had set down their traps close to his door, and, in the calm conhdence that it would soon be hospitably opened by rightful hands, they had made no attempt to open it for themselves. There were eight men in the party, two of whom, apparently its more important members, sauntered to meet Bates, with pipes in their mouths. These told him what district they were surveying, by what track they had just come over the hill, where they had camped the past night, where tliey wanted to get to by nightfall. They remarked on the situation of his house and the extent of his land. They said to him, in fact, more than was immediately necessary, but not more than was pleasant for him to hear or for them to tell. It is a very taciturn man who, meeting a stranger in a wilder- ness, does not treat him with more or less of friendly loquacity. Under the right circumstances Bates was a genial man. He liked the look of these men; he liked the tone of their talk; and had he liked them mucli less, the rarity of the occasion and the fact that he was their host would have in /AT A'KCliSS/TV KNOWS [hook r i 1 ex[)an(lc(l his si)irits. Ho asked astute questions about the region tliey liad traversed, and, as they talked, he motioned tlieni towards the liouse. J[e had it distinc^tly in his mind that lie was glad they had come across his place, and that ho would give them a hot ))reakfast; but he did not say so in words — just as they had not troidded to begin tlieir conversation with him by formal greetings. Th(! house door was still shut; there was still no smoke from the chimney, although it was now full three hours since ]*)ates had left the place. Saying that he Avcmld see if the women were up, he W(!nt alone into the house. The living-room was deserted, and, passing through tlie inniT door, which was open, he saw his aunt, who, according to custom was neatly dressed, sitting on the foot of Sissy's empty bed. The old wt)man was evidently cold, and frightened at the unusual sounds outside; greatly fretted, she held the girl's night-cap in her hand, and the monu'ut he appeared demanded of him where Sissy was, for she must have her breakfast. The girl he did not see. The dog had followed him. lie looked up and wagged his tail; he made no sign of feeling concern that the girl was not there. Bates could have cursed his dumbness; he would fain have asked where she had gone. The dog probably knew, but as for Bates, he not only did not know, but no conjecture rose in his mind as to her probable whereabouts. He took his aunt to her big chair, piled the stove from the well-stored wood-box, and lit it. Tlien, shutting the door cf the room where the disordered bed lay and throw- ing the house-door open, he bid the visitors enter. He went out himself to search the surroundings of the house, but Sissy was not to be found. The dog did not follow Bates on this search. He sat down before the stove in an upright position, breathed with his mouth open, and bestowed on the visitors such cheerful and animated looks that they talked to and patted him. Their own dogs had been shut into the empty ox-shed for CIIAl'. V] WI/AT NKCJiSS/TV KNOWS 43 tlu! sako of peace, and the liouse-dog was very much master of the situation. Of the party, the two surveyors — one older and one young(U' — were men of refinement and education. Jiritisli they were, or of such Canadian birth and trainin*^ as makes a Ljood imitation. Five of tlie others wei-e evidently of liuiabh'r })osition — axe-men and carriers. The eij,dith man, who (somphited the party, was a young American, a singu- hirly liandsome young fellow — tall and lithe. He did not stay in the room with the others, but lounged outsider by himself, leaning against the front of the house in the white cold sunlight. In the meantime IJates, having searched the sheds and ins})e('ted with careful eyes the naked woods above the clearing, came back disconsolately by the edge of the ravine, peering into it suspiciously to see if the girl could, by some wild freak, be hiding there. When he came to the narrow strip of ground between the wall of the house and the broken bank he found himself walking knee-deep in the leaves that the last night's gale had drifted there, an.' because the edge of the ravine was thus entirely con- cealed, he, remembering Sissy's warning, kicked about the leaves cautiously to find the crack of which she had spoken, and discovered that the loose portion had already fallen. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder if the girl could possibly have fallen with it. Instantly he sprang down the ravine, feeling among the drifted leaves on all sides, but nothing exce^^t rock and earth was to be found under their light heaps. It took only a few minutes to assure him of the needlessness of his fear. The low Avindow of the room in which Sissy had slept looked out immediately upon this drift of leaves, and, as Bates passed it, he glanced through the uncurtained glass, as if the fact that it was really empty was so hard for him to believe that it needed this additional evidence. Then the stacks of fire-wood in front of the house were all that remained to be searched, and Bates walked round, looking into the 44 iVtMT NECi:SS/TV KA^OlVS [iJOOK I narrow aislos bctwcon iliciii, lookin!:^ ;it tli(' same timo down tlu! hill, iis if it miglit hv ])()ssiblu that she had been on thu shoro and ho V.ad missed her. ""'/Vhat are y(m looking for?" asked tiic young Ameri- can. The question was not \n\.t rudely. There wjis a serenity about the youth's exi)eetation of an answer whieh, l)roving that Ik; had no thought of over-stepping good manners, made it, at the same time, very difficult to with- hold an answer. ]*>ates turned annoyed. lie had supposed everybody was within. "What have you lost?" repeated the youth. "Oh " said liates, prolonging the sound indefinitely. He was not deceitful or quick at invention, and it seemed to him a manifest absurdity to reply — "a girl." He ap- proached the house, words hesitating on his lips. "My late partner's daughter," he observed, keeping wide of the mark, "usually does the cooking." " Married? " asked the young man rapidly. "She? — No," said Bates, taken by surprise. *' Young lady? " asked the other, with more interest. Bates was not accustomed to consider his ward under his head. "She is just a young girl about seventeen," he replied stiffly. "Oh, halibaloo! " cried the youth joyously. "Why, stranger, I haven't set eyes on a young lady these two months. I'd give a five dollar-bill this minute, if I had it, to set eyes on her right here and now." He took his pipe from his lips and clapped his hand upon his side with animation as he spoke. Bates regarded him with dull disfavour. He would him- self have given more than the sum mentioned to have com- passed the same end, but for different reasons, and his own reasons were so grave that the youth's frivolity seemed to him dv)ubly frivolous. "I hope," he said coldly, "that she will come in soon." His eyes wandered involuntarily up the hill as he spoke. A. CUM'. V] U'l/AT NECESS/TV AWOH'S 45 "Goiio out Wiilkiii^, hiis slic?" Tlit! youtli's eyes fol- lowed ill tlu^ samo (lirrctioii. " Which way has slu? gone?" "I don't know exactly wliieli path sho may have taken." l»ates's words grew more formal the harder ho felt himsidf pressed. '4\'ith! " Imrst out the young man — ^'Macadamised road, don't you nu'an? Tiiere's about as nuudi of one as tlie other on tliis here hill." "I meant," said Bates, "that I didn't know where sho was. )j His trouble esoai)ed somewhat with his voieo as ho said this Avith irritation. The youth looked at him euri(msly, and with some ineipi- cnt sympathy. After a minute's reflection he asked, touch- ing his forehead: "She ain't weak here, is she — like the old lady?" "Nothing of the sort," exclaimed l^ates, indignantly. The bare idea cost him a pang. Until this moment he had been angry with the girl; he was still angry, but a slight modification took place. He felt with her against all possible imputations. "All right in the headpiece, is she?" reiterated the other more lightly. "Very intelligent," replied Bates. "I have taught her myself. She is remarkably intelligent." The young man's sensitive spirits, which had suffered slight depression from contact with Bates's perturbation, now recovered entirely. "Oh, Glorianna!" he cried in irrepressible anticipation. " Let this very intelligent young lady come on ! Why " — in an explanatory way — " if I saw as much as a female dress hanging on a clothes-line out to dry, I'm in that state of mind I'd adore it properly." If Bates had been sure that the girl would return safely he would perhaps have been as well pleased that she should not return in time to meet the proposed adoration ; as it was, he was far too ill at ease concerning her not to desire her advent as ardently as did the naive youth. The 46 WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOWS [book I first feeling made his manner severe; the second con- strained him to say he supposed she woukl shortly appear. His mind was a good deal confounded, but if he supposed anything it was that, having wakened to find herself left behind by the boat, she had walked away from the house in an access of anger and disaj)pointment, and he expected her to return soon, because he did not think she had cour- age or resolution to go very far alone. Underneath this was the uneasy fear that her courage and resolution might take her fartlier into danger than was at all desirable, but he stifled the fear. When he went in he told the company, in a few matter- of-fact words, of liis partner's death, and the object of the excursion from which they had seen him return. He also mentioned tliat his aunt's companion, tlie dead man's child, had, it appeared, gone off into the woods that morning — this was by way of apology that she was not there to cook for them, but he took occasion to ask if tliey had seen her on the hill. As they had come down the least difficult way and had not met her, he concluded that she had not endeavoured to go far afield, and tried to dismiss his anxi- ety and enjoy his guests in his own way. Hospitality, even in its simplest form, is more often a matter of amiable pride than of sincere unselfishness, but it is not a form of pride with which people are apt to quar- rel. Bates, when he found liimself conversing with scien- tific men of gentle manners, was resolved to sliow himself above the ordinary farmer of that locality. He went to the barrel where the summer's eggs had been packed in soft sand, and took out one apiece for the assembled company. He packed the oven with large potatoes. He put on an excellent supply of tea to boil. The travellers, who, in fact, had had their ordinary breakfast some hours before, made but feeble remonstrances against these preparations, remonstrances which only caused Bates to make more ample provision. He brought out a large paper bag labelled, "patent self-raising pancake meal," and a small CHAP. V] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 47 piece of fat pork. Here he was obliged to stoj) and confess liimself in need of culinary skill; he looked at the men, not doubting that he could obtain it from them. "The riiiladelphian can do it better," said one. This was corroborated by the others. "Call Ilarkness," they cried, and at the same time they called Harkness them- selves. The young American opened the door and came in in a very leisurely, not to say langu d, manner. He took in the situation at a glance without asking a question. "But," said he, "are we not to wait for the intelligent young lady? Female intelligence can nuike the finer pancake." The surveyors manifested some curiosity. "What do you know about a young lady? " they asked. "The young lady of the house," replied Harkness. "Hasn't /ie" — referring to Bates — "told you all about her? The domestic divinity who has just happened to get mislaid this morning. I saw him looking over the wood pile to see if she had fallen behind it, but she hadn't." "It is only a few days since her father died," said the senior of the party gravely. "And so," went on the young man, "she has very prop- erly given these few days to inconsolable grief. But now our visit is just timed to comfort and enliven her, voliy is she not here to be comforted and enlivened? " No one answered, and, as the speaker was slowly mak- ing his way toward the frying-pan, no one seemed really ai)i)rehensive that he would keep them waiting. The youth had an oval, almost childish face ; his skin was dark, clear, and softly coloured as any girl's; his hair fell in black, loose curls over his forehead. He was tall, slender with- out being thin, very supple; but his languid attitudes fell short of grace, and were only tolerable because they were coniic. When he reached out his hand for the handle of the frying-pan he held the attention of the whole company by virtue of his office, and his mind, to Bates's annoy- ance, was still running on the girl. 48 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I "Is slie fond of going out walking alone? " he asked. "How could slie be fond of walking when there's no place to walk?'' Bates spoke roughly. "Besides, she has too much work to do.'' " Ever lort her before? " "No," said Bates. It would have been perfectly un- bearable to \rr^ pride that these ^itrangers should guess his real uneasiness or its cause, so he talked as if the fact of the girl's long absence was not in any way remarkable. Having mixed a batter the American sliced pork fat into the hot pan and was instantly obscured from view by the smoke thereof. In a minute his face appeared above it like the face of a genius. "You will observe, gentlemen," he cried without bash- fulness, "that I now perform the eminently interesting operation of dropping cakes — one, two, three. May the intelligent young lady return to eat them ! " No one laughed, but his companions smiled patiently at his antics — a patience born of sitting in a very hot, steamy room after weeks in the open air. "You are a cook," remarked Bates. The youth bent his long body towards him at a sudden angle. " Born a cook — dentist by profession — by choice a vagabond." "Dentist? " said Bates curiously. "At your service, sir." "He is really a dentist," said one of the surveyors with sleepy amusement. " He carries his forceps round in his vest pocket." " I lost them when I scrambled head first down this gen- tleman's macadamised road this morning, but if you want a tooth out I can use the tongs." "My teeth are all sound," said Bates. "Thank the Lord for that!" the young man answered ■with an emphatic piety which, for all that appeared, might have been perfectly sincere. "And the young lady? " he asked after a minute. CHAP. V] WHAT NECESSny KNOWS 49 Inta L-ed iglit " What? " "The young Lidy's teeth — the teeth of the intelligent young lady — the intelligent teeth of the young lady — are they sound? " "Yes." He sighed deeply. "And to think," he mourned, "that he should have casually lost \\qv jast this morning! " He spoke exactly as if the girl vvere a penknife or a marble that had rolled from Bates's pocket, and the latter, irritated by an inward fear, grew to hate the jester. When the meal, which consisted of fried eggs, pancakes, and potatoes, was eaten, the surveyors spent an hour or two about the clearing, examining the nature of the soil and rock. They had something to say to Bates concerning the value of his land which interested him exceedingly. Considering how rare it was for him to see any one, and how fitted he was to appreciate intercourse with men who were manifestly in a higlier rank of life than he, it would not have been surprising if he had forgotten Sissy for a time, even if they had had nothing to relate of personal interest to himself. As it was, even in the excitemct of hearing what was of im})ortance concerning his own prop- erty, he did not wliolly forget her; but wdiile his visitors remained his anxiety was in abeyance. When they were packing their instruments to depart, the young American, who had not been with them during the morning, came and took Bates aside in a friendly way. "See here," he said, "were you gassing about that young lady? There ain't no young lady now, is there? " " I told you " — with some superiority of manner — " she is not a young lady ; she is a working girl, an emigrant's " " Oh, Glorianna! " he broke out, " girl or lady, what does it matter to me? Do you mean to say you've really lost her? " Tlie question was appalling to Bates. All the morning he had not dared to face such a possibility and now to have the question hurled at him with such imperative force by another was like a terrible blow. But when a blow is thus 50 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I I 1 dealt from, the outside, a man like Bates rallies all the opposition of his nature to repel it. " Not at all " — his manner was as stiif as ever — " she is lurking somewhere near." "Look here — I've been up the hill that way, and that way, and that way " — he indicated the directions with his hand — "and I've been down round the shore as far as I could get, and I've had our two dogs with me, who'd either of them have mentioned it if there'd been a stranger anywheres near; and she ain't here. An' if she's climbed over the hill, she's a spunky one — somewhat spunkier than /should think natural." He looked at Bates very suspi- ciously as he spoke. "Well?" " Well, my belief is that there ain't no young lady, and that you're gassing me." "Very well," said Bates, and he turned away. It was offensive to him to be accused of telling lies — he was not a man to give any other name than " lie " to the trick attri- buted to him, or to perceive any humour in the idea of it — but it was a thousand times more offensive that this youth should have presumed to search for Sissy and to tell him that the search had been vain. Horrible as the information just given was, he did not more than half believe it, and something just said gave him a definite idea of hope — the strange dogs had not found Sissy, but the house-dog, if encouraged to seek, would certainly find her. He had felt a sort of grudge against the animal all day, because he must know which way she had gone and could not tell. Now he resolved as soon as the strangers were gone to set the dog to seek her. Upon this he stayed his mind. The surveyors hoped to get a few days' more work done before the winter put an end to their march; they deter- mined when thus stopped to turn down the river valley and take the train for Quebec. The way they now wished to take lay, not in the direction in which the ox-cart had CHAP. V] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS SI ■'d and id not le liim [found ^vould jainst ly slie Ion as |Upon done leter- ralley rislied it bad gone, but over tbe bills directly across tlie lake. Tlie scow belonging to tliis clearing, on wliicli tbey had counted, was called into requisition. The day was still calm ; Bates had no objection to take them across. At any other time he would have had some one to leave in charge of the place, but, especially as he Avould be in sight of the house all the time, he made no difficulty of leaving as it was. He could produce four oars, such as they were, and the way across was traversed rapidly. " And there ain't really a female belonging to the place, except the old lady," said the dentist, addressing the as- sembled party upon the scow. " It Avas all a tale, and — lay eye ; — he took me in completely." Probably he did not give entire credence to his own words, and washed to provoke the others to question Bates further ; but they were not now in the same idle mood that had enthralled them when, in the morning, they had listened to him indulgently. Their loins were girded ; they were intent upon what they were doing and what they were going to do. No one but Bates paid heed to him. Bates heard him clearly enough, but, so stubbornly had he set himself to rebuff this young man, and so closely was he wrapped in that pride of reserve that makes a merit of obstinate self-reliance, that it never even occurred to him to answer or to accept this last offer of a fellow-man's interest in the search he was just about to undertake. He had some hope that, if Sissy were skulking round, she wou "" find it easier to go back to the house when he was absent, and that he should find her as usual on his return ; but, as he wrought at his oar in returning across the leaden water, looking up occasionally to make the log house his aim, and staring for the most part at the lone hills, under the pine woods of which his late companions had dis- appeared, his heart gradually grew more heavy; all the more because the cheerfulness of their society had buoyed up his spirit in their presence, did it now suffer depression. 52 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [hook I I The awful presentiment began to haunt him that lie would not find the girl that night, that he had in grim reality "lost her." If this were the case, what a fool, what a madman, he had been to let go the only aid within his reach ! He stopped his rowing for a minute, and almost thought of turning to call the surveying party back again. But no, Sissy might be — in all probability was — already in the house ; in th;it case what folly to have brought them back, delaying their work and incurring their anger ! So he reasoned, and went on towards home ; but, in truth, it was not their delay or displeasure that deterred him so much as his own pride, which loathed the thought of laying bare his cause for fear and distress. i ^ CHAPTEll VI. The day was duller now. The sun, in passing into the western sky, had entered under thicker veils of vdiite. The film of ice on tlie bay, which had melted in the pale sun- beams of noon, would soon form again. The air was grow- ing bitterly cold. When Bates had moored his boat, he went up the hill heavily. The dog, which had been shut in the house to guard it, leaped out when he opened the door. Sissy was not there. Bates went in and found one of her frocks, and, bringing it out, tried to put the animal on the scent of her track. He stooped, and held the garment under the dog's nose. The dog sniffed it, laid his nose contentedly on Bates's arm, looked up in his face, and wagged his tail with most annoy- ing cheerfulness. " Where is she ? " jerked Bates. " Where is she ? Seek her, good dog." The dog, all alert, bounded off a little way and returned again with an inconsequent lightness in tail and eye. One of his ears had been torn in a battle with the strange dogs, )0K I ould ' lost man, He ht of it no, 1 the back, 5o he t was Lich as ire his CHAP, vi] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 53 ito the !. The [le sun- 5 grow- le hill 3use to ^sy was ringing track, nose. ^'s arm, annoy- Seek ^turned One \q dogs, but he was more elated by the conflict tlian depressed by the wound. When he came back, he seemed to Bates al- most to smile as if he said : ''It pleases me that you should pay me so much attention, but as for the girl, I know her to be satisfactorily disposed of." Bates did not swear at the animal; he was a Scotchman, and he would have con- sidered it a sin to swear : he did not strike the dog eitlier, which he would not have considered a sin at all. He was actually afraid to offend the only living creature who could befriend and help him in his search. Very patiently he bent the dog's nose to the frock and to the ground, begging and commanding him to seek. At length the dog trotted off by a circuitous route up the clearing, and Bates followed. He hoped the dog was really seeking, but feared he was merely following some fancy that by thus running he would be rid of his master's solicitude. Bates felt it an odd thing that he should be wandering about with a girl's frock in his hands. It was old, but he did not remember that he had ever touched it before or noticed its material or pattern. He looked at it fondly now, as he held it ready to renew the dog's memory if his purpose should falter. The dog went on steadily enough until he got to the edge of the woods, where his footsteps made a great noise on tlie brittle leaves. He kicked about in them as if he liked the noise they made, but offered to go no farther. Bates looked at them and knew that the dog was not likely to keep the scent among them if the girl had gone that way. He stood erect, looking up the drear expanse of the hill, and the des- perate nature of his situation came upon him. He had been slow — slow to take it in, repelling it with all the obstinacy of an obstinate mind. iSTow he saw clearly that the girl had fled, and he was powerless to pursue at the distance she might now have reached, the more so as he could not tell which way she had taken. He would have left his live stock, but the helpless old woman, whose life depended on his care, he dared not leave. He stood and considered, his 54 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [hook I mind workinj^ rapidly under a stress of emotion such as perhaps it had never known before — certainly not since the first strong impulses of his youth had died within his cautious heart. Then he remembered that Sissy had walked about the previous day, and perhaps the dog was only on the scent of yesterday's meanderings. He took the animal along the top of the open space, urging him to find another track, and at last the dog ran down again by the side of the stream. Bates followed to the vicinity of the house, no wiser than he had been at first. The dog stopped under the end window of the house where old Cameron fell, and scratched among the leaves on the fresh fallen earth. Bates was reminded of the associa- tions of the fatal spot. He thought of his old friend's death- bed, of the trust that had there been confided to him. Had he been unfaithful to that trust ? With the impatience of sharp pain, he called the dog again to the door of the house, and again from that starting-point tried to make him seek the missing one. He did this, not because he had much hope in the dog now, but because he had no other hope. This time the dog stood by, sobered by his master's sober- ness, but looking with teasing expectancy, ready to do what- ever w^as required if he might only know what that was. To Bates, who was only anxious to act at the dumb thing's direction, this expectancy was galling. He tore off a part of the dress and fastened it to the dog's collar. He com- manded him to carry it to her in such excited tones that the old woman heard, and fumbled her way out of the door to see what was going on. And Bates stood between the dumb animal and the aged wreck of womanhood, and felt horribly alone. Clearly the sagacious creature not only did not know where to find the girl, but knew that she was gone where he could not find her, for he made no effort to carry his burden a step. Bates took it from him at last, and the dog, whose feelings had apparently been much perturbed, went down CHAP. VIl] WHAT NECESSITY KATOIVS 55 to tlie water's edge, and, standing looking over the lake, barked tliere till darkness fell. The night came, bnt the girl did not come. Bates made a great torch of pine boughs and resin, and this he lit and hoisted on a pole fixed in the ground, so that if she was seeking to return to her home in the darkness she might be guided by it. He hoped also that, by some chance, the sur- veying party might see it and know that it was a signal of distress ; but he looked for their camp-tire on the opposite hills, and, not seeing it, felt only too sure that they had gone out of sight of his. He fed and watched his torch all night. Snow began to fall ; as he looked up it seemed that the flame made a globe of light in the thick atmosphere, around which closed a low vault of visible darkness. From out of this darkness the flakes were falling thickly. When the day broke he was still alone. CHAPTER VII. part com- itthe lor to Idumb rribly Iknow ^here irden ^hose Idown WiiEX Saul and the oxen were once fairly started, they l)lodded on steadily. The track lay some way from the river and above it, through the gap in the hills. Little of the hills did Saul see, for he was moving under trees all the way, and when, before noon, he descended into the plain on the other side, he was still for a short time under a can- opy of interlacing boughs. There was no road ; the trees were notched to show the track. In such forests there is little obstruction of brushwood, and over knoll and hollow, between the trunks, the oxen laboured on. Saul sat on the front ledge of the cart to balance it the better. The coffin, wedged in with the potash barrel, lay pretty still as long as they kept on the soft soil of the forest, but when, about one o'clock, the team emerged upon a corduroy road, made of logs lying side by side across the path, the jolting often jerked the barrel out of place, and then Saul would go to 56 WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOWS [hook I i the back of the cart and jerk it and the coffin into position again. The forest was behind them now. This h)g road was constructed across a large tract which sometime since had been cleared by a forest fir(^, but was now covered again by tliick brush standing eight or ten feet liigh. One could see little on either side the road except the brown and grey twigs of the siqdings that grew by tlie million, packed close together. The wiiy had been cut among them, yet they were fondng their sharp slioots up again between the seams of tlie corduroy, and where, here and there, a log had rotted they came up thickly. The ground was low, and would have been wet about the bushes had it not been frozen. Above, the sky was white. Saul could see nothing but his straight road before and behind, the impenetrable thicket and the white sky. It was a lonely thing thus to journey. While he had been under the forest, with an occasional squirrel or chi})munk to arrest his gaze, and with all things as familiar to sight as tlie environments of the house in which he was accustomed to live, Saul had felt the vigour of the morning, and eaten his cold fat bacon, sitting on the cart, without discontent. But now it was afternoon — which, we all know, brings a somewhat more depressing air — and the budless thickets stood so close, so still, Saul became conscious that his load was a corpse. He had hoi)ed, in a dull way, to fall in with a companion on this made road ; the chances were against it, and the chances prevailed. Saul ate more bread and bacon. He had to walk now, and often to give the cart a push, so that the way was laborious ; but, curiously enough, it was not the labour he objected to, but tlie sound of his own voice. All the way the silent thicket was listening to his "Gee-e, gee; haw then"; — "yo-hoi-eest" ; yet, as he and his oxen pro- gressed further into the quiet afternoon, he gradually grew more and more timid at the shouts he must raise. It seemed to him that the dead man was listening, or that unknown shapes or essences might be disturbed by his CHAP. VIl] WHAT NECESSITY KNOIVS 57 air aul lad his ces to ;lie :lie .11 se; iro- It liat lis voice ami rush out from the thicket upon him. Sucli fears he had — wordless fears, su(!h as men never repeat and soon forget. Hough, dull, liardy woodman as he was, he felt now as a child feels in the dark, afraid of he knew not what. The way was very weary. He trudged on beside the cart. Something went wrong with one of his boots, and he stopped the oxen in order to take it off. The animals, thus checked, stood absolutely still, hanging down their heads in an attitude of rest. The man went behind the cart and sat on its edge. He leaned on the end of the cotlin as he examined the boot. "When that was put right he could not deny himself the luxury of a few minutes' rest. The oxen, with hanging heads, looked as if they had gone to sleep. The man hung his head also, and might have been dozing from his appearance. He was i ?t asleep, however. What mental machinery he had began to work more freely, r.nd he actually did something that might be called thinking on the one subject that had lain as a dormant matter of curi- osity in his head all day — namely, how the girl would act when she woke to find the cart was actually gone and she left behind. He had seen old Cameron die, and heard Bates promise to do his best for his daughter ; he remem- bered her tears and pleading on the preceding day; the situation came to him now, as perceptions come to dull minds, with force that had gathered v/itli the lapse of time. He had not the refinement and acuteness of m" d neces- sary to make him understand the disinterested element in Bates's tyranny, and while he sympathised cunningly with the selfishness of which, in his mind, he accused Bates, it seemed to him that the promise to the dead was broken, and he thought upon such calamities as might befall in token of the dead man's revenge. How awfully silent it was ! There was no breath in the chill, still air ; there was no sound of life in all the dark, close brushwood; the oxen slept; and Saul, appalled by the silence that had come with his silence, appalled to real- 58 WHAT NEC ESS /TV K'NOIVS [hook I Si a iso moro vividly tlian over tliat lio, and lie alone, had been the insti^'ator of -oicu in all that n^gion, was cowed into thinking tliat, if the dc^ad could rise from the j^rave for pur^joses of revengt^, how luucii more easily could lu; rise now from so (a'ude a cofiin as he himself had helpetl to construct for him ! It was in this absolute silence that he heard a sound. lie heard tiie dead man turn in his coffin ! Jle heard, and did not doubt his hearing; it was not a thing that he could easily be deceived about as he sat with his ell)ow on the coffin. He sat there not one instant longer ; the next moment he was twenty fc^et away, standing half-hidden in the edge of the brushwood, staring at the cart and the coffin, r(!ady to plunge into the icy swamp and hide farther among the young trees if occasion required. Occasion did not re([uire. The oxen dozed on ; the cart, the barrel, and the coffin stood just as he had left them. Perhaps for five minutes the frightimed man was still. Gradually his muscles relaxed, and he ceased to stand with limbs and features all drawn in horror away from the coffin. He next pulled back his foot from the icy marsh ; but even then, having regained his e(piilibrium on the road, he had not decided what to do, and it took him some time longer to turn over the situation in his mind. He had heard the dead man move ; he was terribly frightened ; still, it might have been a mistake, and, any way, the most disagreeable course, clearly, was to remain there till night- fall. He had run backward in his first alarm ; so, to get to the nearest habitation, it would be necessary to pass the cart on the road, even if he left it there. Had any further manifestation of vitality appeared on the part of the corpse he would have felt justified in running back into the forest, but this was an extreme measure. He did not wish to go near the cart, but to turn his back upon it seemed almost as fearsome. He stood facing it, as a man faces a fierce dog, knowing that if he turns and runs the dog \\\\\ pursue. He supposed that as long as he stared at the coffin and saw 3j ? CHAI'. VIl] WHAT N/CCKSS/TV kWOli'S 59 pse ist, go lost Irce lue. law nothing ho c^oiild he sure that the deeeascd remained inside, hut tliat if he gave the ghost opportunity to get out on the sly it iniglit afterwards eonie at liini from any jjoint of tlie compass, lie was an ignorant man, with a vulgar mind; he liad somo reverence for a corpse, but none whatever for a ghost. His mind had undergone a change concerning the dead the moment he had heard him nujve, and lie looked upon his charge now as e(iually desi)icable and gruesonu?. After some further delay he discovered that the course least disagreeable would be to drive the oxen with his voi(!e and walk as far behind the cart as he now was, keeping the pine box with four nails on its lid well in view. Accord- ingly, making a great effort to encourage himself to break the silen(!e, he raised his shout in the accustomed command to the oxen, and after it had been repeated once or twice, they strained at the cart and set themselves to the road again. They did not go as fast ns when the goad was within reach of their flanks; or rather, they went more slowly than then, for '' fast " was not a word that could have been ap})lied to their progress before. Yet they went on the whole steadily, and the " Gee " and " Haw " of the gruff voice behind guided them straight as surely as bit and rein. At length it could be seen in the distance that the road turned, and round this turning another human hgure came in sight. Perhaps in all his life Saul never experienced greater pleasure in meeting another man than he did now, yet his exterior remained gruff and unperturbed. The only notice that he appeared to take of his fellow-man was to adjust his pace so that, as the other came nearer the cart in front, Saul caught up with it in the rear. At last they met close behind it, and then, as nature prompted, they both stopped. The last comer upon the desolate scene was a largo, hulk- ing boy. He had been j)lodding heavily with a sack upon his back. As he stopped, he set this upon the ground and wiped his brow. 6o H^NAT ATECESS/ry KNOWS [hook I I The boy was French ; but Saul, as a native of the prov- ince, talked French about as well as he did English — that is to say, very ba;lly. He could not have written a word of either. The conversation went on in the patois of the district. " What is in the box ? " asked the boy, observing that the carter's eyes rested uneasily upon it. "Old Cameron died at our place the day before yester- day," answered Saul, not with desire to evade, but because it did not seem necessary to answer more directly. "What of?" The boy looked at the box with more interest now. " He died of a fall "—briefly. The questioner looked at the pinewood box now with con- siderable solicitude. " ])id his feet swell ? " he asked. As Saul did not immediately assent, he added — "When the old M. Didier died, his feet swelled." " What do you think of the coffin ? " Saul said this eyeing it as if he were critically considering it as a piece of workmanship. " M. Didier made a much better one for his little child," replied the boy. " If he did, neither Mr. Bates nor me is handy at this sort of work. We haven't been used to it. It's a rough thing. Touch it. You will see it's badly made." He gained his object. The boy fingered the coffin, and although he did not praise the handiwork, it seemed to Saul that some horrid spell was broken when human hands had again touched the box and no evil had resulted. " Why didn't you bury him at home ? " asked the boy. "He was English." "Mr. Bates has strict ideas, though he is English. He wanted it done proper, in a graveyard, by a minister. He has wrote to the minister at St. Hennon's and sent money for the burying — Mr. Bates, he is always particular." "You are not going to St. Hennon's?" ,said the boy incredulously. CHAP. VIIl] WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOWS 6i "I'll stay to-night at Tiin-ifs, and go on in the morning. It's four (lays' Wc'ilk for me and the cattle to go and come, but I shall take back a man to cut the trees." " Why not send him by the new railroad ? " "It does not stop at Turrifs." " Yes ; they stop at the cross-roads now, not more than three miles from Turrifs. There's a new station, and an Englishman set to keep it. I've just brought this sack of flour from there. M. Didier had it come by the cars." " When do they pass to St. Hennon's ? " asked Saul medi- tatively, — " But anyway, the Englishman wouldn't like to take in a coffin." "They pass some time in the night; and he must take it in if you write on it where it's going. It's not his busi- ness to say what the cars will take, if you pay." "Well," .-aid Saul. "Good-day. Yo-hoist! Yo, yo, ho-hoist ! " It did not seem to him necessary to state whether he was, or was not, going to take the advice offered. The straining and creaking of the cart, his shouts to the oxen, would have obliterated any further query the boy might have made. He had fairly moved off when the boy also took up his burden and trudged on the other way. Le CHArTER VIII. WiiEN" the blueberry bushes are dry, all the life in them sucked into their roots against another summer, the tops turn a rich, brownish red ; at this time, also, wild bramble thickets have many a crimson stalk that gives colour to their mass, and Uie twigs that rise above the white trunks of birch trees are not grey, but brown. Round the new railway station at the cross-roads near Turrifs Settlement, the low-lying land, for miles and miles, was covered v/ith blueberry bushes ; bramble thickets were I 62 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I ni I ; here and there ; and where the land rose a little, in irregu- lar places, young birch woods stood. If the snow had sprinkled here, as it had upon the hills the night before, there was no sign of it now. The warm colour of the land seemed to glow against the dulness of the afternoon, not with the sparkle and brightness which colour has in sun- shine, but with the glow of a sleeping ember among its ashes. Kound the west there was metallic blue colouring upon the cloud vault. This colouring was not like a light upon the cloud, it was like a shadow upon it ; yet it was not grey, but blue. Where the long straight road from Turrifs and the long straight road from the hills crossed each other, and were crossed by the unprotected railway track with its endless rows of tree-trunks serving as telegraph poles, the new station stood. It was merely a small barn, newly built of pinewood, divided into two rooms — one serving as a store-room for goods, the other as waiting-room, ticket office, and living- room of the station-master. The station-master, who was, in fact, master, clerk, and porter in one, was as new to his surroundings as the little fresh-smelling pinewood house. He Avas a young Englishman, and at the first glance it could be seen he had not long been living in his present place. He had, indeed, not yet given up shaving himself, and his clothes, although rough, warm, and suited to his occupation, still suggested, not homespun, but an outfit bought of a tailor. It was about four o'clock on that November afternoon when the new official of the new station looked out at the dark red land and the bright-tinted cloud. It was intensely cold. The ruts of the roads, which were not made of logs here, were frozen stiff. The young man stood a minute at his door with his hands in his pockets, sniffed the frost, and turned in with an air of distaste. A letter that had been brought him by the morning train lay on his table, addressed to "Alec Trenholme, Esq." It had seen vicissitudes, and been to several addresses in different cities, before it had CHAP. VIIl] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 63 been finally readdressed to this new station. Perhaps its owner had not found the path to fortui 3 which he sought in the New World as easily accessible as he had expected. AVhether he had now found it or not, he set himself to that which he had found in manly fashion. Coming in from the cold without, and shutting himself in, as he supposed, for the evening, he wisely determined to alleviate the peculiar feeling of cold and desolation which the weather was fitted to induce by having an early tea. He set his pan upon a somewhat rusty stove and put gen- erous slices of ham therein to fry. He made tea, and then set forth his store of bread, his plates and cup, upon the table, with some apparent effort to make the meal look attractive. The frying ham soon smelt delicious, and while it was growing brown. Alec Trenholme read his letter for the fifth time that day. It was not a letter that he liked, but, since the morning train, only two human beings had passed by the station, and the young station-master would have read and re-read a more disagreeable epistle than the one which had fallen to his lot. It was dated from" a place called Chellaston, and was from his brother. It was couched in terms of affec-tion, and contained a long, closely reasoned argument, with the tenor of which it would ?'5em the reader did not agree, for he smiled at it scornfully. He had not re-read his letter and dished his ham before sounds on the road assured him an ox-cart was approaching, and, with an eagerness to see who it might be which cannot be comprehended by those who have not lived in isolation, he went out to see Saul and his cattle coming at an even pace down the road from the hills. The cart ran more easily now that the road was of the better sort, and the spirits of both man and beasts were so raised by the sight of a house that they all seemed in better form for work than when in the middle of tlieir journey. Alec Trenholme waited till the cart drew up between his door and the railway track, and regarded i;he giant stature of the lumberman, his small, round head, red cheeks, and i 64 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I \ I ! ; luxuriant whiskers, with that intense but unreflecting inter- est which the lonely bestow upon unexpected company. He looked also, with an eye to his own business, at the contents of the cart, and gave the man a civil " good evening." As he spoke, his voice and accent fell upon the air of this wilderness as a rarely pleasant thing to hear. Saul hastily dressed his whiskers with his horny left hand before he answered, but even then, he omitted to return the greeting. " I want to know," he said, sidling up, " how much it would cost to -send that by the cars to St. Hennon's." He nudged his elbow towards the coffin as he spoke. " That box ? " asked the station-master. " How much does it weigh ? " " We might weigh it if I'd some notion first about how much I'd need to pay." " What's in it ? " Saul smoothed his whiskers again. " Well," he said — then, after a slight pause — " it's a dead man." " Oh ! " said Trenholme. Some habit of politeness, unnecessary here, kept his exclamation from expressing the interest he instantly felt. In a country where there are few men to die, even death assumes the form of an almost agreeable chanf;' as a matter of lively concern. Then, after a pause which both men felt to be suitable, " I suppose there is a special rate for — that sort of thing, you know. I really haven't been here very long. I will look it up. I suppose you have a certificate of death, haven't you ? " Again Saul dressed his whiskers. His attention to them was his recognition of the fact that Trenholme impressed him as a superior. "I don't know about a certificate. You've heard of the Bates and Camei-on clearin', I s'pose ; it's old Cameron that's dead" — again he nudged his elbow coffinward — "and Mr. Bates he wrote a letter to the minister at St. Hennon's." CHAP- VIIl] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 6S liere an I'll. "I the n'on I'd— St. He took the letter from his pocket as he spoke, and Trenholme perceived that it was addressed in a legible hand and sealed. " I fancy it's all right," said he doubtfully. He really had not any idea wluit the railway might require before he took the thing in charge. Saul did not make answer. He was not quite sure it was all right, but tlie sort of wrongness he feared was not to be confided to the man into whose care he desired to shove the objectionable burden. " What did he die of ? " asked the young man. " He fell down, and he seemed for some days as if he'd get over it ; then he was took sudden. We put his feet into a hot pot of water and made him drink lye." " Lye ? " " Ash water — but we gave it him weak." " Oh." " But— he died." "Well, that was sad. Does he leave a wife and family ? " " No," said Saul briefly. " But how much must I pay to have the cars take it the rest of the way ? " Trenholme stepped into his room and lit his lamp that he might better examine his list of rates. Saul came inside to warm himself at the stove. The lamp in that little room was the one spot of yellow light in the whole world that lay in sight, yet outside it was not yet dark, only dull and bitterly cold. Trenholme stood near the lamp, reading fine print upon a large card. The railway was only just opened and its tariff incomplete as yet. He found no particular provision made for the carriage of coffins. It took him some minutes to consider under what class of freight to reckon this, but he decided not to weigh it. Saul looked at the room, the ham and tea, and at Trenholme, with quiet curiosity in his beady eyes. Outside, the oxen hung their heads and dozed again. : i ■ 66 WHAT ATECESS/TV KNOWS [hook I • I iii i ! ! J " You see," said Saul, " I'll get there myself with the potash to-morrow night ; then I can arrange with the minister." He had so much difficulty in producing the requisite number of coins for the carriage that it was evident the potash could not be sent by train too ; but Trenholme was familiar now with the mode of life that could give time of man and beast so easily, and find such difficulty in produc- ing a little money of far less value. He did remark that, as the cart was to complete the journey, the coffin might as well travel the second day as it had done the first ; but Saul showed reluctance to hear this expostulation, and certainly it was not the station-master's business to insist. The whole discussion did not take long. Saul was evidently in a haste not usual to such as he, and Trenholme felt a natural desire to sit down to his tea, the cooking of which filled the place with grateful perfume. Saul's haste showed itself more in nervous demeanour than in capacity to get through the interview quickly. Even when the money was paid, he loitered awkwardly. Trenholme went into his store-room, and threw open its double doors to the outside air. " Help me in with it, will you ? " It was the pleasant authority of his tone that roused the other to alacrity. They shouldered the coffin between them. The store-room was fairly large and contained little. Tren- holme placed the coffin reverently by itself in an empty corner. He brought a pot of black paint and a brush, and printed on it the necessary address. Then he thought a moment, and added in another place the inscription — " Box containing coffin — to be handled with care." It is to be remarked how dependent we are for the simplest actions on the teaching we have had. Never having received the smallest instruction as to how to deal with such a charge, it cost him effort of thought and some courage to put on this inscription. Saul watched, divide u. between curious interest and his desire to be away. CHAP. VIIl] PV//A T NECESSITY KNO \VS 67 land it a 111 — ithe iver leal )me " You've got another coffin inside this case, of course ? " said the station-master, struck ■■vith a sudden doubt. To him, polished wood and silver plating seemed such a natural accessory of death that he had, without thought, always associated the one idea with the other. " No, that's all there is. We made it too large by mis- take, but we put a bed quilt in for stuffing." "But, my man, it isn't very well put together; the lid isn't tight." "No — neither it is." Saul had already sidled to the door. Trenholme felt it with his thumb and fingers. "It's perfectly loose," he cried. "It's only got a few nails in the lid. You ought to have put in screws, you know." "Yes, but we hadn't got any; we had used the last screws we had for the hinge of a door. I'm going to buy some to put in at St. Heiinon's. Good-day." As they spoke, Saul had been going to his cart, and Trenholme following, with authoritative displeasure in his mien. " It's exceedingly careless — upon my word. Come back and nail it up firmer," cried he. But Saul drove off. The young station-master went back to the store-room. He looked at the box for a moment, with annoyance still in his mind. The air that he had would have sat well upon a man with servants under him, but was somewhat futile in the keeper of a desolate railway-station. He had not been able to command the man, and he certainly could not command the coffin to nail itself more firmly together. Vfter all, his tea waited. Somewhat sullenly he barred the double door on the inside, and went back to his own room and his evening meal. The room was filled ' '^ the steam of the boiling tea as he poured it out, and th .oke of the ham gravy. With the strength of youth and health he thrust aside the annoy- 68 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I anoe of his official position from his present mind, and set himself to his supper with considerable satisfaction. He had not, however, eaten a single morsel before he heard a sound in the next room which caused him to sit erect and almost rigid, forgetting his food. He had been so pre-occupied a minute before with the carelessness of those who constructed the coffin that he had left the inner door between the two rooms ajar. It was through this that the sound came, and it seemed to his quickened sense to proceed from the corner in which the pinewood box re- posed, but he hastily went over all the contents of the room to think if any of them could be falling or shifting among themselves. The sound still continued; it seemed as if something was being gently worked to and fro, as in a soft socket. His imagination was not very quick to represent impossible dangers, nor had he in him more cowardice than dwells in most brave men. He did not allow himself to conclude that he heard the coffin-lid being opened from the inside. He took his lamp and went to see what was wrong. The sound ceased as he moved. When the light of the i lamp was in the next room all was perfectly silent. For almost half a minute he stood still, shading his eyes from the lamp, while, with every disagreeable sensation crowd- I'! ing upon him, he observed distinctly that, although the ij: nails were still holding it loosely in place, the lid of the 1 1 coffin was raised half an inch, more than that indeed, at m the top. VS "Now, look here, you know — this won't do," said Tren- i'l holme, in loud authoritative tones; so transported was he |i| by the disagreeableness of his situation that, for the i'^ moment, he supposed himself speaking to the man with whom he had just spoken. Then, realising that that man, although gone, was yet probably within call, he set down the lamp hastily and ran out. . , It seemed to him remarkable that Saul and the oxen could I have gone so far along the road, although of course they CHAP, viii] tVHAT NECESSITY KJVOU'S 69 m- Ihe he Ith In, ivn Id were still plainly in sight. He shouted, but received no answer. He raised his voiee and shouted again and again, with force and authority. He ran, as lie sliouted, about twenty paces. In return he only heard Saul's own com- mands to his oxen. Wliether the man was making so much noise himself that he could not hear, or whether he lieard and would not attend, Trenholme could not tell, but he felt at the moment too angry to run after him farther. It was not his place to wait upon this carter and run his errands ! Upon this impulse lie turned again. However, as he walked back, the chill frost striking his bare head, he felt more diffidence and perplexity about his next action than was at all usual to him. He knew that he had no inclination to investigate the contents of the box. All the curiosity stirred within him still failed to create the least desire to pry further; but, on the other hand, he could not think it right to leave the matter as it was. A strong feeling of duty commanding him to open the coffin and see that all was right, and a stout aversion to perform- ing this duty, were the main elements of his consciousness during the minutes in which he retraced his steps to the house. He had set down the lamp on a package just within the baggage-room door, so that his own room, by which he entered, was pretty dark, save for the fire showing through the damper of the stove. Trenholme stopped in it just one moment to listen; then, unwilling to encourage hesitation in himself, went through the next door. His hand was out- stretched to take the lamp, his purpose was clearly defined — to go to the far corner and examine the coffin-lid. Hand and thouglit arrested, he stopped on the threshold, for the lid was thrown off the coffin, and beside it stood a figure. The lamp, which did not throw very much light across the comparatively large empty room, was so placed that what light there was came directly in Trenholme's eyes. Afterwards he remembered this, and wondered whether all that he thought he saw had, in fact, been clearly seen; but ! : i 'i 70 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [hook I at tlie inoineut lio thought nothing of tho inadequacy of light or of the ghire in liis eyes ; lie only knew that there, in the far eorner beside the empty eolKn, stood a white figure — very tall to his vision, very lank, with wliite drapery that clothed it round the head like a cowl and spread upon the floor around its feet. But all that was not what arrested his attention and chilled his strong courage, it was the eyes of the figure, which were clearly to be seen — large, frightened, fierce eyes, that met his own with a courage and terror in them which seemed to quell his own courage and impart terror to him. Above them he saw the form of a pallid brow clearly moulded. He did not remem- ber the rest of the face — perhaps the white clothes wrapped it around. While the eyes struck him with awe, he had a curious idea that the thing had been interrupted in arrang- ing its own winding sheet, and was waiting until he retired again to finish its toilet. This was merely a grotesque side-current of thought. He was held and awed by the surprise of the face, for those eyes seemed to him to belong to no earthly part of the old man who, he had been told, lay there dead. Drawn by death or exhaustion as the face around them looked, the eyes themselves appeared un- earthly in their large brightness. He never knew whether his next action was urged more by fear, or by the strong sense of justice that had first prompted him to call back the carter as the proper person to deal with the contents of the coffin. Whatever the motive, it acted quickly. He drew back; closed the doorj locked it on the side of his own room; and set out again to bring back the man. This time he should hear and should return. Trenholme did not spare his voice, and the wide lonely land resounded to his shout. And this time he was not too proud to run, but went at full speed and shouted too. Saul undoubtedly saw and heard him, for he faced about and looked. Perhaps something in the very way in which Trenholme ran suggested why he ran. Instead of respond- CHAP, viii] irifAT mXKSSlTY KNOWS 7^ ing to the oomiiiaiul to ri'turn, lie liiniself began to run away and madly to goad his oxen. There are those who suppose oxt n yoked to a cart cannot run, but on occasion they can plunge hito a Avild heavy gallop that man is pow- erless to curb. The great strength latent in these animals was apparent now, for, after their long day's draught, they seemed to become imbued with their driver's panic, and changed from walking to dashing madly down the road. It was a long straight incline of three miles from the sta- tion to the settlement called Turrifs. Saul, unable to keej) lip with the cattle, flung himself upon the cart, and, with great rattling, was borne swiftly aAvay from his pursuer. Young Trenholme stopped when he had run a mile. So far he had gone, determined that, if the man would not stop for his commands, he should be collared and dragged back by main force to face the thing whicdi he had brought, but by degrees even the angry young man perceived the futility of chasing mad cattle. He drew up panting, and, turning, walked back once more. He did not walk slowly; he was in no frame to loiter and his run had brought such a flush of heat upon him that it would have been madness to linger in the bitter cold. At the same time, while his legs moved rapidly, his mind certainly hesitated — in fact, it almost halted, unable to foresee in the least what its next opinion or decision would be. He was not a man to pause in order to make up his mind. He had a strong feeling of responsibility towards his little station and its inexplicable tenant, therefore he hurried back against his will. His only consolation in this backward walk was the key of the door he had locked, which in haste he had taken out and still held in his hand. Without attempting to decide whether the thing he had seen was of common clay or of some lighter substance, he still did not lend his mind with sufficient readiness to ghostly theory to imagine that his unwelcome guest could pass through locked doors. Nor did the ghost, if ghost it was, pags through iin- I I i I i f2 IVHAT N/'ICESS/TV K!^OVVS [hook \ opened doors. Tlu; Huw in Trenliolnie's comfortable theory \ was that he had forgotten that the hirge double door, whicih opened from the baggage room to the railway track, was barred on the inside. When he got back to liis place he i found this door ajar, and neither in his own room, nor in ' the baggage room, nor in the cofiin, was there sign of I luiman presence, living or dead. •' All the world about lay in the clear white twilight. The ■' blueberry flats, the bramble-holts, were red. The clouded I sky was white, except for that metallic blue tinge in the I west, through which, in some thin places, a pale glow of I yellower light was now visible, the last rays of the day that had set. It was this world on which the young Eng- lishman looked as, amazed and somewhat affrighted, he walked rouiul the building, searching on all sides for the creature that could hardly yet, had it run away in such a level land, be wholly out of sight. He went indoors again to make sure that nothing was there, and this time he made a discovery — his tea was gone from his cup. He gave a shudder of disgust, and, leaving his food untouched, put on coat and cap, and went out shutting his door behind him. His spirits sank. It seemed to him that, had it been midnight instead of this blank, even daylight, had his unearthly-looking visitant acted in more unearthly fashion, the circumstances would have had less weird force to impress his mind. We can, after all, only form conjectures regarding inex- plicable incidents from the successive impressions that have been made upon us. This man was not at all given to love of romance or superstition, yet the easy explanation that some man, for purpose of trick or crime, had hidden in the box, did not seem to him to fit the circumstances. He could not make himself believe that the eyes he had seen belonged to a living man; on the other hand, he found it impossible to conceive of a tea-drinking ghost. ' About a quarter of a mile away there was a long grove of birch trees, the projecting spur of a second growth of •ii CHAP. IX] IVIfAT I^ECESS/TV kWOWS 73 forest tliat covercul tlio distant risins,' f^'round. Towards this Tronliolme strode, for it was the only eovert near in whieli a liunian being couhl travel unseen. It was more by the impulse of eni-rgy, however, than by reasonable hope that he eanie there, for by the time he had reaehed the edge of the trees, it was beginning to grow dark, even in the open jdain. No one who has not seen birch trees in their undisturbed native haunts can know how purely whit(>, unmarred by stiiin or tear, their trunks can be. Trenholme looked in among them. They grew thickly. White — white — it seemed in the gathering gloom that each was whiter than the other; and Trenholme, remembering that his only knowledge of the figure he sought was that it was wrapped in white, recognised the uselessness, the absurdity even, of hoi)ing to find it here, of all places. Then he went back to the road and started for Turrifs Settlement. ! CHAPTER IX. The settlement called " Turrifs " was not a village ; it was only a locality, in which there were a good many houses within the radius of a few square miles. When Alec Trenholme started off the third time to re- proach the recreant driver of the ox-cart, he had no inten- tion of again dealing with him directly. He bent his steps to the largest house in the neighbourhood, the house of the family called Turrifs; whose present head, being the second of his generation on the same farm, held a posi- tion of loosely acknowledged pre-eminence. Turrif was a Frenchman, who had had one Scotch forefather through whom his name had come. This, indeed, was the case with many of his neighbours. Trenholme had had various negotiations with this Turrif and his neighbours, but he had only once been to the 74 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book i house lie was now seeking; and in tlie darkness, •..'iiich had fallen eompletely during his three-mile walk, he was a little puzzled to find it quickly. Its wooden and weather- greyed walls glimmered but faintly in the night; it was only by following the line of log fences through the flat treeless fields that he found himself at last full in the feeble rays of the candle-light that peeped from its largest window. Trenholme knocked. Turrif hi'nself opened the door. He was a man of middle age, thick-set but thin, with that curious grey shade on a healthy skin that so often pertains to Frenchmen. For a moment his shrewd but mild countenance peered into the darkness; then, holding Avide the door and making welcome motion with his hand, he bade Trenholme enter. Trenholme could not speak French, but he knew that Turrif could understand enough English to comprehend his errand if he told it slowly and distinctly. Slowly and distinctly, therefore, he recounted all that ''ad befallen him since Saul arrived at the station; but such telling of such a story could not be without some embarrassment, caused by the growing perception, on the part of both men, of its extraordinary nature. " Eh — h ! " said the Frenchman during the telling. It was a prolonged syllable, denoting meditative astonish- ment, a. it brought another listener, for the wife came I ; and stood by her husband, who interpreted the story to her, I ' and shortly a girl of thirteen also drew near and stood I listening to her father's interpretation. Trenholme began \ ■; to wonder v/hetlier the elder listeners were placing any I ] confidence in his word; but the doubt was probably in his I • m'^id only, for an honest man does not estimate the subtile ;; force of his own honesty. Turrif and his wife listened to all that was said, and looked at each other, and looked at him, and asked him a [ » \ good many questions. They were neither of them hasty, I I ' but, as the woman's manner was the more vivacious, so her f ■ « questions, when translated, showed a somewhat quicker i I CHAP. IX j WHAT NECESSITY KNOIVS 75 wit. AVlien all was said, like wise people, they pro- nounced no sentence, either upon Trenholrie's actions or upon those of the creature that luid inhabited the coffin; but they remarked that if the carter had committed no evil he would not have run away. They said that they had some knowledge of ^his man, whom they called "Monsieur Saul," and that he was a fellow of little worth. They agreed that Turrif should go with Trenholme, as requested, to bring the man to book. On crossing the threshold of the house Trenholme had come at once into a large, long room, which composed the whole lower flat of the dwelling, as appeared from the windows on both sides and from the fact that the staircase went up from one end of it. It was a comfortable, well- warmed room, containing evidences of all the various industries of the family, from the harness that hung on the wall and the basket of carded wool by the spining- wheel, to the bucket of cow's mash that stood warming by the stove at the foot of the baby's cradle. At the far end a large table, that held the candle, had a meal spread upon it, and also some open dog's-eared x^rimers, at which small children were spelling audibly. When the conference, which had taken place near the door, was over, the wife went back to her children and her lighted table, and Trenholme made as if to open the door, supposing that Turrif would walk away with him. "Eh — ?io?i," said the older man, with a kindly smile. ^^ Pas encore," and taking Trenholme by the arm, he pushed him gently towards the table. "I weel get out my 'orse," said he, in slow, broken Englisli. " You have had enough walking to-day, and I have had enough work. A present" — with a gesture toward the table. He made Trenholme sit dcwr at the table. There was a very large pan of tl.ick sour milk on it, and a loaf of grey bread. Bits of this bread were set round the edge of the table, near the children, who munched at them. Turrif gave TrenliolLie a bit of bread, cutting into ^\g ii <4 76 ti^Z/AT IStECESSITV KNOWS [boot: I loaf as men only do in whose lives bread is not scarce. With a large si)Oon he took a quantity of the thick rich cream from the top of the milk and put a saucer of it before the visitor. Trenholme a+e it with his bread, and found it not as sour as he expected, and on the whole very good. Turrif, eating bread as he went, carried the harness out of the house. As there was no one left for him to talk to, Trenholme grew more observant. He remarked the sweetness and sense in the face of the house -mother as she bestowed their suppers upon the children. She was still comparatively young, but there was no beauty of youth about her, only the appearance of strength that is produced by toil and endurance before these two have worn the strength away. But, in spite of this look of strength, the face was not hard — no, nor sad; and there was a certain latent poetry, too, about the gesture and look with which she gave food to the little or-^s, as if the giving and receiving were a free thing, and not the mere necessity of life. Her manner of giving them supper was to push the large pan of curded milk close to the edge of the table, where the little ones were clus- tered, and let them, four of them at once, lap out of the side of it with their little spoons. At the same time she pushed the creasy yellow cover of cream to the farther side, with a watchful glance at Trenholme's saucer, evi- dently meaning that it was kept for him. She and the elder boy and girl waited to sup till the little ones had finished. Trenholme endeavoured to say that he should not want any more crjam, but she did not understand his words. He would have felt more concerned at the partiality shown I him if the youngsters had looked more in need of cream ; but they were, in truth, so round-faced and chubby, and so evidently more pleased to stare at him with their big, black eyes than grieved to lose the richest part of their mUk, that he felt distress would have been thrown way. All four little ones wore round knitted caps, and their little i CHAP. IX] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 77 heads, at uneven heights, their serious eyes rolling upon him, and their greedy little mouths supping in the milk the while, formed such [in odd picture round the white disk of the milk-pan that Trenholme could not help laughing. The greedy little feeders, without dropping their spoons, looked to their mother to see whether they ought to be frightened or not at such conduct on the stranger's part, but seeing her smile, they concluded that they were safe. Upon Trenholme 's making further overtures of friend- ship, one or two of them began to smile: the smile was infectious, it spread to all four, and they began to laugh, and laughed in baby fashion quite immoderately. Their mother considered this a sign that they had had enough, and took their spoons from tliem. As they scattered from the table Trenholme perceived that, though their heads were covered, their feet were not. Their whole costume consisted of a short blue cotton nightgown and the little knitted cap. When Turrif came in to say that the horse was ready, Trenholme made an effort to present his thanks in saying good-bye to the mistress of the house, but she did not seem to expect or take much notice of these manners. As he went out of the door he looked back to see her bending over the baby in the cradle, and he noticed for the first time that above the cradle there was a little shrine fastened to the wall. It was decked with a crucifix and paper flow ers ; above was a coloured picture of the Virgin. Trenholme, whose nerves were perhaps more suscep- tible than usual by reason of the creature set at large by the opening of the coffin, wondered that Turrif should leave his wife and children alone so willingly, without any effort to bar the house and without objection on their part. He knew there was no other house within half a mile, and the darkness that lay on the flat land appeared to give room for a thousand dangers. He expressed this surprise to Turrif, who replied placidly that the good saints took care of women and childrcxi — a 78 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book i reply wliich probably did not go to prove the man's piety so much as the habitual peace of the neighbourhood. The vehicle to which Turrit" had harnessed his pony was a small hay cart — that is to say, a cart consisting of a plat- form on two wheels, and a slight paling along each side intended to give some support to its contents. It was muc"" more lightly made than Saul's ox-cart. The wheels went over the frozen ruts at a good pace, and the inmates were badly jolted. Trenholme would rather have walked, but he had already observed that the Canadian rustic never walked if he could possiljly avoid it, and he suppposed there must be some reason for this in the nature of the country. The jolting made talking disagreeable; indeed, when he attempted conversation he found his words reminded him forcibly of times when, in the nursery of his childhood, he had noticed the cries of baby companions gradually grow less by reason of the rapid vibrations of the nurse's knee. He kept silence therefore, and wondered whether Turrif or the pony was guiding, so carelessly did they go forth into the darkness, turning corners and avoid- ing ghostly fences with slovenly ease. It soon appeared that Turrif knew no more than Tren- holme where to find Saul; his only method of seeking was to inquire at each house. It was not, however, necessary to go into each house; the cart was only brought suffi- ciently near upon the road for a lusty shout to reach the family inside. The first house Trenholme hardly saw in the darkness; at one or two others he had a good view of the interior through an open door or window. From each door men and boys, sometimes women and children, sallied forth eagerly into the cold night to see what was wanted, and to each inquiry the phlegmatic Turrif repeated Tren- holme's tale. Trenholme would have given a good deal to be able fully to understand what was said. There Avas much conversation. From each house one or two men joined them, and in one case, from a squalid-looking door- way, a loud-speaking and wilful girl came out and insisted CHAP. IX] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 79 on getting into the cart. She talked to the men and shrieked loudly when any object, such as a barn or a tree, loomed dimly at the side of the road. Two of the men brought a lantern and walked behind. When they came to the house whose roof was found to cover Saul, a party of eight entered to hear and pronounce upon his explanation. Certainly, if Trenholme had had the management of the business, he would not have proceeded in this fashion, but he had no choice. The carter had been drinking whisky — not much as yet, but enough to give him a greater command of words than he ordinarily possessed. When he saw Trenholme among the band who were inquiring for him, he manifested dis- tinct signs of terror, but not at his visitors; his ghastly glances were at door and window, and he drew nearer to the company for protection. It was plainly what they had to tell, not what they had to demand, that excited him to trembling; the assembled neighbourhood seemed to strike him in the light of a safeguard. When, however, he found the incomers were inclined to accuse him of trick or knavery, he spoke out bravely enough. Old Cameron had died — they ki.cw old Cameron? Yes, the men assented to this knowledge. And after he had been dead two days and one night, Mr. Bates — they knew Mr. Bates? — Assent again. — Had put him in the coffin with his own hands and nailed down the lid. He was quite dead — perfectly dead. On hearing this thp bold girl who had come with them shrieked again, and two of the younger men took her aside, and, holding her head over a bucket in the corner poured water on it, a process which silenced her. "And," said Turrif, quietly speaking in French, "what then? " "What then?" said Saui; "Then to-day I brought him in the cart." " And buried him on the road, because he was heavy and 8o WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOWS [book I ,t I j useless, and let some friend of yours play with the box? " continued Turrif, with an insinuating smile. Saul swore loudly that tliis was not the case, at which the men shrugged their shoulders and looked at Trenholme. To him the scene and the circumstances were very curious. The house into which they liad come was much smaller than Turrif's. The room was a dismal one, with no sign of woman or child about it. Its atmosphere was thick with the smoke of tobacco and the fumes of hot whisky, in wliich Saul and his host had been indulging. A soft, home- made candle, guttering on the table, shed a yellow smoky light upon the faces of the bearded men who stood around it. Saul, perhaps from an awkward feeling of trembling in his long legs, had resumed his seat, his little eyes more beady, his little round cheeks more ruddy, than ever, his whiskers now entirely disregarded in the importance of his self-vindication. Too proud for asseveration, Trenholme had not much more to say. He stated briefly that he could not be respon- sible for the contents of a box when the contents had run away, nor for any harm that the runaway might do to the neighbourhood, adding that the man who had consigned the box to his care must now come and take it away. He spoke with a fine edge of authority in his voice, as a man speaks who feels himself superior to his circum- stances and companions. He did not look at the men as he spoke, for he was not yet sure whether they gave him the credence for which he would not sue, and he did not care to see if they derided him. *'I sink," said Turriff, speaking slowly in English now, — " I sink we cannot make that mee-racle be done." " What miracle ? " asked Trenholme. Those of the men who understood any English laughed. " Se miracle to make dis genteelman, M. Saul, fetch se box." Trenholme then saw that Saul's shudderings had com.Q upon him again at the mere suggestion. 3 CHAP. IX] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 8i \ " What am I to do, then ? " he asked. At this the men had a good deal of talk, and Turrif interpreted tlie decision. "AVe sink it is for M. Bates to say wliat shall be done wit se box. We sink we take so liberte to say to sis man — ' Stay here till some one go to-morrow and fetch M. Bates.'" This strnck Trenholme as just, and any objection he felt to spending the night under the same roof with the mysterious coffin did not seem worth remark. As for Saul, he professed himself satisfied with the arrangement. He was only too glad to have some one brought who would share his responsibility and attest, in part at least, his tale. " Well," said Trenholme, " I'll go then." He felt for the key of the station in his pocket, and would have thanked the men and bid them "good even- ing," had they not, rather clamorously, deprecated his inten- tion. Living, as they did, far from all organised justice, there was in them a rough sense of responsibility for each other which is not found in townsmen. Trenholme shortly made out that they had decided that two of them should help him to guard the station that night, and were only disputing as to who should be allotted for the purpose. " It isn't at all necessary," said Trenholme. "We sink," said Turrif, with his deliberate smile, "it will be best ; for if you have not been wandering in your mind, some one else's body has been wandering." Trenholme went back to his station in the not unpleasant company of two sturdy farmers, one young and vivacious, the other old and slow. They found the place just as he had left it. The coffin was empty, save for the sweet- scented curhion of rouglily covered pine tassels on which the body of the gaunt old Cameron had been laid to rest. The three men sat by the stove in the other room. The smoke from their pipes dimmed the light of the lamp. 82 WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOWS [book I 1 ; ■ The quiet sounds of their talk and movonionts never entirely took from them the consciousness of the large dark silence that Lay without. No footfall broke it. When they heard the distant rush of the night train, they all three went out to see its great yellow eye come nearer and nearer. Trenholnu; had one or two packages to put in the van. He and his companions exchanged greetings with the men of the train. Just as he was handing in his last package, a gentle- manly voice accosted him. "Station-nuister! " said a grey-haired, military-looking traveller, "Station-nuister! Is there any way of getting milk here? " A lady stood behind the gentleman. Tlu-y were both on the platform at the front of Ji passenger car. "It's for a child, you know," explained the gentleman. Trenholme remembered his untouched tea, and confessed to the possession of a little milk. " Oh, hasten, hasten! " cried the lady, " for the guard says the train will move on in a moment." As Trenholme knew that the little French conductor thus grandly quoted did not know when the train would start, and as in his experience the train, whatever else it did, never hastened, he did not move with the sudden agility that was desired. Before he turned he heard a loud- whispered aside from the lady: "Tell him we'll pay him double — treble, for it; I have heard they are avaricious." When Trenholme had started the train he jumped upon it with the milk. He found himself in a long car. The double seats on either side were filled with sleepy people. There was a passage down the middle, and the lamps above shone dimly through dirty glasses. Trenholme could not immediately see any one like the man who had spoken to him outside, but he did spy out a baby, and, jug in hand, he went and stood a moment near it. The lady who held the baby sat upright, with her head CHAI'. IX] WHAT NEC /CSS /TV kWOll'S 83 leaning against the side of tlie car. She was dozing, and the baby was also asleep. It was a rosy, healthy cliild, about a year old. The lady's handsome face suggested she was about seven-and-twenty. Among all the sluiwl- \vra[)ped heaps of restless humanity around them, this pair looked very lovely together. The dusty lampliglit fell upon them. Tliey seemed to Trenliolme like a beautiful picture of mother and child, such as one sometimes comes upon among the evil surroundings of old frames and hide- ous prints. Said Trenholme aloud: "1 don't know who asked me for the milk." The lady stirred and looked at him indifferently. She seemed very beautiful. JNIen see with different eyes in these matters, but in Trenholme's eyes this lady was fault- less, and her face and air touched some answering mood of reverence in his heart. It rarely liappens, however, that we can linger gazing at the faces which possess for ns the most beauty. The train was getting up speed, and Tren- holme, just then catching sight of the couple who had asked for the milk, had no choice but to pass down the car and pour it into the jar they held. The gentleman put his hand in his pocket. "Oh no," said Trenholme, and went out. But the more lively Lady reopened the door behind him, and threw a coin on the ground as he was descending. By the sound it had made Trenholme found it, and saw by the light of the passing car that it was an English shil- ling. When the train was gone he stood a minute where it had carried him, some hundred feet from the station, and watched it going on into the darkness. Afterwards, when his companions had composed them- selves tc sleep, and he lay sleepless, listening to all that could be heard in the silent night, curiously enough it was not upon the exciting circumstances of the early evening that he mused chiefly, but upon the people he had seen in the night train. 84 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [hook I A seoiuiujj^ly little, tliinj^ luis soinetiiiios the power to change those (uirreiits that set one way and another within a man, making him satislied or dissatisfied with this or that. By chanee, as it seems, a song is sung, a touch is given, a sight revealed, and man, like a har[» hung to the winds, is played upon, and the music is not that which he devises. So it was that Trenholme's encounter in the dusty ear with the beautiful woman who had looked upon him so indifferently had struck a chord which was like a ])laintive sigh for some better purpose in life than he was beating out of this rough existence. It was not a desire for greater pleasure that her beauty had aroused in him, but a desire for nobler action — such was the power of her face. The night passed on; no footfall broke the silence. The passing train was the only e])is()(h; of his vigil. In the morning when Trenholmc looked out, the land was covered deep in snow. I I CHAPTER X. WiiKN the night train left Turrifs Station it thundered on into the darkness slowly enough, but, what with bump- ing over its rough rails Jind rattling its big cars, it seemed anxious to deceive its passengerL into the idea that it was going at great speed. A good number of its cars were long vans for the carriage of freight; behind these came two for the carriage of passengers. These were both labelled "First Class." One was devoted to a few men, who were smoking; the other was the one from which Trenholme had descended. Its seats, upholstered in red velvet, were dusty from the smoke and dirt of the way ; its atmosphere, heated by a stove at one end, was dry and oppressive. It would have been im])ossible, looking at the motley company lounging in the lamplight, to have told their relations one to another; but it was evident that an uncertain number of CHAP. X] H'lIAT Ni:ci:ss/Tv Awoirs 8s young people, ]»l;ie('(l near the lady who held the baby, were of the same [)arty; tliey slept in twos and threes, leaning on one another's shouhhu's and covered by the same wraps. It was to seats left vacant nejir this groiq) that the man and his wife who had procured tlie milk returned. The man, wlio was past middh^ life, betook himsidf to his seat wearily, and jnilled his cap over his eyes witliout speaking. His wife deposited the mug of milk in a basket, speaking in low but brisk tones to the lady who ludd the baby. "There, So{)hia; I've had to pay a shilling for a cupful, but I've got some milk." " I should have thought you would have been surer to get good milk at a larger station, nuimma." She did not turn as she spoke, perhaps for fear of waking the sleei)ing baby. The other, who was the infant's mother, was rapidly tying a shawl round her head and shoulders. She was a little stout woman, who in middle age had retained her brightness of eye and complexion. Her features were regular, and her little nose had enough suggestion of the eagle's beak in its form to preserve her countenance from insignificance. "Oh, my dear," she returned, "as to the milk — the young man looked quite clean, I assure you; and then such a large country as the cows have to roam in ! " Having delivered herself of this energetic whisper, she subsided below the level of the seat back, leaving So})hia to sit and wonder in a drowsy muse whether the mother supposed that the value of a cow's milk would be increased if, like lo, she could prance across a continent. Sophia liexford sat upright, with the large baby in her arms and a bigger child leaning on her shoulder. Both children were more or less restless; but their sister was not restless, she sat quite still. The attitude of her tall figure had the composure and strength in it which do not belong to lirst youth. Hers Avas a line face; it might even be called beautiful; but no one now would call it pretty — the skin was too colourless, the expression too earnest. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) ^/ ■ ^0 z ^p I/. 1.0 1.25 ■u lU B2.2 :; us 12.0 I.I fr i III I i 86 IV//AT NECESSITY KNOWS [book i Her eyes took on the look that tells of inward, rather than outward, vision. Her thoughts were such as she would not have told to any one, but not because of evil in them. This was the lady to whom Robert Trenholme, the master of the college at Chellaston, had written his letter; and she was thinking of that letter now, and of him, pon- dering much that, by some phantasy of dreams, she should have been suddenly reminded of him by the voice of the man who had passed through the car with the milk. Her mind flitted lightly to the past; to a season she had once spent in a fashionable part of London, and to her acquaintance with the young curate, who was receiving some patronage from the family with whom she was visit- ing. She had been a beauty then ; every one danced to the tune she piped, and this curate — a mere fledgeling — had danced also. That was nothing. No, it was nothing that he had, for a time, followed lovesick in her train — she never doubted that he had had that sickness, although he Lad not spoken of it — all that had been notable in the acquaintance was that she, who at that time had played with the higher aims and impulses of life, had thought, in her youthful arrogance, that she discerned in this man something higher and finer than she saw in other men. She had been pleased to make something of a friend of him, condescending to advise and encourage him, pro- nouncing upon his desire to seek a wider field in a new country, and calling it good. Later, when he was gone, and life for her had grown more quiet for lack of circum- stances to feed excitement, she had wondered sometimes if this man had recovered as perfectly from that love-sickness as others had done. That was all — absolutely all. Her life had lately come again into indirect relations with him through circumstances over which neither he nor she had had any control ; and now, when she was about to see him, he had taken upon him to write and pick up the thread of personal friendship again and remind her of the past. CHAP. X] WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOWS By In what mood had he written this reminder? Sophia Rexford would surely not have been a woman of the world if she had not asked herself this question. Did he think that on seeing her again he would care for her as before? Did he imagine that intervening years, which had brought misfortune to her family, would bring her more within his grasp? Or was his intention in writing still less pleas- ing to her than this? Had he written, speaking so guard- edly of past friendship, with the desire to ward off any hope she might cherish that he had remained unmarried for her sake? Sophia's lips did not curl in scorn over nis last suggestion, because she was holding her little court of inquiry in a mental region quite apart from her emotions. This woman's character was, how»^ver, revealed in this, that she passed easily from her queries as to what the man in question did, or would be likely to, think of her. A matter of real, possibly of paramount, interest to her was to wonder whether his life had really expanded into the flower of which she had thought the bud gave promise. She tried to look back and estimate the truth of her youth- ful instinct, which had told her he was a man above other men. And if that had been so, was he less or more now than he had been then? Had he been a benefit to the new country to which he had come? Had the move from the Old World to this — the decision in which she had rashly aided with youthful advice — been a good or a bad thing for him and for the people to whom he had come? From this she fell a-thinking upon her own life as, in the light of Trenholme's letter, the contrast of her present womanly self with the bright, audacious girl of that past time was set strongly before her. It is probably as rare for any one really to wish to be the self of any former time — to wish to be younger — as it is really to wish to be any one else. Sophia certainly did not dream of wishing to be younger. We are seldom just to ourselves — either past or present : Sophia had a tine scorn for what she remembered herself to have been j she had greater respect for her present 88 IVNAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I self, because there was less of outward show, and more of reality. It might have been a quarter of an hour, it might have been more, since the train had last started, but now it stopped ratlier suddenly. Sophia's father murmured sleep- ily against the proximity of the stations. He was reclin- ing in the seat just behind lier. Sophia looked out of her window. She saw no light. By-and-by some men came up the side of the tra(!k with lanterns. She saw by the light tliey held that thoy were officials of the train, and tliat the bank on which tliey walked looked perfectly wild and untrodden. She turned her head toward her father. " We are not at any station, " she remarked. " Ay ! " He got up with cumbrous haste, as a horse might rise. He, too, looked out of the window, tlien round at his women and children, and clad himself in an immense coat. "I'll just go out," he whispered, "and see how things are. If there's anything wrong I'll let you know." He intended his whisper to be some!.hing akin to silence; he intended to exercise tlie utmost consideration for those around him; but his long remark was of the piercing quality that often appertains to whispers, and, as he turned his back, two of the children woke, and a young girl in the seat in front of Sophia sat up, her grey eyes dilated with alarm. "Sophia," she said, with a low sob, "oh, Sophia, is there something wrong ? " "Be quiet! " said Sophia, tartly. The snoring mother now shut her mouth with a snap. In a twinkling she was up and lively. " Has your father got on his overcoat, Sophia? Is there danger? " She darted from one side of the carriage to another, rubbing the moisture off each window with a bit of her shawl and speaking with rapidity. Tlien she ran out of the car. Two of the children fol- CHAP. X] WHAT NECESSITY KNOIVS 89 lowed her. The others, reassured by Sopliia's stillness, huddled together at the windows, shivering in the draught of cold air that came from the oi)en door. After some minutes Sophia's father came in again, lead- ing his wife and children with an old-world gallantry that was apparent even in these unsatisfactory circumstances. He had a slow impressive way of speaking that made even his unimportant words appear important. In the present case, as soon as he began to speak most of the people in the car came near to hear. Some obstruction, he said, had fallen across the line. It was not much; the men would soon remove it. An Indian woman, who lived near, had heroically lit a fire, a,nd thus stopped the train in time. There was no other train due upon the road for many hours. Tliere was no danger. There might have been a bad accident, but they had been providentially preserved. His utterance greatly impressed the bystanders, for he was an important-looking gentleman; but long before he had finished speaking, the bright-eyed little mother had set her children into their various seats again, pulled their jackets close in front, rolled up their feet, patted their caps down on their heads, and, in fact, by a series of pokes and pulls, composed her family to sleep, or, at least, started them as far on the way to sleep as a family can be sent by such a method. Quiet settled on the car again. Soon the train went on. Sophia Rexford, looking out, could dimly discern the black outline of wood and river. At length the window grew thicker and opaque. There was no sound of rain or hail, and yet something from without muffled the glass. Sophia slept again. When the dawn of day at length stole upon them she found that snow had been upon the glass and had nudted. Snow lay thick on the ledges of the windows outside. Yet in that pv^.rt of the country in which they now were there was none on the ground. Tliey seemed to have run a race 90 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book i with a snowstorm in the night, and to have gained it for the nonce. But the sight struck her sadly. The winter, which she dreaded, was evidently on their track. It was in the first grey hour of dawn that the train steamed into the station, which was the junction for Quebec, and passengers bound for the English settlements south of that city were obliged to change. For a few minutes before the train stopped the llexford family had been booted and spurred, o to speak, ready for the transfer. Each young })erson was warmly buttoned u}) and tied into a warlike-looking muffler. Each had several packages in charge. A youth came in from the smoking- car and attached himself to them. When the train had come to a standstill the little French conductor was ener- getic in helping them to descend. The family was very large, and, moreover, it was lively; its members were as hard to count as chickens of a brood. Sophia, holding the youngest child and the tickets, en- deavoured to explain their number to the conductor. " There are three children that go free, " she said. " Then two little boys at half fare — that makes one ticket. Myself and three young ladies — make five tickets; my brother and father and mother — eight." The sharp Frenchman looked dubious. " Three children free; two at half fare," he repeated. He was trying to see them all as he spoke. Sophia repeated her count with terse severity. "There was not another young lady?" "Certainly not." And Sophia was not a woman to be trifled with, so he punched the tickets and went back into his car. Wooden platforms, a station hotel built of wood, innum- erable lines of black rails on which freight trains stood idle, the whole place shut in by a high wooden fence — this was the prospect which met the eyes of the English travellers, and seen in the first struggling light of morning, in the bit- ter cold of a black frost, it was not a cheerful one. The Chap, x] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 9« Rexford family, however, were not considering the prospect; they were intent only on finding tlie warm passenger-car of the train that was to take them the rest of their journey, and which they had been assured would be waiting here to receive them. This train, however, was not immediately to be seen, and, in the meantime, tlie broad platform, which was dusted over with dry frost crystals, was the scene of varied activities. From the baggage-car of the train they had left, a great number of boxes and bags, labelled "Rexford," were being thrown down in a violent manner, which greatly distressed some of the girls and their father. " Not that way. That is-^jot the way. Don't you know that is not the way boxes should be handled?" shouted Captain Rexford sternly, and then, seeing that no one paid the slightest attention to his words, he was fain to turn away from the cause of Jiis agitation. He took a brisk turn down the empty epd of the platform, and stood there as a man might who felt that the many irritations of life were growing too much for his self-control. The little boys found occupation because they observed that the white condensed vapour which came from their mouths with each breath bore great resemblance to the white steam a slowly moving engine was hissing forth. They therefore strutted in imitation of the great machine, emitting large puffs from their little warm mouths, and making the sound which a groom makes when he plies the curry-comb. The big brother was assisting in the unload- ing of a large carriage from an open van in the rear of the train, and Mrs. Rexford, neat, quick-moving, and excitable, after watching this operation for a few minutes and issuing several orders as to how it was to be done, moved off in lively search of the next train. She ran about, a few steps in each direction, looking at tlie various railway lines, and then accosted a tall, thin man who was standing still, doing nothing. " Is the train for the Eastern Townships here? We were H'//AT NEC ESS /TV KNOT'S [book I told it would be liere waiting to receive us at daybreak. Is it here? Is it ready?" Seeing from the man's face, as she had already seen from the empty tracks, that no such train was in readiness, she ran at one of the puffing and strutting children Avhose muffler was loose, and tied it up again. Then, struck by another thought, she returned to the impassive man whom she had before addressed. "This is really the actual dawn, I suppose?" she asked, with an air of importance. " I have read tliat in some coun- tries there is what is called a 'false dawn ' that comes before the real one, you know." Compelled now to speak, the man, who was a New Eng- lander, took a small stick from between his teeth and said: "As far as I know, marm, this morning is genuine.'' " Oh really " — with abatement of interest in her tone — " I thought perhaps there might be that sort of thing in Canada, you know — we certainly read of Northern Lights. Very strange that our train isn't here! " The Yankee took the trouble to reply again, hardly mov- ing a muscle of his face. " Keep a good heart, marm ; it may come along yet, a-ridin' on these same Northern Lights." "Riding on — ? I beg your pardon — on what, did you say?" she asked eagerly. At this the grey-eyed girl who had been frightened in the night plucked her by the sleeve and pulled her away. " Don't you see he's making fun of you, mamma? " Besides the grey-eyed girl, who wore short frocks, there were two other girls in the first bloom of young-woman- hood. One of these, having overheard the conversation, ran and told the other. "Just because we happened to read of such a thing in that book of Asiatic travel! Isn't it absurd? And there's papa fuming at the other end of the station." 13oth girls giggled. " I know quite well that people will think us all crazy, " CHAP. X] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 93 urged the first speaker. Then they lauglied again, not unhappily. "There's not a doubt of it," gasped the other. These two girls v/ere very much alike, but one wore a red cloak and the other a blue one. In spite of tlie fact that they were somewhat bloused and a little grimy, and their pretty little noses were now nipped red by the icy morning, they looked attractive as tliey stood, pressing their handker- chiefs to their mouths and bending with laughter. The extent of their mirth was proportioned to their youth and excitement, not to the circumstances which called it forth. The train they had left now moved off. Most of the other passengers who had alighted with them had taken themselves away in various directions, as travellers are apt to do, without any one else noticing exactly what had become of them. Sophia, with the child in her arms, made her way to a mean waiting-room, and thither the children followed her. The mother, having at last ascertained the train would be ready in the course of time, soon came in also, and the father and brother, hearing it would not be ready for at least a quarter of an hour, went away to see the town. There was a stove burning hotly in the small waiting- room. The only other furniture was a bench all round the wall. The family, that had entered somewhat tumultu- ously, almost filled it. There was only one other traveller there, a big girl with a shawl over her head and a bundle under her arm. When Sophia had come into the room alone with the baby, she had asked the girl one or two questions, and been answered civilly enough; but when the rest of the family followed, the girl relapsed into silence, and, after regarding them for a little while, she edged her way out of the room. Mrs. Rexford, who in the excitement of change and bustle was always subject to being struck with ideas which would not have occurred to her mind at other times, sud- denly remembered now that they were dependent upon the 94 WHAT NKCKSS/TV KNOWS [book I resources of the new country for doniestio service, and tliat she had lieard that no cliance of securing a good servant must he h)st, as tliey were very rare. Stating her thought liastily to Sophia, and darting to the narrow door without waiting for a reply, she stretched out her head with an ebullition of registry-office questions. "My good girl! " she cried, "my good girl! " The girl came back nearer the door and stood still. " Do you happen to know of a girl about your ag(5 who can do kitchen work? " "I don't know any one here. I'm travelling." "But perhaps you would do for me yourself" — this half aside — "Can you make a fire, keep pots clean, and scour floors? " "Yes." She did not express any interest in her assent. "Where are you going? Would you not like to come with me and enter my service? 1 happen to be in need of just such a girl as you." No answer. "She doesn't understand, mamma," whispered the grey- eyed girl in a short frock, who, having wedged herself be- side her mother in the narrow doorway, was the only one who could see or hear the colloquy. " Speak slower to the poor thing." "Looks very stupid," commented Mrs. Rexford, hastily pulling in her head and speaking within the room. " But still, one must not lose a chance." Then, with head again outside, she continued, " Do you understand me, my good girl? What is your name? " "Eliza White." " That is a very good name " — encouragingly. " Where do you live? " " I used to live a good bit over there, in the French coun- try." She pointed with her arm in a certain direction, but as the points of the compass had no existence for Mrs. Rexford's newly immigrated intelligence, and as all parts of Canada, near and remote, seemed very much in CHAP. X] H7/AT NECESS/TV KNOWS "5 the same place in her iiolmlous vision of geography, the little inforiiuitiou tlie girl hail given was of no interest to her and she took little note of it. "Did you eonie from Quebec just now? " "Yes," replied the girl, after a moment's pause. Then, in answer to furtiier questions, she told a succint tale. She said that her fatlier had a farm; that he had died the week before; that she had no relatives in the place; tliat, having seen her father buried, she thought it best to come to an English-speaking locality, and wait there until she had time to write to her father's brother in Scotland. " Sad, sad story ! Lonely fate ! Brave girl ! " said Mrs. Rexford, shaking her head for a minute inside the waiting- room and rai)idly repeating the tale. "Yes, if it's true," said Sojdiia. But Mrs. Ilexford did not hear, as she had already turned her head out of the door again, and was commending Eliza White for the course she had taken. The grey-eyed Winifred, however, still turned inside to combat reproachfully Sophia's suspicions. " You would not doubt her word, Sophia, if you saw how cold and tired she looked." Mrs. Rexford seemed to argue concerning the stranger's truthfulness in very much the same way, for she was saying:— "And now, Eliza, will you be my servant? If you will come with me to Chellaston I will pay your fare, and I will take care of you until you hear from your uncle." "I do not want to be a servant." The reply was stolidly given. "What! do you wish to be idle?" " I will work in your house, if you like ; but I can pay ray own fare in the cars, and I won't be a servant." There was so much sullen determination in her manner that Mrs. Rexford did not attempt to argue the point. Take her, mamma," whispered Winifred. " How ill she iir\ CHAPTER XI. The village of Cliellaston was, in itself, insignificant. Its chief income was derived from summer visitors ; its largest building was an hotel, greatly frequented in summer; and its best houses were owned by townspeople, who used them only at that season. That which gave Cliellaston a position 96 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [hook 1 seems! And she must bo awfully lonely in tliis great coun- try all alone." Mrs. K(!xford, having turned into the room, was rapidly commenting to Sophia. "Says she will come, but won't be calh'd a servant, and can jmy her own fare. Very jjoculiar — but we read, you know, in that New England book, that that was just the independent way they felt about it. They can only induce slaves to be servants there, I believe." She gave this cursory view of the condition of affairs in the neighbouring States in an abstracted voice, and summed up her remarks by speaking out her decision in a more lively tone. " Well, we must have some one to help with the work. This girl looks strong, and her spirit in the matter signifies less." Then, turning to the girl without the door: " I think you will suit me, Eliza. You can stay with us, at any rate, till you hear from your uncle. You look strong and clean, and I'm sure you'll do your best to please me " — this with warning emphasis. " Come in now to the warmth beside us. We can make room in liere." The place was so small and the family so large that the last assurance was not wholly unnecessary. Mrs. Rexford brought Eliza in and set her near the stove. The girls and children gathered round her somewhat curiously, but she sat erect without seeming to notice them much, an expression of impassive, almost hardened, trouble on her pale face. ' i She was a. very tall, strong girl, and when she dropped the shawl back a little from her head they saw that she had red hair. CHAP. XI] ir/fAT NECESSITY KNOWS 97 and niimo iil)ove other pliioos ot the samo size in the coun- try wa.s iin institution ciilhHl "The New College," in whieh boys up to the age of eighteen w(a'e given a higher edueation than could be obtained at ordinary seluxds. The college wasascjuare brick building, not handsome, but coniniodious; and in the same enclosure with it were the head-master's house, and a boarding-house in which the assistant-nuisters lived witii the pupils. With that love of grand terms which a new country is apt to evince, the head-master was called "The l*rincii»al, " and his assistants "]*rofessors.''' The New CoUege was understood to have the future of a uni- versity, but its present function was meridy that of a public school. Chellaston was prettily situated by a well-wooded hill and a fair flowing river. The college, with some fields that were cultivated for its use, was a little apart from most of the houses, placed, both as to nhysical and social position, between the commonplace village and the farms of the undulating land around it; for, by a curious drift of cir- cumstances, the farms of this district were chiefly worked by Inglish gentlemen, whose families, in lieu of all other worldly advantage, held the more stoutly by their family traditions. In doing so they were but treasuring their only heirloom. And they did not expect to gain from the near future any new source of pride ; for it is not those who, as convention terms it, are the best born who most easily gather again the moss of prosperiLy when that which has been about them for generations has once been removed. They were, indeed, a set of people who exhibited more sweetness of nature than thrift. Elegance, even of the simplest sort, was almost unknown in their homes, and fash- ion was a word that had only its remotest echoes there; yet they prided themselves upon adhering strictly to rules of ])ehaviour which in their mother-country had already fallen into the grave of outgrown ideas. Their little soci- ety was, indeed, a curious thing, in which the mincing propriety of the Old World had wed itself right loyally to 98 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I the stern necessity of the New. How stern such necessity might be, the Kexford family, who came rolling into this state of things in tlieir own family carriage, had yet to learn. It was to the Principalship of the New College that Kobert Trenholme, by virtue of scholastic honours from Oxford, had attained. Although a young man for the post, it was admitted by all that he filled it admirably. The scliool had increased considerably in the three years of his management. And if Trenholme adapted himself to the place, the place was also adapted to him, for by it he held an assured standing in the country; he could, as the saying is, mix with the best; and he valued his position. Why should he not value it? He had won it honourably, and he cherished it merely as the greatest of his earthly goods, which he believed he held in due subordination to more heavenly benefits. Those lives are no doubt the most peace- ful in which self-interest and duty coalesce, and Trenholme's life at this period was like a fine cord, composed of these two strands twisted together with exquisite equality. His devotion to duty was such as is frequently seen when a man of sanguine, energetic temperament throws the force of his being into battle for the right. He had added to his school duties voluntary service in the small English church of Chellaston, partly because the congregation found it hard to support a clergyman; partly because he preferred keeping his schoolboys under the influence of his own sermons, which wei'i certainly superior to those of such clergymen as were likely to come there; and partly, if not chiefly, because the activity of his nature made such serving a delight to him. The small church, like the school, had been greatly improved since it had come under his hand, and the disinterestedness of his unpaid ministrations was greatly lauded. He was a very busy, and a successful, man, much esteemed by all who knew him. The New College was expected to become a university ; ilobert Trenholme hoped for this and expected to remain at its head, but this hope of his was by the way; he did not think of it often, for he loved work for its owi; CHAP. Xl] IVHAT JVECESS/rV AWOH^'S 99 6 S e s n s .1 f sake. Even the value he set on his present success was not often more actively in his mind than the value he set on the fresh air lie breathed. It was very occasionally that the pride of him came to the surface, and then chiefly when animated by the memory of the time v-hen he had been at a disadvantage in worldly things. Such memories came to him when he prepared to go to the railway station to meet the Rexfords. He concealed it perfectly, but it gave him certain swellings of heart to think that Miss Rexford would now gradually see all to which he had attained. When Captain Rexford had decided upon buying a farm at Chellaston, he had had some correspondence with Princi- pal Trenholme on the subject, having been put into com- munication with him by the widow of the relative at whose house Sophia and Trenholme had first met. This was the whole extent of the acquaintance. Of Sophia's stepmother and her numerous children Robert Trenholme knew nothing, save that a second family existed. Nor did Captain Rexford imagine that his eldest daughter had any distinct remem- brance of a man whom she had so casually known. Fathers are apt to assume that they know the precise extent of their daughters' acquaintanceships, for the same reason that most people assume that what they never heard of does not exist. Yet when Trenholme actually repaired to the station at the hour at which Captain Rexford had announced his arrival, it was a fact that many of his leisure thoughts for a month back had been pointing forward, like so many guide-posts, to the meeting that was there to take place, and it was also true that the Rexford family — older and younger — were prepared to hail him as a friend, simply because their knowledge of him, though slight, was so much greater than of any other being in the place to which they were come — and everything in this world goes by comparison. Now the main feature of the arrival of the Rexford family in Chellaston was that they brought their own carriage with them. It was an old, heavy carriage, for it had come into Captain Rexford's possession in the first place by inheri- 100 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I tance, and it was now a great many years since he had possessed horses to draw it. From its long and ignominious retreat in an outhouse it had lately emerged to be varnished and furbished anew, in order to make the handsomer appearance in the new country. It had been one of the considerations which had reconciled Mrs. Kexford to emi- gration, that on a farm this carriage could be used with little extra expense. Principal Trenholme had come to the station, which was a little way from the village, in a smart gig of his own. According to Captain Rexford's instructions, he had sent to the station a pair of horses, to be harnessed to the aforesaid carriage, which had been carefully brought on the same train with its owners. He had also sent of his own accord a comfortable waggon behind the horses, and he straightway urged that the family should repair in this at once to their new home, and leave the carriage to be set upon its wheels at leisure. As he gave this advice he eyed the wheelless coach with a curiosity and disfavour which was almost apparent through his studious politeness. His arguments, however, and Captain Rexford's, who agreed with him, were of no avail. Mrs. Eexford, partly from sentiment, partly from a certain pathetic vanity, had set her heart on driving to the new home in the old carriage. Captain Eexford's eldest son had helped to get the vehicle off the train, and was now working steadily with one of the station hands to get it upon its wheels. It was assuredly such a carriage as that bit of Canadian road had never seen before. The station loiterers, sometimes helping in its arrangement, sometimes merely looking on, gazed at it with unwavering attention. Robert Trenholme gazed at it also, and at last felt obliged to give some more distinct warning of difficulties he foresaw. "We have native horses," he said, with a good-humoured smile that leaped out of his eyes before it parted his lips; " we have horses, and we have ponies, and I am afraid that a pair of the one would be as serviceable in the long run as , I CHAP. XIl] WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOWS 101 a pair of the other in drawing it on these loads. Are you getting out carriage-horses from England, Captain Rex- ford?" Tlie gentleman addressed continued to set the cushions in their places, but in a minute he went back into the station, where by a stove he found his wife and Sophia warming themselves, the smallest children, and a pot of carriage oil. "You know, my dears, I never felt quite clear in my own mind that it was wise of us to bring the carriage." He held his hands to the warmth as he spoke. "Mr. Tren- holme, I find, seems to think it hc^avy for these roads." His wife heard him quite cheerially. " In weather like this nothing could be more desirable," said she, "than to have one's own comfortably cushioned carriage ; and besides, I have always told you we owe it to our children to show the people here that, whatever misfortunes we liave had, we have been people of consequence." She added after a moment in conclusion : " Harold has brought the best grease for the wheels." She had her way therefore, and in course of time the ladies, and as many of the children as could be crowded into the carriage, thus commenced the last stage of their journey. The others were driven on by Trenholme. As for the little boys, "a good run behind," their mother said, was just what they needed to warm them up. They began running behind, but soon ran in front, which rather confused Mrs. Rexford's ideas of order, but still the carriage lumbered on. Id ' 5 it CHAPTER XII. Captain Rexford had no fortune with his second wife; and their children numbered seven daughters and three sons. It was natural that the expenses of so large a family should have proved too much for a slender income in an English town where a certain style of living had been deemed a loa JVHAT NECESSlJy KNOWS [book i necessity. When, further, a mercantile disaster had swept away the larger part of this income, the anxious parents had felt that there was nothing left for their children but a choice between degrading dependence on the bounty of others and emigration. From the new start in life which the latter course would give they had large hopes. Accordingly, they gathered together all that they had, and, with a loan from a richer relati /e, purchased a house and farir in a locality where they were told their children would not wholly lack educational opportunities or society. This move of theirs was heroic, but whether wise or unwise remained to be proved \yj the result of indefinite years. The extent of their wealth was now this new property, an income which, in pro- portion to their needs, was a mere pittance, and the debt to the richer relative. The men who came to call on their new neighbour, and congratulate him on his clioice of a farm, did not knew how small was the income nor how big the debt, yet even they shook their heads dubiously as they thought of their own difficulties, and remarked to each other that such a large family was certainly a great responsibility. "I wonder," said one to another, "if Rexford had an idea in coming here that he would marry his daughters easily. It's a natural thing, you know, when one hears of the flower c :' British youth leaving England for the Colonies, to imagine that, in a place like this, girls would be at a premium. I did. When we came out I said to my wife that when our little girls grew up they might pick and choose for themselves from among a dozen suitors, but — well, this isn't just the locality for that, is it? " Both men laughed a little. They knew that, however difficult it might be to find the true explanation of the fact, the fact remained that there were no young men in Chellas- ton, that boys who grew up there went as inevitably else- where to make tlieir fortunes as they would have done from an English country town. Among the ladies who came to see Mrs. Rexford and ««if CHAP. Xii] WHAT NECESS/TV KNOWS «03 count her cliildren, the feeling concerning her was more nearly allied to kindly commiseration than she would at all have liked had she known it. They said that Captain llexford might succeed if his wife and daughters Each would complete the conditional clause in her own way, but it was clear to the minds of all that the success of the Kexford farm would depend to a great extent upon the economy and good management practised in the house. Nowthe Rexfords, man, woman, and child, had come with brave hearts, intending to work and to economise ; yet they found what was actually required of them different from all that their fancy had pictured; and their courage, not being obliged to face those dangers to which they had adjusted it, and being forced to face much to which it was not adjusted, suffered shock, and took a little time to rally into moderate animation. At the end of their weary journey they had found them- selves in a large wooden house, not new by any means, or smart in any of its appointments; and, as convenience is very much a matter of custom, it appeared to them incon- venient — a house in which room was set against room without vestige of lobby or passage-way, and in which there were almost as many doors to the outside as there were windows. They had bought it and its furniture as a mere adjunct to a farm which they had chosen with more care, and when they inspected it for the first time their hearts sank somewhat within them. Captain Rexford, with impressive sadness, remarked to his wife that there was a greater lack of varnish and upholstery and of traces of the turning lathe than he could have supposed possible in — *^ furniture." But his wife had bustled away before he had quite finished his speech. Whatever she might feel, she at least expressed no discouragement. Torture does not draw from a brave woman expressions of dismay. That which gave both Mrs. Rexford and Sophia much perplexity in the first day or two of the new life was that the girl Eliza seemed to them to prove wholly incompetent. 104 PVNAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I She moved in a dazed and weary fashion which was quite inconsistent with the intelligence and capacity'' occasionally displayed in her remarks; and had they in the first three days been able to hear of another servant, Mrs. Kext'urd would have abrujjtly cancelled her agreement with Eliza. At the end of that time, however, when there came a day on which Mrs. Kexford and Sophia were both too oxhausced by uni)acking and housework to take their ordinary share of responsibility, Eliza suddenly seemed to awake and shake herself into thought and action. She cleared the house of the litter of packing-cases, set their contents in order, and showed lier knowledge of the mysteries of the kitchen in a manner which fed the family and sent them to bed more comfortably than since their arrival. From that day Eliza became more cheerful; and she not only did her own work, but often aided others in theirs, and set the household right in all its various elforts towards becoming a model Canadian home. If the ladies had not had quite so much to learn, or if the three little children had not been quite so helpless, Eliza's work would have appeared more effective. As it was, the days passed on, and no tragedy occurred. It was a great relief to Captain and Mrs. Rexford in those days to turn to Principal Trenholme for society and advice. He was their nearest neighbour, and had easy opportunity for being as friendly and kind as he evidently desired to be. Captain Rexford pronounced him a fine fellow and a perfect gentleman. Captain Rexford had great natural courtesy of disposition. "I suppose, Principal Trenholme," said he blandly, as he entertained his visitor one day in the one family sitting- room, " I suppose that you are related to the Trenholmes of ?" Trenholme was playing with one of the little ones who stood between his knees. He did not instantly answer — indeed, Captain Rexford's manner was so deliberate that it left room for pauses. Sophia, in cloak and fur bonnet, CHAP, xiij WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 105 I was standing by the window, ready to take the children for their airing. Trenlioline found time to look up from his tiny playmate and steal a glance at lier handsome profile as she gazed, with thoughtful, abstracted air, out upon the snow. "Not a very near connection, Captain Rexford," was his reply; and it was given with that frank smile which always leaped first to his eyes before it showed itself about his mouth. It would have been impossible for a much closer observer than Captain Rexford to liave told on which word of this small sentence the emphasis had been given, or whether the smile meant that Principal Trenholme could have proved his relationship liad he chosen, or that he laughed at tlie notion of there being any relationship at all. Cap- tain Rexford accordingly iiiterpreted it just as suited his inclination, and mentioned to another neighbour in the course of a week that his friend, the Principal of the Col- lege, was a distant relative, by a younger branch probably, of the Trenholmes of , etc. etc., an item of news of which the whole town took account sooner or later. To Mrs. Rexford Trenholme was chiefly useful as a per- son of whom she could ask questions, and she wildly asked his advice on every possible subject. On account of Captain Rexford's friendly approval, and his value to Mrs. Rexford as a sort 01 guide to useful knowledge on the sub- ject of Canada in general and Chellaston in particular, Robert Trenholme soon became intimate, in easy Canadian fashion, with the newcomers ; that is, with the heads of the household, with the romping children and the pretty babies. The young girls were not sufficiently forward in social arts to speak much to a visitor, and with Sophia he did not feel at all on a sure footing. After this little conversation with Captain Rexford about his relatives, and when Sophia had received the other children from the hands of Eliza and repaired with them to the house door, Trenholme also took leave, and rose to accompany her as far as the gate. lo6 IVHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOWS [book i Sophia shivered a little when she stepped out upon the narrow wooden gallery in front of the door. The Rexford house was not situated in the midst of the farm, but between the main road that ran out of the village and the river that here lay for some distance parallel with the road. On the next lot of land stood an empty house in the centre of a larg'e deserted garden; and on the other side of the road, about a quarter of a mile off, stood the college buildings, which were plainly to be seen over flat fields and low log fences. Beyond the college grounds were woods and pastures, and beyond again rose Chellaston Mountain. This view was what Sophia and Trenholme looked upon as they stood on the verandah; and all that they sav — field, road, roof, tree, and hill — was covered with spfirkling snow. It was a week since the snow came, and Sophia still shivered a little whenever she looked at it. " I an sorry to see you do not look upon this scene as if ic rejoiced your heart," he said. "When you know it bettor, you will, I hope, love it as I do. It is a glorious climate. Miss Rexford; it is a glorious country. The depressions and fears that grow up with one's life in the Old World fall away from one in tiiis wonderful air, with the stimulus of a new world and a strong young nation all around. This snow is not cold; it is warm. In this garden of yours it is just now acting as a blanket for the germs of flowers that could not live through an English winter, but will live here, and next summer will astonish you with their richness. Nor is it cold for you; it is dry as dust; you can walk over it in moccasins, and not be damp: and it has covered away all the decay of autumn, conserving for you in the air such pure oxygen that it will be like new life in your veins, causing you to laugh at the frost." "I have not your enthusiasm," she replied. Together they led the unsteady feet of the little ones dow^n the crisp snow path which Harold's industrious shovel had made. Trenholme spoke briefly of the work he was trying to do CHAP. XII] IVHAT NKCESS/ry KNOT'S 107 cl If F IP lo in liis school. A clergyman has social licence to be serious which is not accorded to other men. Wherefore he spoke as a clergyman might speak to a friend, saying, in general terms, liow steep is the ascent when, among mundane affairs, human beings try to tread only where the angels of the higher life may lead. Sophia assented, feeling a little sharp because it seemed to her that he was taking up the thread of his acquaintance with her just where it had formerly parted when slie had thrown before him the gauntlet of such high resolves and heavenly aims as young girls can easily talk about when they know as yet nothing of their fulfilment. Whether or not Sophia knew more of their fulfilment since then, she had, at least, learned a more humble reverence for the very thought of such struggles, and she was quite ready to be- lieve that the man to whom she had once called to come onward had by this time far outstripped her in the race. She was ready for this belief, but she had not accepted it, because, as yet confused and excited by all that was new, she *had formed no conclusion whatever with regard to Trenholme. It had puzzled her somewhat from the outset to find him such a model of elegance in the matter of clothes and manners. She had, somehow, fancied that he would have a long beard and wear an old coat. Insteau of that, his usual manner of accosting her reminded her more of those fashion plates in which one sees tailors' blocks tak- ing off their hats to one another. She did not think this was to his disadvantage; she did not, as yet, think dis- tinctly on the matter at all. She certainly had no time to deliberate during this particular conversation, for her com- panion, having only a few minutes to utilise, was in a talkative humour. Having spoken of his own work, and made the more general observations on the difficulties of what is commonly called the "narrow road," in a quiet, honest way, he said something more personal. " I have always felt. Miss Rexford, that it would be a pleasure to me to see you again, because of the strength io8 WHAT NECESS/TV AWOIJ'S [book i and courage wliioh you managed to infuse into my youtli- ful aspirations; but now tliat I have seen you, will you permit me to say that you have been (juite unknowingly a help to me again? A week ago I was half-disheartened of my life because of the apparent sordidness of its daily duti«^s, and now that I have seen you giving your life to perform small and unassuming services for others, my own duties have appeared more sacred. I can't tell you how mu(^h I admire your unselfish devotion to these children. Don't think me rude because I say it. I often think we are shabby to one another because, in the strife, we do not frankly say when we are helped by seeing the brave light that some one else is making." They had stopped by the gate, for he was going one way and she and the little ones another. Two strong young firs, with snow upon their shelving branches, formed gate- posts. The long broad road was white as their footpath had been. Sophia answered : " There is no virtue in what I do, for, had I the choice, I certainly should not be their nurse- maid." "Do you know," he said, "I think when we see life in its reality, instead of in its seeming, we shall find that the greatest deeds have been done just because their doers believe that they could not do otherwise." " I don't see that. If circumstances shut us up to doing certain things, there is no virtue in doing them. There may be a little virtue in not repining at our fate, but not much." He did not answer for a minute, but broke the curl of a little snow-drift gently with his stick. Because he did not answer or say good-bye, Sophia tarried for a moment and then looked up at him. "Miss Rexford," he replied, "the voice of circumstances says to us just what we interpret it to say. It is in the needs must of a high nature that true nobility lies." Il CHAP, xiii] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 109 CHAPTER XIII. It is upon the anniversary of feasts that a family, if de- spondent at all, feels most despondent. So it fell out tliat at Christmas-time the home-siekness whieli hitlierto luid found its antidote in novelty and surprise now attacked the llexford household. The girls wept a good deal. Sophia chid them for it sharply. Captain Rexford carried a sol- emn face. The little boys were in worse pickles of mis- chief than was ordinary. Even jNfrs. Rexford was caught once or twice, in odd corners, hastily wiping away furtive tears. This general despondency seemed to reach a climax one afternoon some days before the end of the year. Without, the wind was blowing and snow was descending; inside, the housework dragged monotonously. The only lively people in the house were the little children. They were playing quite riotously in an upper room, under the care of the Canadian girl, Eliza; but their shouts only elicited sighs from Mrs. Rexford's elder daughters, who were help- ing her to wash the dinner dishes in the kitchen. These two elder daughters had, since childhood, always been dressed, so far as convenient, the one in blue, the other in red, and were nicknamed accordingly. Their mother thought it gave them individuality which they otherwise lacked. The red frock and the blue were any- thing but gay just now, for they were splashed and dusty, and the pretty faces above them showed a decided disposi- tion to pout and frown, even to shed tears. The kitchen was a long, low room. The unpainted wood of floor, walls, and ceiling was darkened scmewhat by time. Two square, four-paned windows were as yet uncurtained, except that Nature, with the kindness of a fairy helper, had supplied the lack of deft fingers and veiled the glass with such devices of the frost as resembled miniature land- no WHAT NEC ESS I TV KNOIVS [uooK i scapes of distant alp and nearer minaret. The largo, square cooking-stove smoked a little. Hetw(;en tlie stove and the other door stood tlie table, which held tlie dishes at which worked the neat, quick mother and her rather untidy and idle daughters. "Keally, Blue and lied! " The words were jerked out to conceal a sigh which had risen involuntarily. "This is disgraceful." Her sharp brown eyes fell on the pile of dishes she had washed, which the two girls, who were both drying them, failed to diminish as fast as she increased it. " Our cloths are wet," said Blue, looking round the ceiling vaguely, as if a dry dish-towel might bo lying somewhere on a rafter. " I declare " the mother began, tapping her foot. But what she was going to declare was never known, for just then a knock at the outer door diverted tlieir attention. However commonplace may bo the moment after a door is opened, the moment before the opening is apt to be full of interest, for one can never know but that some cause of delightful excitement is on the other side. It was Blue who opened the door. She did not at first open it very wide, for she had learned by experience how much icy air could rush in, and the other two, watching from behind, saw her answering some salutation with dubi- ous politeness. Then, after a moment, they saw her open it more widely, and with a shy but hospitable inclination of tlie pretty head — "Will you walk in? " said Blue. The young man wlio immediately entered had a very smart appearance to eyes which had grown accustomed to the working garb of father and brother. He was, more- over, handsome to a degree that is not ordinary. The curly hair from which he had lifted his fur cap was black and glossy as a blackbird's plumage, and the moustache, which did iiot cover the full red lips, matched the hair, save that it seemed of finer and softer material. His brown eyes had the glow of health and good spirits in them. ,.) cnAi'. xiiij lyi/AT NECESSITY KNOWS III 1 P "J)ear me!" Mrs. Roxford gavo this involuntary ex- clamation of surprise; tlien she turned inciuiringly to the visitor. It was iiot in her nature to regard him with an unfriendly eye; and as for l>lue and Red, a spot of warm colour had come into each of their sorrowful cheeks. They were too well bred to look at each other or stare at the stranger, but there was a flutter of pleased interest about the muscles of their rosy lips that needed no expres- sive glances to interpret it. To be sure, the next few minutes' talk rather rubbed the bloom off their pleasure, as one rubs beauty off a plum by handling; but the plum is still sweet; and the pleasure •was still there, being composed purely of the excitement of meeting a young human creature apparently so akin to themselves, but different with that mysterious difference which nature sets between masculine and feminine attri- butes of mind and heart. The young man was an American, Any one experienced in American life would liave observed that the youth was a wanderer, his tricks of speech and behaviour savouring, not of one locality, but of many. His accent and manner showed it. He was very mannerly. He stated, without loss of time, that, hearing tliat they had lately come to the country and had some rooms in their house which they did not use, he had taken the liberty of calling to see if they could let him a couple of rooms. He was anxious, he said, to set up as a dentist, and had failed, so far, to find a suitable place. The disappointment which Blue and Red experienced in finding that the handsome youth was a dentist by profession was made up for by the ecstasy of amusement it caused them to think of his desiring to set up his business in their house. They would almost have forgiven Fate if she had •^withdrawn her latest novelty as suddenly as she had sent him, because his departure would have enabled them to give vent to the mirth the suppression of which was at that moment a pain almost as great as their girlish natures could bear. 112 WHAT NECESSITY KNOIVS [book I Oh, no, Mrs. Rexford said, they had no rooms to let in the house. The stranger muttered something under his breath, which to an acute ear might have sounded like ''Oh, Jemima!" but he looked so very disconsolate they could not help being sorry for him as he immediately replied, soberly enough, " 1 am sorry. I can't think of any place else to go, ma'am. I'm real tired, for I've been walking this long time in the loose snow. Will you permit me to sit and rest for a time on the doorstep right outside here till I can think what I better do next? " l^lue fingered the back of a chair nervously. "Take a chair by the stove and rest yourself," said Mrs. Rexford. She had a dignity about her in dealing witli a visitor that was not often apparent in other circumstances. She added, "We have too lately been strangers ourselves to wish to turn any one weary from our door." Then, in whispered aside, "Dry your dishes, girls." The dignity of bearing with which she spoke to him altered as she threw her head backward to give this last command. "I tluank you from ray heart, madam." The young man bowed — that is, he made an angle of himself for a moment. He moved the chair to which she had motioned him, but did not sit down. "It is impossible for me to sit," said he, fervently, "while a lady stands." The quaintness and novelty in his accent made them unable to test his manners by any known standard. For all they knew, the most cultured inhabitant of Boston, New York, or Washington might have behaved precisely in this way. "Sit down, mamma," whispered Blue and Red, with praiseworthy consideration for their mother's fatigue; "we'll finish the dishes." Tlie girls perceived what, perhaps, the stranger had already perceived, that if icheir mother consented to sit there was a chance of a more equal conversation. And Mrs, If o n :n 5t n CHAP, xiii] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS "3 Rexfcrd sat down. Her mind had been unconsciously relieved from the exercise of great dignity by the fact that the stranger did not appear to notice her daughters, appar- ently assuming that they were only children. " It is real kind of you, ma'am, to be so kind to me. I don't think any lady has seemed so kind to me since I saw my own mother last." He looked pensively at the stove. "Your mother lives in the United States, I suppose." He shook his head sadly. "In heaven now." "Ah! " said Mrs. Rexford; and then in a minute, "I am glad to see that you feel her loss, I am sure." Here she got half off her chair to poke the damper of the stove. "Tliere is no loss so great as the loss of a motlier." " No, and I ahvays feel her loss most when I am tired and hungry; because, when I was a little chap, you know, it was always when I was tired and hungry that I went home and found her just sitting there, quite natural, waiting for me." Blue and Red looked at the cupboard. They could not conceive how their mother could refrain from an oifer of tea. But, as it was, she gave the young man a sharp glance and questioned him further. Where had he come from? When had he arrived? He had come, he said, from the next station on the rail- way. He had been looking there, and in many other places, for an opening for his work, and for various reasons he had now decided that Chellaston was a more eligible place than any. He had come in the early morning, and had called on the doctor and on Principal Trenholme of the College. They had both agreed that there was an opening for a young dentist who would do his work well, charge low prices, and be content to live cheaply till the village grew richer. " It's just what I want," he said. "I don't seem to care much about making money if I can live honestly among kind- hearted folks. ^ "But surely," cried Mrs. Rexford, "neither Dr. Nash nor 114 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book i Principal Trenliolme suggested to you that Captain llexford could give you rooms for " She was going to say " pull- ing out teeth," but she omitted that. The young man looked at her, evidently thinking of something else. " Would you consider it a liberty, ma'am, if I " He stopped diffidently, for, seeing by his manner that he meditated immediate action of some sort, she looked at him so fiercely that her glance interrupted him for a moment, " if I were to stop the stove smoking?" He com- pleted the sentence with great humility, evidently puzzled to know how he had excited her look of offence. She gave another excited poke at the damper herself, and, having got her liand blacked, wiped it on her coarse grey apron. The diamond keeper above the wedding-ring looked oddly out of place, but not more so than the small, shapely hand that wore it. Seeing that she had done the stove no good, she sat back in her chair with her hands crossed upon her now dirty apron. " You can do nothing with it. Before we came to Canada no one told us that the kitchen stoves invariably smoked. Had they done so I should have chosen another country. However, as I say to my children, we must make the best of it now. There's no use crying; there's no use lamenting. It only harasses their father." The last words were said with a sharp glance of reproof at Blue and Red. This mother never forgot the bringing up of her children in any one's presence, but she readily forgot the presence of others in her remarks to her children. " But you aren't making the best of it," said the visitor. With that he got up, carefully lifted an iron piece in the back of the stove, turned a key thus disclosed in the pipe, and so materially altered the mood of the fire that in a few moments it stopped smoking and crackled nicely. "Did you ever, mamma!" cried the girls. A juggler's feat could not have entertained them more. " If for a time, first off, you had someone in the house who had lived in this country, you'd get on first class," said the youth. CHAP. XIII] WHAT NECESSJTV KNOIVS^ IIS )0f lily ;n. )r. the )e, w Lse lid "But you know, my dears," Mrs. Rexford spoke to her daughters, forgetting the young man for a moment as before, " if I had not supposed that Eliza understood tlie stove I should have inquired of Principal Trenholme before now." ";May I enquire where you got your help?" asked the American. "If she was from this locality she certainly ought to have comprehended the stove." "She is a native of the country." "As I say," he went on, with some emphasis, "if she comes from hereabouts, or further west, she ought to have understood this sort of a stove; but, on the other hand, if she comes from the French district, where they use only the common box stove, she would not understand this kind." He seemed to be absorbed entirely in the stove, and in the benefit to them of having a "help," as he called her, who understood it. "I think she comes from the lumbering country some- where near the St. Lawrence," said Mrs. Rexford, examin- ing the key in the stove-pipe. She could not have said a moment before where Eliza had come from, but this phrase seemed to sum up neatly any remarks the girl had let fall about her father's home. " That accounts for it! Will you be kind enough to let me see her? I could explain the mechanism of this stove to her in a few words; then you, ma'am, need have no further trouble." She said she should be sorry to trouble him. If the key were all, she could explain it. "Pardon me" — he bowed again — "it is not all. There are several inner dampers at the back here, which it is most important to keep free from soot. If I might only explain it to the help, she'd know once for all. I'd be real glad to do you that kindness." Mrs. Rexford had various things to say. Her speeches were usually complex, composed of a great variety of short sentences. She asked her daughters if they thought Eliza would object to coming down. She said that Eliza was ii6 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book i invaluable, but she did not always like to do as she was asked. She thought the girl had a high temper. She had no wish to rouse her temper; she had never seen anything of it; she didn't wish to. Perhaps Eliza would like to come down. Then she asked her daughters again if they thought Eliza would come pleasantly. Her remarks showed the track of her will as it veered round from refusal to assent, as bubbles in muddy water show the track of a diving insect. Finally, because the young man had a strong will, and viras quite decided as to what he thought best, the girls were sent to fetch Eliza. Blue and Red ran out of the kitchen. When they got into the next room they clasped one another and shook with silent laughter. • As the door between the rooms did not shut tightly, they adjured one another, by dances and ges- tures, not to laugh loud. Blue danced round the table on her toes as a means of stifling her laughter. Then they both ran to the foot of the attic stair and gripped each other's arms very tight by way of explaining that the situ- ation was desperate, and that one or other must control her voice sufficiently to call Eliza. The dining-room they were in was buiit and furnished in the same style as the kitchen, save that here the wood was painted slate-colour and a clean rag carpet covered the floor. The upper staircase, very steep and dark, opened off it at the further end. All the light from a square, small-paned window fell sideways upon the faces of the girls as they stretched their heads towards the shadowed covert of the stairs. And they could not, could not, speak, although they made gestures of despair at each other and mauled each other's poor little arms sadly in the endeavour to prove how hard they were trying to be sober. If any one wants to know precisely what they were laugh- ing at, the only way would be to become for a time one of twv/ girls to whom all the world is a matter of mutual mirth except when it is a matter of mutual tears. CHA> . XIII] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 117 at [ed ey he [de rd h- lof bh Although it seemed very long to them, it was, after all, only a minute before Blue called in trembling tones, "Eliza!" "Eliza!" calhid Red. "Eliza! Eliza'" they both called, and though there was that in their voices which made it perfectly apparent to the young man in the next room that they were laughing, so grand was their composure compared with what it had been before, that they thought they had succeeded admirably. But when a heavy foot was heard overhead and an answering voice, and it was necessary to explain to Eliza wherefore she was called, an audible laugh did escape, and then Blue and Red scampered upstairs and made the com- munication there. It spoke much for the strength and calibre of character of the girl who had so lately come into this family that a few minutes later, when the three girls entered the kitchen, it was Eliza who walked first, with a bearing equal to that of the other two and a dignity far greater. The young man, wlio had been fidgeting with the stove, looked up gravely to see them enter, as if anxious to give his lesson; but had any one looked closely it would have been seen that his acute gaze covered the foremost figure with an intensity of observation that was hardly called for if he took no other interest in her than as a transient pupil in the matter of stove dampers. Perhaps any one might have looked with interest at her. She was evidently young, but there was that in her face that put years, or at least experience of years, between her and the pretty young things that followed her. She was largely made, and, carrying a dimpled child of two years upon her shoulder, she walked erect, as ? luthern women walk with their burdens on their heads. It detracted little that her gown was of the coarsest, and that her abundant red hair was tossed by the child's restless hands. Eliza, as she entered the kitchen, was, if not a beautiful girl, a girl on the eve of splendid womanhood} and the young man, per- ii8 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I ceiving this, almost faltered in his gaze, perhaps also in the purpose he was pursuing. The words of the lesson he had ready seemed to be forgotten, although his outward composure did not fail him. Eliza came near, the child upon her shoulder, looked at him and waited. "Eliza will hear what you have to say," said Mrs. Rex- ford. "Oh," said he, and then, whatever had been the cause of his momentary pause, he turned it off with the plea tliat he had not supposed this to be " the — young lady who — wished to learn about the stove." She received what he had to say without much apprecia- tion, remarking that, with the exception of the one key, she had known it before. As for him, he took up his cap to go. " Good-day, ma'am, " he said; "I'm obliged for your hospitality. Ladies, I beg leave now to retire." He made his bow elaborately, first to Mrs. Rexford, then in the direction of the girls. "My card, ma'am," he said, presenting Mrs. Rexford with the thing he mentioned. Then he went out. On the card was printed, "Cyril P. Harkness, M.D.S." It was growing so dark that Mrs. Rexford had to go to the window to read it. As she did so, the young man's shadow passed below the frosted pane as he made his way between snow-heaps to the main road. CHAPTER XIV. Next day Eliza went out with two of the little children. | It was in the early afternoon, and the sun shone brightly. Eliza had an errand down the street, but every one knows that one does not progress very fast on an errand with a toddler of two years at one's side. Eliza sauntered, giving CHAP. XIV] kVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS "9 )> to r |\vs a soothing answers to the little one's treble remarks, and only occasionally exerting herself to keep the liveliness of her older charge in check. Eliza liked the children and the sunshine and the road. Her saunter was not an undignified one, nor did she neglect her duty in any particular ; but all the while there was an under-current of greater activity in her mind, and the under-thoughts were occupied wholly and entirely with lierself and her own interests. After walking in the open road for a little while she came under tlie great elm trees that held their leafless limbs in wide arch over the village street. Here a footpath was shovelled in the snow, on either side of the sleigh road. The sun was throwing down the graceful lines of elm twigs on path and snowdrift. The snow lawns in front of the village houses were pure and bright; little children played in them with tiny sledge and snow spade, often under the watchful eye of a mother who sat sewing behind the win- dow pane. Now and then sleighs passed on the central road with a cheerful jingle of bells. When Eliza, with the children, came to the centre of the village, it became necessary to cross the street. She was bound for the largest shop, that stood under part of the great hotel, and just here, opposite the hotel, quite a num- ber of sleighs were passing. Eliza picked up the little one in her arms, and, taking the other child by the hand, essayed to cross. But one reckons without one's host in counting surely on the actions of children. Sturdy five- year-old baulked like a little horse, and would not come. Eliza coaxed in vain. A long line of draught-horses, dragging blue box-sleighs, came slowly up the road, each jingling a heavy belt of bells. Five-year-old was frightened and would not come. Eliza, without irritation, but at the same time without hesitation, took it by the waist under her left arm and started again. She got half across before the child seemed thoroughly to realise what was occurring, and then, with head and arms in front and little gaitered legs behind, it began to struggle so violently tl tt the young 120 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book i woman, strong and composed as she was, was brought for a minute to a standstill. Two men were watching her from the smoking-room of the hotel ; the one an elderly man, the owner of the house, had his attention arrested by the calm force of character Eliza was displaying; the other, the young American den- tist, saw in the incident an excuse for interference, and he rushed out now to the rescue, and gallantly carried the little naughty one safely to the right side of the road. ^ Eliza, recognising him, saw that he was looking at her | with the pleasant air of an old acquaintance — one, in fact, who knew her so well that any formal greeting was unnec- essary — not that she knew anything about greetings, or what might or might not be expected, but she had an indis- tinct sense that he was surprisingly friendly. " How's the stove going? " then he asked. He escorted her into the shop, and superintended her little purchases in a good-natured, elder-brother fashion. That done, he carried the elder child across the road again, and Eliza went upon her way back down the long narrow pavement, with the children at her side. She had shown nothing to the young man but composed appreciation of his conduct. She was, iiowever, conscious that he would not have been so kind to any girl he hap- pened to meet. "He admires me," thought Eliza to her- self. For all that, she was not satisfied with the encounter. She felt that she had not played her part well ; she had been too — had been too — she did not know what. She thought if she had held her head higher and shown her- self less thankful — yes, there had been something amiss in her behaviour that ought to be corrected. She could not define what she had done, or ought to have done. How could she? An encounter of this sort was as new to her as Mrs. Rexford's sewing machine, which she had not yet been allowed to touch. Yet had she been shut up alone with the machine, as she was now shut up to revise her own conduct within herself, she would, by sheer force of f CHAP. XIV] JVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 121 t I determined intelligence, have mastered its intricacy to a large degree without asking aid. And o with this strong idea that she must learn how to act differently to this young man; dim, indeed, as was her idea of what was lack- ing, or what was to be gained, she strove with it in no fear of failure. She raised her head as she walked, and recast the inter- view just past in another form more suited to her vague ideal, and again in another. She had a sense of power within her, that sense which powerful natures have, with- out in the least knowing in what direction the power may go forth, or when they will be as powerless as Samson shaven. She only felt the power and its accompanying impulses; she supposed that in all ways, at all times, it was hers to use. In a day or two Cyril Harkness met Eliza in the street again, and took occasion to speak to her. This time she was much less obliging in her manner. She threw a trifle of indifference into her air, looking in front of her instead of at him, and made as if she wished to proceed. Had this interview terminated as easily as the other, she would have been able to look back upon it with complete satisfac- tion, as having been carried on, on her part, according to her best knowledge of befitting dignity ; but, unfortunately for her, the young American was of an outspoken dis- position, and utterly untrammelled by those instincts of conventionality which Eliza had, not by training, but by inheritance from he** law-abiding and custom-loving Scotch ancestry. " Say," said he, "are you mad at anything? " He gained at least this much, that she instantly stared at him. "If you aren't angry with me, why should you act crusty? " he urged. " You aren't half as pleasant as t'other day." Eliza had not prepared herself for this free speaking, and her mind was one that moved slowly. 122 WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOWS [book I "I must take the children home," she said. "I'm not angry. I wasn't pleasant tliat I know of." "You ought to be pleasant, any way; for I'm your best friend. " Eliza was not witty, and she really could not think of any answer to this astonishing assertion. Again she looked at him in simple surprise. "Well, yes, I am; although you don't know it. There isn't a man round Turriffs who has tlie least idea in the world where you are, for your friends left you asleep when they came out wil i the old gentleman; when I twigged how you got off 1 never told a word. Your father had been seen " (here he winked) " near Dalhousie, wandering round! But they won't find you unless I tell them, and I won't." "Won't find me unless you tell them," repeated Eliza slowly, the utmost astonishment in her tone. " Wlio? " So vague and great was the wonder in her voice that he brought his eyes to interrogate hers in sudden surprise. He saw only simple and strong interest on the face of a simple and strong country girl. He had expected a differ- ent response and a different expression. He put his tongue in the side of his cheek with the air of an uncontrolled boy who has played a trump-card in vain. "Say," said he, "didn't you, though?" "Didn't I?" said Eliza, and after a minute she said, "What?" The young man looked at her and smiled. His smile suggested a cunning recognition that she was deceiving him by pretended dulness. At this Eliza looked excessively offended, and, with her head aloft, began to push on the little sleigh with the baby in it. "Beg your pardon, ma'am," he said with sudden humil- ity, but with a certain lingering in his voice as if he could not relinquish his former idea as suddenly as he wished to appear to do. "I see I've made a mistake." ■•??- CHAP, xiv] IVHAT NECESS/TV KNOWS 123 Eliza hesitated in lier onward movement. "But what was it you were going to tell about me?" She spoke as if she had merely then remembered how the conversation began. His recantation was now complete. " Nothing; oh, noth- ing. T'was just my fun, miss." She surveyed him witli earnest disapprobation. "You're not a very sensible young man, I'm afraid." She said this severely, and then, with great dignity, she went home. The young man lingered for a minute or two by the snow piles in front of the hotel where they had been standing. Then he went into the hotel with the uncertain step that betokens an undecided mind. When he got to the window he looked out at her retreating figure — a white street with this grey-clad healthy-looking girl walking down it, and the little red box-sleigh with the baby in it which she pushed before her. He was quite alone, and he gave vent to an emphatic half-whisper to himself. " If she did it, she's a magnificent deep one — a magnifi- cent deep one." There was profound admiration in his voice. That evening it was Mrs. Kexford who happened to wipe the tea-things while Eliza washed them. " That young Mr. Harkness, the dentist — " began Eliza. "Yes," said Mrs. Rexford, alert. " Twice when I've been to the shop he's tried to make himself pleasant to me and the children. I don't suppose he means any harm, but he's not a sensible young man, I think." "You're a very sensible girl, Eliza," said Mrs. Rexford, with quick vigour and without any sense of contrast. "It doesn't matter to me," went on Eliza, "for I don't answer him more than I can help; but if he was to talk to the other girls when they go out, I suppose they'd know not to notice him too much." Mrs. Rexford was one of those people who get accustomed 124 WHAT NECESSfTY KNOWS [book I to circumstances in the time that it takos otlicrs to begin to wonder at them. Slie often took for granted now that Eliza wouhl consider her daugliters as entirely on a level with herself, but less sensible. It miglit not be wholly agreeable; neither, to Mrs. Rexford's mind, was it .agreea- ble to have the earth covered with snow for four montlis of the year; but she had ceased wondering at that plienomenon a minute after she had first read of it in a book of travels, and all the ever-fresh marvel of its glossy brightness had failed to bring fresh comment to her lips, or to make her mind more familiar with the idea. In the same way, she had accepted Eliza's position and character as a complex fact which, like the winter, liad advantages and disadvantages. Mrs. Kexford put up witli tlie latter, was thankful for the former, and wasted no more thoughts on the matter. Eliza's last remark, however, was a subject for considera- tion, and with Mrs. liexford consideration was speech. " Dear me ! " she said. " Well ! " Then she took a few paces backward, dish-cloth and dish still in hand, till she brought herself opposite the next room door. The long kitchen was rather dark, as the plates were being washed by the light of one candle, but in the next room Captain liexford and his family were gathered round a table upon which stood lamps giving plenty of light. The mother addressed the family in general. "The dentist," said she, "talks to Eliza when she goes to the shop. Blue and Red ! if he should speak to you, you must show the same sense Eliza did, and take not the slightest notice." Sophia had asked what the dentist said to Eliza, and Mrs. Rexford had reproved the girls for laughing, while the head of the family prepared himself to answer in his kindly, leisurely, and important way. "To 'take not the slightest notice ' is, perhaps, requiring more of such young heads than might be possible. It would be difficult even for me to take no notice whatever of a young man who accosted me in a place like this. CHAP. XIV] WHAT NECESS/TV KNOWS 135 Severity, mild displeasure, or a determinatiou not to speak, might be shown." "If necessary," said Sophia; "but " "If necessary," the father corrected himself, emphasizing his words with a gentle tap of his fingers on the table. "I only mean if necessary, of course." "People have such easy-going ways here," said Sophia. "Don't you think, mamma, a little ordinary discretion on the girls' part would be enough? lUue and Red have too much sense, I suppose, to treat him as an equal ; but they can be polite." Eliza, overhearing this, decided that she would never treat the young American as an equal, although she had no idea why she should not. Let it not be supposed that Mrs. Rexford had idled over the dish she was wiping. The conversation was, in fact, carried on between the family in the bright sitting-room and an intermittent appearance of Mrs. Rexford at the door of the shady kitchen. Twice she had disappeared towards Eliza's table to get a fresh plate and come again, rubbing it. " Ah, girls," she now cried, " Sophia is always giving you credit for more sense than I'm afraid you possess. No giggling, now, if this young fellow should happen to say 'good morning.' Just 'good morning' in return, and pass on — nothing more." The father's leisurely speech again broke in and hushed the little babble. " Certainly, my dear daughters, under such circumstances as your mother suggests; to look down modestly, and answer the young man's salutation with a little primness, and not to hesitate in your walk — that, I should think, is perhaps the course of conduct your mother means to indi- cate." "It strikes me," said Harold, the eldest son, "a good deal depends on what he did say to Eliza. Eliza ! " This last was a shout, and the girl responded to it, so 126 WHAT JVECESS/TV KNOWS [hook I that there were now two figures at the door, Mrs. Kexford drying the dish, and Eliza standing quite quietly and at ease. "Yes, my son," responded Captain Rexford, "it does depend a good deal on what he did say to Eliza. Now, Eliza " (this was the beginning of a judicial inquiry), " I understand from Mrs. llexford that " "I've heard all that you have said," said Eliza. "I've been just here." " Ah ! Then without any preface " (he gave a wave of his hand, as if putting aside the preface), "I might just ask you, Eliza, what this young — Ilarkness, I believe his name is — what " "He's just too chatty, that's all that's the matter with him," said Eliza. "He took off his hat and talked, and he'd have been talking yet if I hadn't come away. There was no sense in what he said, good or bad." The children were at last allowed to go on Avith their lessons. When the dish-washing was finished and Mrs. Rexford came into the sitting-room, Sophia took the lamp by the light of which she had been doing the family darning into the kitchen, and she and Harold established themselves there. Harold, a quiet fellow about nineteen, was more like his half-sister than any other member of the family, and there was no need that either s'lOuld explain to the other why they were glad to leave the nervous briskness of the more occuf ied room. It was their hab't to spend their evenings here, and Sophia arranged that Eliza should bring her own sewing and work at it under her direction. Harold very often read aloud to them. It was astonishing how quickly, not imperceptibly, but determinedly, the Canadian girl took on the habits and manners of the lady beside her; not thereby producing a poor imitation, for Eliza was not imitative, but by erireful study reproducing in herself much of Sophia's refineirent. CHAP. XV] WHAT NECESaiTY KNOWS 127 CHAPTEE XV. That evening Blue and Red were sent to bed rather in disgrace, because they had professed themselves too sleepy to hnish sewing a seam their mother had given them to do. Very sleepy, very glad to fold up their work, they made their way, through the cold empty room which was intended to be the drawing-room when it was furnished, to one of the several bedrooms that opened off it. There was only one object in the empty room which they passed through, and that was the big family carriage, for which no possible use could be found during the long winter, and for the storing of which no outside place was considered good enough. It stood wheelless in a corner, with a large grey cloth over it, and"^ the girls passing it with their one flickering candle looked at it a little askance. They had the feeling that something might be within or behind it which would bounce out at them. Once, however, ^vithin their small whitewashed bedroom, they felt quite safe. Their spirits rose a little when they shut the door, for now there was no exacting third person to expect anything but what they chose to give. Theirs was that complete happiness of two persons when it has been long proved that neither ever does anything which the other does not like, and neither ever wants from the other what is not naturally given. They were still sleepy when they unbuttoned each other's frocks, but when they had come to the next stage of shak- ing out their curly hair they began to make remarks which tended to dispel their drowsiness. Said Blue, "Is it very dreadful to be a dentist? " Said Red, " Yes ; horrid. You have to put your fingers in people's mouths, you know." " But doctors have to cut off legs, and doctors are quite " There is another advantage in perfect union of twin souls, 128 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I and that is, that it is never necessary to finish a remark the end of which does not immediately find expression on the tip of the tongue, for the other always knows what is going to be said. " Yes, I know doctors are, " replied Red ; " still, you know, Principal Trenholme said Mr. Harkness is not a well-bred American." "His first name is Cyril. I saw it on the card," replied Blue, quitting the question of social position. 'lo's a lovely name," said Red, earnestly. "And I'll tell you," said Blue, turning round with sud- den earnestness and emphasis, " I think he's the handsomest young man I ever saiv." The rather odd plan Mrs. Rexford had hit on for lessen- ing the likeness betwee.i these two, clothing each habitually in a distinctive colour, had not been carried into her choice of material for their dressing-gowns. These garments were white; and, as a stern mood of utility had guided their mother's shears, they were short and almost shapeless. The curly hair which was being brushed over them had stopped its growth, as curly hair often does, at the shoulders. In the small whitewashed room the two girls looked as much like choristers in surplices as anything might look, and their sweet oval faces had that perfect freshness of youth which is strangely akin to the look of holiness, in spite of the absolute frivolity of conduct which so often characterises young companionship. When Blue made her earnest little assertion, she also made an earnest little dab at the air with her brush to emphasise it; and Red, letting her brush linger on her curly mop, replied with equal emphasis and the same earnest, open eyes, "Oh, so do I." This decided, there was quiet for a minute, only the soft sound of brushing. Then Red began that pretty little twittering which bore to their laughter when in full force the same relation that the first faint chit, chit, chit of a bird bears to its full song. « s I CHAP. XV] IV//AT NECESSITY KNOIVS 129 10 " Weren't papa and mamma funny when they talked about what we should do if he spoke to us?" She did not finish her sentence before merriment made it difficult for her to pronounce the words ; and as for Blue, she was obliged to throw herself on the side of the bed. Then again Blue sat up. "You're to look down as you pass him, Eed — like this, look!" " That isn't right." Eed said this with a little shriek of delight. "You're smiling all over your face — that won't do." "Because I caiiH keep my face straight. Oh, Eed, what shall we do? I know that if we ever see him after this we shall simply die." " Oh, yes " — with tone of full conviction — " I know we shall." "But we shall meet him." They became almost serious for some moments at the thought of the inevitableness of the meeting and the hope- lessness of conducting themselves with any propriety. "And w> ^t will he think?" continued Blue, in. sympa- thetic distress ; " he will certainly think we are laughing at him, for he will never imagine how much we have been amused." Eed, however, began to brush her hair again. "Blue," said she, "did you ever try to see how you looked in the glass when your eyes were cast down? You can't, you know." Blue immediately tried, and admitted the difficulty. "I wish I could," said Eed, "for then I should know how I should look when he had spoken to me and I was passing him." "Well, do it, and I'll tell you." " Then you stand there, and I'll come along past and look down just when I meet you." Eed made the experiment rather seriously, but Blue cried out : 130 WHAT NECESSITY KNOIVS [book i " Oh, you looked at me out of the corner of your eyQ just as you were looking down — that'll never do." "I didn't mean to. Now look! I'm doing it again." The one white-gowned figure stood with its back to the bed while the other through its little acting down the middle of the room. " That's better " — critically. "Well," pursued Red, with interest, "how does it look?" " Rather nice. I shouldn't wonder if he fell in love with you." This was a sudden and extraordinary audacity of thought. " Oh, Blue ! " — in shocked tones — " how could you think of such a thing! " She reproached her sister as herself. It was actually the first time such a theme had been broached even in their private converse. "Well," said Blue, stoutly, "he might, you know. Such things happen." "I don't think it's quite nice to think of it," said Red, meditatively. "It isn't nice," said Blue, agreeing perfectly, but unwill- ing to recant; "still, it may be our duty to think of it. Sophia said once that a woman was always more or less responsible if a man fell in love with her." " Did Sophia say that? " Weighty worlds of responsibility seemed to be settling on little Red's shoulders. "Yes; she was talking to mamma about something. So, as it's quite possible he might fall in love with us, we ought to consider the matter." "You don't think he's falling in love with Eliza, do you?" "Oh no! " — promptly — "but then Eliza isn't like us." Red looked at her pretty face in the glass as she con- tinued to smooth out the brown curls. She thought of Eliza's tall figure, immobile white face, and crown of red hair. "No," she said, meditatively; "but, Blue" — this quitQ seriously — "I hope he won't fall in love with us." CHAP. XV] WHAT NECESSirV KNOWS 131 I, do I" 3on- of red "Oh, so do I; for it would make him feel so miserable. But I think, Red, when you looked down you did not look prim enough — you know papa said ' prim. ' Now, you stand, and I'll do it." So Blue now passed down the little narrow room, but when she came to the critical spot, the supposed meeting ground, her desire to laugh conflicting with the effort to pull a long face, caused such a wry contortion of her plump visage that seriousness deserted them once more, and they bubbled over in mirth that would have been boisterous had it not been prudently muffled in the pillows. After that they said their prayers. But when they had taken off the clumsy dressing-gowns and got into the feather- bed under the big patchwork quilt, like two little white rabbits nestling into one another, they reverted once more to their father's instructions for meeting the dentist, and giggled themselves to sleep. Another pair of talkers, also with some common attri- butes of character, but with less knowledge of each other, were astir after these sisters had fallen asleep. Most of the rooms in the house were on the ground-floor, but there were two attic bedrooms opening off a very large room in the roof which the former occupant had used as a granary. One of these Sophia occupied with a child; the other had been given to Eliza. That night, when Sophia was composing herself to sleep, she heard Eliza weeping. So smothered were the sounds of sorrow that she could hardly hear them. She lifted her head, listened, then, putting a long fur cloak about her, went into the next room. No sooner was her hand on the latch of Eliza's door than all sound ceased. She stood for a minute in the large, dark granary. The draught in it was almost great enough to be called a breeze, and it whispered in the eaves which the sloping rafters made round the edges of the floor as a wind might sigh in some rocky cave. Sophia opened the door and went in. "What is the matter, Eliza?" I 132 PVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book i Even in the almost darkness she could see that the girl's movement was an involuntary feigning of surprise. "Nothing." " I used to hear you crying when we first came, Eliza, and now you have begun it again. Tell me what troubles you. m Why do you pretend that nothing is the matter?" ™ The cold glimmer of the light of night reflected on snow came in at the diamond-shaped window, and the little white bed was just shadowed forth to Sophia's sight. The girl in it might have been asleep, she remained so quiet. " Are you thinking about your father? " "I don't know." "Do you dislike being here?" "No; but " " But what? What is troubling you, Eliza? You're not a girl to cry for nothing. Since you came to us I have seen that you are a straightforward, good girl; and you have plenty of sense, too. Come, tell me how it is you cry like this?" Eliza sat up. "You won't tell them downstairs?" she said slowly. "Y^'ou may trust me not to repeat anything that is not necessary." Eliza moved nervously, and her movements suggested hopelessness of trouble and difficulty of speech. Sophia pitied her. " I don't know, she said restlessly, stretching out aimless hands into the darkness, "I don't know why I cry. Miss Sophia. It isn't for one thing more than another; every- thing is the reason — everything, everything." " You mean, for one thing, that your father has gone, and you are homesick?" "You said you wouldn't ieW?" "Yes." " Well, I'm not sorry about tlmt, because — well, I suppose I liked father as well as he liked me, but as long as he lived I'd have had to stay on the clearin', and I hated that. I'm CHAP. XV] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS ^Zl she not land bose Ived glad to be here ; but, oh ! I want so much — I want so much —oh, Miss Sophia, don't you know?" In some mysterious way Sophia felt that she did know, although she could not in any way formulate her confused feeling of kinship with this young girl, so far removed from her in outward experience. It seemed to her that she had at some time known such trouble as this, which was com- posed of wanting " so much — so much," and hands that were stretched, not towards any living thing, but vaguely to all possible possession outside the longing self. "I want to be something," said Eliza, "rich or — I don't know — I would like to drive about in a fine way like some ladies do, or wear grander clothes than any one. Yes, I would like to keep a shop, or do something to make me very rich, and make everybody wish they Avere like me." Sophia smiled to herself, but the darkness was about them. Then Sophia sighed. Crude as were the notions that went to make up the ignorant idea of what was desir- able, the desire for it was without measure. There was a silence, and when Eliza spoke again Sophia did not doubt but that she told her whole mind. It is a curious thing, this, that when a human being of average experience is confided in, the natural impulse is to assume that confidence is complete, and the adviser feels as competent to pronounce upon the case from the statement given as if minds were as limpid as crystal, and words as fit to represent them as a mirror is to show the objects it reflects. Yet if the listener would but look within, he would know that in any complicated question of life there would be much that he would not, more than he could not, tell of himself, unless long years of closest companionship had revealed the one heart to the other in ways that are beyond the power of words. And that is so even if the whole heart is set to be honest above all — and how many hearts are so set? "You see," said Eliza, "if people knew I had lived on a very poor clearin' and done the work, they'd despise me perhaps." I 134 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I " It is no disgrace to any one to have worked hard, and it certainly cannot be a disadvantage in this country." "It was rough." " You are not very rough, Eliza. It strikes me that you have been pretty carefully trained and taught." " Yes, I was that " — with satisfaction. " But don't you think, if I got on, grand people would always look down at me if they knew I'd lived so common? And besides, I'm sometimes afraid the man that went shares at the land with father will want to find me." "But you said you told him you were coming away." "I told him, plain and honest; but I had a long way to walk till I got to the train, and I just went off. But he won't find it so jasy to fill my place, and get some one to do the housework I He'd have kept me, if he could; and if he heard where I was he might come and try to get me back by saying father said I was to obey him till I was twenty-one." " If your father said — that " "No," cried the girl, vehemently, "he never did." "You will hear from your uncle in Scotland?" said Sophia. " I don't believe he'll write to me. I don't believe he lives any more where I sent the letter. It's years and years since father heard from him. I said I'd write because I thought it would look more respectable to Mrs. Eexford to have an uncle. And I did write; but he won't answer." This was certainly frank. "Was that honest, Eliza?" "No, Miss Sophia; but I feH so miserable. It's hard to walk off with your bundle, and be all alone and afraid of a man coming after you, and being so angry. He was dread- ful angry when I told him I'd come. If you'd only •prom- ise not tell where I came from to anybody, so that it can't get round to him that I'm here, and so that people won't know how I lived before " " Well, we certainly have no reason to tell anybody. If CHAP. XV] tVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 135 it will make you content, T can assure you none of us will talk about your affairs. Was that all the trouble? " "No— not all." "Well, what else?" Sophia laughed a little, and laid her cool hand on the girl's hot one. "I can't be anything grand ever, and begin by being a servant, Miss Sophia. I say I'm not a servant, and I try not to act like one; but Mrs. llexford, she's tried hard to make me one. You wouldn't like to be a servant. Miss Sophia? " " You are very childish and foolish," said Sophia. " If I had not been just as foolish about other things when I was your age I would laugh at you now. But I know it's no use to tell you that the things you want will not make you happy, and that the things you don't want would, because I know you will not believe it. I will do my best to help you to get what you want, so far as it is not wrong, if you will promise to tell me all your difficulties." "Will you help me? Why are you so kind?" " Because " said Sophia. Then she said no more. Eliza showed herself cheered. " You'ic the only one I care to talk to. Miss Sophia. The others haven't as much sense as you, have they?" As these words were quietly put forth in the darkness, without a notion of impropriety, Sophia was struck with the fact that they coincided with her own estimate of the state of the case. "Eliza, what are you talking of — not of my father and mother surely?" "Why, yes. I think they're good and kind, but I don't think they've a deal of sense — do you? " "My father is a wiser man than you can understand, Eliza; and " Sophia broke off, she was fain to retreat; it was cold for one thing. " Miss Sophia," said Eliza, as she was getting to the door, "there's one thing — you know that young man they were talking about to-night? " t3^ IVHAT NEC ESS /TV k'NOlVS [book 1 "What of him?" "Well, if he were to ask about me, you'd not tell him anything, would you? I've never told anybody but you about father, or any particulars. The others don't know anything, and you won't tell, will you? " " I've tol I you I won't take upon myself to speak of your affairs. What has that young man to do with it? " — with some severity. " It's only that he's a traveller, and I feel so silly about every traveller, for fear they'd want me to go back to the clearin'." Sophia took the few necessary steps in the cold dark granary and readied her own room. CHAPTER XVI. Sophia was sitting with Mrs. Eexford on the sofa that stood with its back to the dining-room window. The frame of the sofa was not turned, but fashioned with saw and knife and plane; not glued, but nailed together. Yet it did not lack for comfort; it was built oblong, large, and low; it was cushioned with sacking filled with loose hay plentifully mixed with Indian grass that gave forth a sweet perfume, and the whole was covered with a large neat pinafore of such light washing stuff as women wear about their work on summer days. Sophia and her step-mother were darning stockings. The homesickness of the house- hold was rapidly subsiding, and to-day these two were not uncomfortable or unhappy. The rest of the family, some to work, some to play, and some to run errands, had been dismissed into the large outside. The big house was tranquil. The afternoon sun, which had got round to the kitchen window, blazed in there through a fringe of icicles that hung from the low eaves of the kitchen roof, and sent a long strip of bright pris- CHAP. XVl] WHAT NEC ESS/TV KNOWS «37 iiuitic rays across the floor and through the door on to the rag carpet under tl»e dining-room tabk'. Ever and anon, as the ladies sewed, the sound of sleigh-bells came to them, distant, then nearer, tlien near, with the trotting of horses' feet as they passed the house, then again more distant. Tlie dining-room window faced the road, but one could not see through it witliout standing upright. "Mamma," said Sopliia, "it is quite clear we can never make an ordinary servant out of Eliza; but if we try to be companionable to her we may help lier to learn what she needs to learn, and make her more willing to stay with us." It was Mrs. Eexford's way never to approach a subject gradually in speech. If her mind went through the process ordinarily manifested in introductory remarks it slipped through it swiftly and silently, and her speech darted into the heart of the subject, or skipped about and hit it on all sides at once. " Ah, but I told her again and again, Sophia, to say 'miss ' to the girls. She eitlier didn't hear, or she forgot, or she wouldn't understand. I think you're the only one she'll say 'miss' to. But we couldn't do without her. Mrs. Nash was telling me the other day that her girl had left in the middle of the washing, and the one they had before that for a year — a little French Romanist — stole all their handkerchiefs, and did not give them back till she made confession to her priest at Easter. It was very awkward, Sophia, to be without handkerchiefs all winter." The crescendo emphasis which Mrs. Rexford had put into her remarks found its fortissimo here. Then she added more mildly, " Though I got no character with Eliza I am con- vinced she will never pilfer." Mrs. Rexford was putting her needle out and in with almost electric speed. Her mind was never quiet, but there was a healthy cheerfulness in her little quick move- ments that removed them from the region of weak nervous- ness. Yet Sophia knit her brow, and it was with an effort that she continued amicably : 138 IVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [hook r " Certainly we should W more uncomfortabh^ without her just now than she would be without us; but it' she left us there's no saying wliere her ambition might lead her." Mrs. Kexford bethouglit her tliat she must look at some apples that were baking in the kitchen oven, which she did, and was back in time to make a remark in exchange withtmt causing any noticeal)le break in the conversation. She always gave renuirks in exchanges, seldom in reply. " Scotchmen are faithful to their kinsfolk usually, aren't they, Sophia? " "You think that the uncle she wrote to will answer. He may be dead, or may have moved away; the chances are ten to one that he will not get the letter. I think the girl is in our hands. We have come into a responsibility that we can't make light of." "Good gracious, Sophia! it's only the hen with one chicken that's afraid to take another under her wing." " I know you want to do your best for her — that's why I'm talking." " Oh, / — it's you that takes half the burden of them all." " Well, we want to do our best " " And you, my dear, could go back whenever you liked. You have not burned the bridges and boats behind you. There's one would be glad to see you back in the old coun- try, and that lover of yours is a good man, Sophia." A sudden flush swept oy^r the young woman's face, as if the allusion offended her; but she took no other notice of what was said, and continued: "I don't suggest any radical alteration in our ways ; I only thought that, if you had it in your mind to make a companion of her, the pains you take in teaching her might take a rather diiferent form, and perhaps have a better result." "I think our own girls grow more giddy every day," said Mrs. Eexford, exactly as if it were an answer. " If Blue and Red were separated they would both be more sensible." The mother's mind had now wandered from thought of the alien she had taken, not because she had not given CHAI'. XVl] WHAT NEC ESS /TV K'NOH'S 139 attention to the words of the daugliter she thouj^ht so wise, but because, liaving consi(U'red them as h)ng as slie was accustomed to consichii- anything, slie had decided to act upon them, and so could dismiss the subject with a good conscience. The conversation ceased thus, as many conversations do, witliout apparent conchision; for Sophia, vexed by her step-mother's flighty manner of speech, liid lier mood in silence. Anything like discussion between these two always irritated Sophia, and then, conscious that she had in this fallen below her ideal, she chafed again at her own irritation. The evil from which she now suffered was of the stuff of which much of the pain of life is made — a flimsy stuff that vanishes before the investigation of reason more surely than the stuif of our evanescent joys. There was nothing that could be called incompatibility of temper between these two; no one saw more clearly than Sophia the generosity and courage of Mrs. Kexford's heart; no one else sympathised so deeply with her motherly cares, for no one else understood them half so well ; and yet it might have been easier for Sophia Kexford to have lived in exter- nal peace with a covetous woman, able to appreciate and keep in steady view the relative importance of her ideas. Meantime Mrs. Kexford went on talking. She was gen- erally unconscious of the other's intellectual disdain. Pretty soon they heard bells and horses' feet that slackened at the gate. Sophia stood up to look. There was a comfortable sleigh, albeit somewhat battered and dingy, turning in at the gate. A good-looking girl was driving it; a thin, pale lady sat at her side. Both were much enveloped in faded furs. Over the seats of the sleigh and over their knees were spread abundant robes of buffalo hide. The horse that drew the vehicle was an old farm-horse, and the hand that guided the reins appeared more skilful at driving than was necessary. The old reins and whip were held in a most stylish manner, and the fair driver made an innocent pretence of guiding her steed up 140 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I the road to the back-yard with care. The animal the while, having once been shown the gate, trotted quietly, with head down, up the middle of the sleigh track, and stopped humbly where the track stopped, precisely as it would have done had there been no hand upon the rein. Sophia, standing in the middle of the sitting-room, watched the visitors tlirough the windows of that room and of the kitchen, with unwonted animation in her handsome face. The girl, who was now evidently coming with her mother to call upon them, had been named to her more than once by discriminating people as the most likely person in the neighbourhood to prove a friend and companion to herself, and Sophia, in her present situation, could not be at all in- different to such a prospect. She had already observed them in church, wondering not a little at that scrupulous attention to ceremony which had made them ignore the existence of the newcomers till their acquaintance should have been made in due form. "Mamma," said she, "this is Mrs. Bennett and her daughter." " Something to do with an admiral, haven't they? " cried Mrs. Eexford. It proved to be an unnecessary exertion of memory on Mrs. Rexford's part to recollect what she had heard of the relatives of her visitors, for not long after Mrs. Bennett had introduced herself and her daughter she brought her uncle, the admiral, into the conversation with considerable skill. She was a delicate, narrow-minded woman, with no open vulgarity about her, but simply ignorant of the fact that bragging of one's distinguished relatives had fallen i.ito disuse. Her daughter was like her in manner, with the likeness imposed by having such a mother, but m,.:^. more largely made in mind and body, pleasant-looking, healthy, high-browed. Sophia liked her appearance. Mrs. Rexford, her mind ever upon some practical exi- gency, now remembered that she had also heard that the CHAP. XVI] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 141 Bennetts managed their dairy excellently, and, having a large craving for help on all such subjects, she began to bewail her own ignorance, asking many and various ques- tions ; but, although she did not perceive it, it soon became apparent to her more observant daughter that the visitors, having come out to make a call of ceremony, preferred to . talk on subjects more remote from their daily drudgery, on subjects which they apparently considered more elegant and becoming. Unable to checV. the flow of her mother's talk, Sophia could only draw her chair cosily near to Miss Bennett and strike into a separate conversation, hoping for, and expecting, mental refreshment. " I suppose there are no good lending libraries in any of the towns near here," she began. "How do you get new books or magazines?" Miss Bennett had a bright, cordial manner. She ex- plained that she thought there was a circulating library in every town. When she was visiting in Quebec her friends had got a novel for her at two cents a day. And then she said Principal Trenholme bought a good many books, and he had once told her mother that he would lend them any they chose, but they had never had time to go and look over them. "It has," she added, "been such an advantage to Chellaston to have a gentleman so clever as he at the college." "Has it?" said Sophia, willing to hear more. "Is he very clever? " *^ Oh," cried the other, "from Oxford, you know;" and she said it in much the tone she might have said "from heaven." "Is it long," asked Sophia, "since you have been in England? " Miss Bennett said she had never been "home," but she longed, above all things, to go. She had, it seemed, been born in Canada, and her parents had no possessions in the motlier-country, and yet she always call-^d it "home." This was evidently a tradition. 142 WHAT NEC ESS I TV KNOIVS [book I 1 Sophia, who liad come from England a little tired of the conditions there, and eager for a change, felt the pathetic sameness of the discontent wrought by surfeit and by famine. "Yet," said she, "it is a relief to the mind to feel that one lives in a country where no worthy person is starving, and where every one has a good chance in life if he will but avail himself of it. It seems to make me breathe more freely to know that in all this great country there is none of that necessary poverty that we have in big English towns." Little answer was made to this, and Sophia went on to talk of what interested her in English politics ; but found that of the politics, as well as of the social condition, of the country she adored, Miss Bennett was largely ignorant. Her interest in such matters appeared to sum itself up in a serene belief that Disraeli, then prominent, was the one prop of the English Constitution, and as adequate to his position as Atlas beneath the world. Now, Sophia cher- ished many a Radical opinion of her own, and she would have enjoyed discussion ; but it would have been as difficult to aim a remark at the present front of her new acquaint- ance as it would be for a marksman to show his skill with a cloud of vapour as a target. Sophia tried Canadian poli- tics, owning her ignorance and expressing her desire to understand what she had read in the newspapers since her arrival; but Miss Bennett was not sure that there was any- thing that " could exactly be called politics " in Canada, except that there was a Liberal party who " wanted to ruin the country by free trade." Sophia ceased to take the initiative. She still endeav- oured to respect the understanding of a girl of whom she had heard that when her father's fortunes were at a low ebb she had retrieved them by good management and personal industry — a girl, too, who through years of toil had preserved sprightliuess and perfect gentility. What though this gentility was somewhat cramped by that undue I i CHAP. XVI] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 143 in importance given to trifles wliich is often the result of a remote life; it was still a very lovely thing, a jewel shin- ing all the more purely for its iron setting of honest labour. Sophia fought with the scorn that was thrusting itself into her heart as she listened when Miss Bennett now talked in a charming way about the public characters and incidents which interested her. "I wish for your sake, Miss Kexford," she said, "that some of the Royal family would come out again. The only time that there is any real advantage in being in a colony is when some of them come out; for here, you know, they take notice of every one." "One would still be on the general level then," said Sophia, smiling. " Well, I don't know. It makes one feel distinguished, you know, in spite of that. Now, when the Prince was out, he stopped here for a night, and we had a ball. It wa,s simply delightful! He danced with us all — I mean with all who could claim to be ladies, and indeed with some who could not; but how could he discriminate? There was a man called Blake, who kept a butcher's shop here tlien — you may have noticed we haven't such a thing as a butcher's shop in the village now, Miss llexford?" "Indeed I have. It seems so odd." "Blake had a handsome daughter; and when we had a ball for the Prince, didn't he buy her a fine dress, and take her to it! She really looked very handsome." "I hope the Prince danced with her," laughed Sophia. Her good spirits were rising, in spite of herself, under the influence of the liveliness with which Miss Bennett's mind had darted, birdlike, into its own element. " Fes, he did. Wasn't it good-natured of him! I be- lieve his aide-de-camp told him who she was; but he was so gracious; he said she should not go away mortified. I never spoke to her myself; but I've no doubt she was unable to open her mouth without betraying her origin; but perhaps on that occasion she had the grace to keep silent, and she danced fairly well." 144 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I "Was her head turned by the honour?" asked Sophia, led by the other's tone to expect a sequel to the tale. " Poor girl ! The end was sadder than that. She caught a violent cold, from wearing a dress cut low when she wasn't accustomed to it, and she died in a week. When we heard of it I was glad that he had danced with her; but some. were cruel enough to say that it served Blake right for his presumption. He was so broken-hearted he left the place. The dress she wore that night was a green silk, and he had her buried in it; and some one told the Prince, and he sent some flowers. Wasn't it sweet of him! They were buried with her too. It was quite romantic." "More romantic to have such a swan-like death than to live on as a butcher's daughter," said Sophia, and sarcasm was only a small ingredient in the speech. "We were quite grieved about it," said Miss Bennett, sincerely. Sophia also felt sorry, but it was not her way to say so. She was more interested in remarking upon the singular method of getting butcher's meat then in vogue at Chellas- ton. A Frenchman, a butcher in a small way, drove from door to door with his stock, cutting and weighing his joints in an open box-sleigh. To see the frozen meat thus manip- ulated in the midst of the snow had struck Sophia as one of the most novel features of their present way of life. Miss Bennett, however, could hardly be expected to feel its picturesqueness. Her parents did not fancy this vendor's meat, and at present they usually killed their own. Her father, she said, had grown quite dexterous in the art. " Really ! " cried Sophia. This was an item of real inter- est, for it suggested to her for the first time the idea that a gentleman could slaughter an ox. She was not shocked ; it was simply a new idea, which she would have liked to enlarge on; but good-breeding forbade, for Miss Bennett preferred to chat about tlie visit of the Prince, and she continued to do so in a manner so lively that Sophia found it no dull hearing. CHAP. XVI] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 145 ts a t "And, do you know," she cried, "what EerthaNash did? The Nashes, you know, are of quite a common family, although, as Dr. Nash is everybody's doctor, of course we are all on good terms with them. Well, Bertha asked the Prince how his mother was ! " She stopped. "I suppose he knew whom she was talking about?" " Oh, that was the worst of it — he couldn't help knowing," cried Miss Bennett. " I should have sunk through the floor with mortification if I had done such a thing. I should have expected to be arrested on the spot for high treason. Bertha says, you know, that she was so nervous at the thought of who her partner was that she didn't know what she was saying; but I scarcely think she knew really how to address him. One can never be thankful enough, I'm sure, for having been thoroughly well brought up." She went on to explain what had been her own sensations when first accosted by this wonderful Prince, upon being led out by him, and so on. It all sounded like a new fairy tale; but afterwards, when she had gone, with cordial wishes, as she took leave, that another prince might come soon and dance with Sophia, the latter felt as if she had been reading a page of an old-fashioned history which took account only of kings and tournaments. This visit was a distinct disappointment on the whole. Sophia had hoped more from it, and coming after weeks that had been trying, it had power to depress. It was late afternoon now, and the day was the last in the year. Sophia, going upstairs to get rid of the noise of the chil- dren, was arrested by the glow of the sunset, and, wea^y as she was, stood long by the diamond window that was b i: in the wooden wall of her room. It was cold. She wrapped a cloak about her. She did not at first look observantly at the glow and beauty outside. Her eyes wandered over the scene, the bright colour upon it rousing just enough interest to keep her standing there : her thoughts were within. Sophia Kexford had set herself, like many a saint of olden and modern times, to crush within her all selfishness j 146 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book I and the result had been the result of all such effort when it is staunch and honest — to show that that against which she was warring was no mere mood or bad habit, to be overcome by directing the life on a nobler plan, but a living thing, with a vitality so strong that it seemed as if God Himself must have given it life. She stood now baffled, as she had often been before, by her invincible enemy. Where was the selfless temper of mind tliat was her ideal? Certainly not within her. She was too candid to suppose for a moment that the impatient scorn she felt for those with whom she had been talking approached in any way to that humility and love that are required of the Christian. She felt overwhelmed by surging waves of evil within. It was at the source the fountain ought to be sweet, and there ambition and desire for pleasure rose still triumphant; and the current of her will, set against them, seemed only to produce, not their abatement, but a whirlpool of discontent, which sucked into itself all natural pleasures, and cast out around its edge those dislikes and disdains which were becoming habitual in her intercourse with others. It was all wrong — she knew it. She leaned her head against the cold pane, and her eyes grew wet with tears. There is no sorrow on earth so real as this ; no other for which such bitter tears have been shed ; no other which has so moved the heart of God with sympathy. Yet there came to Sophia just then a strange thought that her tears were unnecessary, that the salvation of the world was something better than this conflict, that the angels were looking upon her discouragement in pained surprise. She had no understanding with which to take in this thought. As she looked at it, with her soul's eye dim, it passed away ; and she, trying in vain to recall the light that it seemed to hold, wondered if it would come again. Perhaps the tears, had given relief to her brain ; perhaps some Divine Presence had come near her, giving hope that she could not weigh or measure or call by name; at any rate, as she looked round again with fresh glance, the 1 CHAP. XVl] JV//AT NECESSITY KNOWS 147 haps that any the scene outside seemed fairer than it had yet appeared to her. A long strip had been swept on tlie ice of the river by pleasure-loving hands. Down this burnished path young men and maidens were skating, and their way was paved with gold. There was soft tinting of this same light on the undulations of the pearly land beyond; blue shadows were in its woods, and reflected fire on many a window of the houses that clustered near and far. She knew that in each house that was a true Canadian home there was joyous prepara- tions going on for the next day's fete. She wondered what it would be like to be at home in this country, to be one in its sports and festivities. She could not see from her attic window the land on this side of the river, but she heard the shouts of some boys who were spending their holiday at the college. They were at some game or other in a field near. Sophia liked to hear them. Just then Mrs. Kexford came upstairs to consult her about something. She joined in the outlook for a few moments, and the sunset made her reflective. "Well, my love," said she, "last year at this time we did not know we should be here to-day! Ah, Sophia, it is ahvays a little doleful to see the Old Year go out; but here, where there are no bells in the churches, it will seem less solemn." this m, it that END OF BOOK I. '^ BOOK II. ** Necessity, like ligMs electric force, Is in ourselves and all things, and no more Without us than within us ." ■"■^ i ! ■m CHAPTER I. The bells have solemn sound that from old belfries ring the passing of the year in the hearing of thousands; but perhaps it is a more solemn thing to watch and tell the birth of a new year by the march of stars that look down out of their purple void upon a land of trackless snow. If ceremony and the united sentiment of many heaits have impressive effect, they yet tend to lighten the burden of individual responsibility, which presses with weight, like the weight of the atmosphere upon a vacuum, when a man tries to grapple with his own soul in solitude. Alec Trenholme was spending another wakeful night in tlie living-room of his small railway station. Winter lay around him. For a month the blueberry flats and bramble thickets had been wholly lost under the snow, which stretched far whiter than the pure white of the birch trees in the nearest groves. Now the last night I t one of the old year had brought a fresh downfall, unusually heavy ; the long, straight railway track, and the sleigh-road which was kept open between the station and Turrifs Settlement, had been obliterated by it. Alec Trenholme had awoke that morning to observe that his little station of new wood, and tlie endless line of rough telegraph poles, were the only remaining signs of man's lordship of earth, as far as his eyes could see. It was upon this sight, when the snow clouds had fled, that he had seen a scarlet sun come up; over the same scene he had watched it roll its golden cliariot all day, and, tinging the same unbroken drifts, it had sunk scarlet again in the far southwest. H had not been far from his house, and no one, in train, or £>ieigh, or on snow-shoes, had happened to come near it. 161 152 WHAT NKCESS/TV KNOWS [rook II He would have gone liiinsclf to Tiirrifs for milk, for tlie pleasure of exchanging a word with liis fellow-men, and for air and exercise, had it not been that he had hourly expected to see an engine, witli its snow-plough, approaching on the rails. Conversation by telegraph would have been a relief to him, but the wires seemed to have succund)ed in more than one place to their weight of snow, and there was noth- ing for this young stationmaster to do but wait, and believe that communication would be re-established over the road and the wires sooner or later. In the meantime he suffered no personal inconvenience, unless loneliness can be thus named, for he had abundance of food and fuel. He watched the oright day wane and the sun of the old year set, and filled his stove with wood, and ate his supper, and told him- self that he was a very fortunate fellow and much better off than a large proportion of men. It is not always when we tell ourselves that we are well off that we are happiest : that self-addressed assertion often implies some tacit contradiction. When darkness came he wondered if he should put on his snow-shoes and run over to Turrifs. Yet for some reason he did not go, in the way that men so often do not do things that they think on the whole would be very good things to do. An hour or two later he knew that the good people there would have gone to bed and that he had no longer the option of going. He did not go to bed himself. He had not had enough exercise that day to make him sleepy; and then, too, he thought he would sit up and see the old year out. He had an indistinct idea that it was rather a virtu- ous thing to do, rather more pious than sleeping the night through just as if it were any other night. He put his much-handled, oft-read books down before him on the table, and set himself to passing the evening with them. Mid- night is actually midnight when the sun goes down before five o'clock and there is no artificial interest for the after hours. Most men liave more religion at heart, latent or devel- CHAP. l] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 153 oped, than can be seen by others. When they have not, when what shows is as much as what is — (iod pity tht^n! Alec Trenholnie was not given to self-dissection or to expression of his private sentiments, therefore neither to himself nor to others was the religion of him very visible. Nevertheless, this evening his books, which had become not less bnt more to him because he Jiad read them often, palled upon his taste. When he was a boy his father had taught him that at New Year's time one ought to consider whether the past had been spent well, and how the future could be spent better. So, as time went on, he pushed his books further and set himself to this consideration. For a while he sat looking at his own doings only by the light, as it were, of two candles — the one, of expediency; the other, of rectitude. Had he been wise? Had he been good? Not being of a contemplative or egotistical disposition, he soon fidgeted. Thinking he heard a sound outside, which miglit be wiiul rising, or might be the distant approach of the iron snow-plough, he got up to look out. The small panes of his window were so obscured by frostwork that he did not attempt to look through the glass, but opened his door. Far or near there was no sign of rising wind or com- ing engine; only, above, the glowing stars, with now and then a shaft of northern light passing majestically beneath them, and, below, the great white world, dim, but clearly seen as it reflected the light. The constellations attracted his attention. There hung Orion, there the Pleiades, there those mists of starlight which tell us of space and time of which we cannot conceive. Standing, looking upwards, he suddenly believed himself to be in the neighbourhood of God. When the keen air upon his bare head had driven him indoors, he sat down again to formulate his good resolu- tions, he found that his candles of expediency and morality had gone out. The light which was there instead was the Presence of God ; but so dilfused was this light, so dim, that it was as hard for him now to see distinction between right 1 { ? f I i « I •- i i' 154 W^/^^r NECESSITY KNOWS [book II and wrong as it would have been outside upon the snow to see a shadow cast by rays which had left their stars half a century before. All, all of which he could think seemed wrong, because it was not God; all, all of which he could think seemed right, because it was part of God. The young man's face sank on his arms and lay buried there, while he thought, and thought, and thought, trying to bring a life of which he could think into relation with that which is unthinkable. Was ever reverie more vain! He raised his head and stared about him. The glaring lamp showed all the details of the room, and made it seem so real, so much more real than mere thoughts, let alone that of which one cannot think. He got up to alter the stove -damper, pushing it shut with a clatter of iron, burning his fingers slightly, and sat down again, feeling it a relief to know, if by the smart, that he had touched something. The wood within the stove ceased blazing when the damper was shut, and when its crackling was silenced there was a great quiet. The air outside was still; the flame of the lamp could hardly make sound. Trenholme's watch, which lay on the table, ticked and seemed to clamour for his atten- tion. He glanced down at it. It was not very far from midnight. Just then he heard another sound. It was possibly the same as that which came to him an hour ago, but more continuous. There was no mistaking this time that it was an unusual one. It seemed to him like a human voice in prolonged ejaculatory speech at some distance. Startled, he again looked out of his door. At first he saw nothing, but what he had seen before — the world of snow, the starry skies. Yet the sound, which stopped and again went on, came to him as if from the direction in which he looked. Looking, listening intently, he was just about to turn in for his coat and snow-shoes in order to go forth and seek the owner of the voice, when he perceived some- thing moving between him and the nearest wood — that very CHAP. l] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS '55 ten- :rom the more was e in he K of and lich )OUt rth ne- ery birch wood in which, more than a month before, he had sought for the man Cameron who had disappeared from his own coffin. In an instant the mood of that time flashed back on him as if there had been nothing between. All the search that had been made for Cameron in the first days of the snow had resulted in nothing but the find- ing of his coarse winding-sheet in this birch wood. Then and since, confused rumours had come that he was wander- ing from village to village, but no one had been brave enough to detain him. Trenholme knew that people on the railway line to the south believed firmly that the old man was still alive, or that his ghost walked. Now, as his eyes focussrid more intently upon the moving thing, it looked to him like a man. Again he heard the sound of a voice, a man's voice cer- tainly. It was raised for the space of a minute in a sort of chant, not loud enough for him to hear any word or to know what language was spoken. " Hi ! " cried Trenholme at the top of his voice. " Hi, there ! What do you want? " There was no doubt that a man out there could have heard, yet, whatever the creature was, it took not the slight- est notice of the challenge. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light he saw that the figure was moving on the top of the deep snow near the outskirts of the wood — moving about in an aim- less way, stopping occasionally, and starting again, raising the voice sometimes, and again going on in silence. Tren- holme could not descry any track left on the snow ; all that he could see was a large figure dressed in garments which, in the starlight, did not seem to differ very much in hue from the snow, and he gained the impression that the head was thrown back and the face uplifted to the stars. He called again, adjuring the man he saw to come at once and say why he was there and what he wanted. No atten- tion was paid to him ; he might as well have kept silent. A minute or two more and he went in, shut and bolted 156 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book ii his door, even took the trouble to see that the door of the baggage-room was secured. He took his lamp down from the wall where, by its tin reflector, it hung on a nail, and set it on the table for company. He opened the damper of the stove again, so that the logs within crackled. Then he sat down and began to read the Shakespeare he had pushed from him before. What he had seen and heard seemed to him very curious. No obligation rested upon him, cer- tainly, to go out and seek this weird-looking creature. There was probably nothing supernatural, but — well, while a man is alone it is wisest to shut out all that has even the appearance of the supernatural from his house and from his mind. So Trenholme argued, choosing the satirical fool of the Forest of Arden to keep him company. "Now am I in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at home, I was in a better place : but travellers must be con- tent." Trenholme smiled. He had actually so controlled his mind as to become lost in his book. There was a sound as if of movement on the light snow near by and of hard breathing. Trenholme's senses were all alert again now as he turned his head to listen. When the moving figure had seem^ed so indifferent to his calls, what reason could it have now for seeking his door — unless, indeed, it were a dead man retracing his steps by some mys- terious impulse, such as even the dead might feel? Tren- holme's heart beat low with the thought as he heard a heavy body bump clumsily against the baggage-room door and a hand fumble at its latch. There was enough light shining through his window to have shown any natural man that the small door of his room was the right one by which to enter, yet the fumbling at the other door continued. Trenholme went into the dark baggage-room and heard the stir against the door outside. He went near it. Who- ever was there went on fumbling to find some way of entrance. By this time, if Trenholme had suffered any shock of CHAP. l] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS ^57 dismay, he had righted himself, as a ship rights itself after shuddering beneath a wave. Clearly it now came within his province to find out what the creature wanted; he went back into his room and opened its outer door. Extending beyond the wall, the flooring of the house made a little platform outside, and, as the opening of the door illuminated this, a man came quietly across the thresh- old with clumsy gait. Tliis man was no ghost. What fear of the supernatural had gathered about Trenholme's mind fell off from it instantly in self-scorn. The stranger was tall and strong, dressed in workman's light-coloured clothes, with a big, somewhat soiled bit of white cotton worn round his shoulders as a shawl. He carried in his hand a fur cap such as Canadian farmers wear; his grey head was bare. What was chiefly remarkable was that he passed Trenholme without seeming to see him, and stood in the middle of the room with a look of expectation. His face, which was rugged, with a glow of weather-beaten health upon it, had a brightness, a strength, an eagerness, a sensibility, which were indescribable. "Well?" asked Trenholme rather feebly; then reluc- tantly he shut the door, for all the cold of the night was pouring in. Neither of him nor of his words or actions did the old man take the slightest notice. The description that had been given of old Cameron was fulfilled in the visitor; but what startled Trenholme more than this likeness, which might have been the result of mere chance, was the evidence that this man was not a person of ordinary senses and wits. He seemed like one who had passed through some crisis, which had deprived him of much, and given him perhaps more. It appeared probable, from his gait and air, that he was to some extent blind; but the eagerness of the eyes and the expression of the aged face were enough to suggest at once, even to an unimaginative mind, that he was looking for some vision of which he did not doubt the reality and listening for sounds which he longed to hear. He put out a large hand IS8 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book II I I i \ ' I i : 1 and felt the table as he made his clumsy way round it. He looked at nothing in the room but the lamp on the table where Trenholme had lately put it. Trenholme doubted, however, if he saw it or anything else. When he got to the other side, having wandered behind the reflector, he stopped, as if perhaps the point of light, dimly seen, had guided him so far but now was lost. Trenholme asked him why he had come, what his name was, and several such questions. He raised his voice louder and louder, but he might as well have talked to the inanimate things about him. This one other human being who had entered his desolate scene took, it would seem, no cognisance of him at all. Just as we know that animals in some cases have senses for sights and sounds which make no impression on human eyes and ears, and are impervious to v/hat we see and hear, so it seemed to Trenholme that the man before him had organs of sense dead to the world about him, but alive to something which he alone could perceive. It might have been a fantastic idea produced by the strange circumstances, but it certainly was an idea which leaped into his mind and would not be reasoned away. He did not feel repulsion for the poor wanderer, or fear of him ; he felt rather a growing attraction — in part curiosity, in part pity, in part desire for whatever it might be that had brought the look of joyous expectancy into the aged face. This look had faded now to some extent. The old man stood still, as one who had lost his way, not seeking for indications of that which he had lost, but looking right forwards and upwards, steadily, calmly, as if sure that something would appear. Trenholme laid a strong hand upon his arm. "Came- ron ! " he shouted, to see if that name would rouse him. The ar> that he grasped felt like a rock for strength and stillness. The name which he shouted more than once did not seem to enter the ears of the man who had perhaps owned it in the past. He shook off Trenholme's hand gently without turning towards him. CHAP. Il] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 159 "Ay," he said. (His voice was strong.) Then he shook his head with a patient sigh. "Not here," he said, "not here." He spoke as deaf men speak, unconscious of the key of their own voice. Tlien he turned shuffling round the table again, and seemed to be seeking for the door. "Look here," said Trenholme, "don't go out." Again he put his hand strongly on his visitor, and again he was quietly brushed aside. The outside seemed so terribly cold and dark and desolate for this poor old man to wander in, that Trenholme was sorry he should go. Yet go he did, opening the door and shutting it behind him. Trenholme's greatcoat, cap, and snow-shoes were hanging against the wall. He put them on quickly. When he got out the old man was fumbling for something outside, and Trenholme experienced a distinct feeling of surprise when he saw him slip his feet into an old pair of snow-shoes and go forth on them. The old snow-shoes had only toe-straps and no other strings, and the feat of walking securely upon seemed almost as difficult to the young Englishman as walk- ing on the sea of frozen atoms without them; but still, the fact that the visitor wore them made him seem more companionable. Trenholme supposed that the traveller was seeking some dwelling-place, and that he would naturally turn either up the rood to Turrifs or toward the hills ; instead of that, he made u^^an for the birch wood, walking fast with strong, elastic stride. Trenholme followed him, and they went across acres of billowy snow. CHAPTER II. Why Alec Trenholme followed the old man toward the wood he himself would have found it a little difficult to tell. If this was really Cameron he did not wish that he should escape ; but, at the same time, he saw no means of keeping i6o WHAT NEC ESS IT V KNOWS [book II him against his will, unless he went of his own accord to some place where other men could be called to help. Quite apart, however, from the question whether the stranger was Cameron or not, Trenholme felt for him a sort of respect which character alone inspires, and which character written in a man's appearance has often power to inspire without a word or action to interpret it further. It was because of this that curiosity to know where he was going and what for, and a real solicitude as to what would happen to him, were strong enough to lead the young man on. They who have not walked upon snow by starlight do not know, perhaps, that the chief difficulty of such progress is that there is no shadow; perhaps they do not even know that at all times the difference between an upward and a downward slope is revealed to the eye by light and shade. The snow on which the two men were now walking had been left by the wind with slight undulations of surface, such as are produced in a glassy sea by the swing of a gentle under-swell; and Trenholme, not sensitive as the stranger seemed to be in the points of his snow-shoes, found himself stepping up when he thought himself step- ping down, and the reverse. At last he stumbled and fell. It is not a matter of ease to rise from a bed which yields endlessly to every pressure of arm or knee. Even a sea- bird, that strongest of flyers, finds it hard to rise from any but its own element; and before Trenholme had managed to spring up, as it were, from nothing, the man in front had in some way become aware of his presence for the first time, and of his fall ; he turned and lifted him up with a strong hand. "When Trenholme was walking again the other retained a firm hold of his arm, looked at him earn- estly, and spoke to him. His words expressed a religious idea which was evidently occupying his whole mind. "The Lord is coming presently to set up His kingdom," he said. " Are you ready to meet Him? " On Alec Trenholme the effect of these words, more unex- pected than any other words could have been, was first CHAP. Il] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS i6i sea- any aged front I first Itli a the larn- lious km » liex- irst and chiefly to convince him that he was dealing with a witless person. Leaving him again, the speaker had hur- ried on in front, making his way still toward the wood. When Trenholme came up with him the wanderer had evi- dently found the place where he had been before, for there was tlie irregular circular track of his former wandering upon the snow. Trenholme counted himself a fool to have been able before to suppose that there was no track because he had not seen it. But he had hardly time for even this momentary glance at so small a matter, for the old man was standing with face uplifted to the stars, and he was praying aloud that the Divine Son of Man would return to earth and set up His kingdom. Sometimes there was more light upon the dark scene, sometimes less, for giant rays of the northern light stalked the sky, passing from it, coming again, giving light faintly. Trenholme felt an uncontrollable excitement come over him. His mind was carried out of himself, not so much to the poor man who was praying, as to the Divine Man to whom the supplication was addressed; for the voice of prayer spoke directly from the heart of the speaker to One wlio he evidently felt was his friend. The conviction of this other man that he knew to whom he was speaking caught hold of Alec Trenholme's mind with mastering force; he had no conviction of his own ; he was not at all sure, as men count certainty, whether there was, or was not, any ear but his own listening to the other's words; but he did not notice his own belief or unbelief in the matter, any more than he noticed the air between him and the stars. The colourlessness of his own mind took on for the time the colour of the other's. And the burden of the prayer was this: Our Tathc thy kingdom come. Even so, come. Lord Jesus. The hardihood of the prayer was astonis^MUj. '11 ten- der arguments of love were used, all reasoj ible arguments as of friend with friend and man with ma^x, an ' its length- I 162 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book II ■ ened pathos was such that Trenholme felt his heart torn for pity within him. " Look here ! " he said at last. (He had been listening he knew not how long, but the planets in the sky above had moved westward. He took hold of the old man.) "Look here! He won't come so that you can see Him; but He's here just the same, you know." The only result was that the old man ceased speaking aloud, and continued as if in silent prayer. It seemed irreverent to interrupt him. Trenholme stood again irresolute, but he knew that for himself at least it was ro.adness to stand longer withor^- exercise in the keen night. " Come, Lord Jesus ! " cried the old man again in loud anguish. "Come. The world is needing only Thee. We are so wicked, so foolish, so weak — we need Thee. Come!" Whether or not his companion had the full use of eyes and ears, Trenholme was emboldened by the memory of the help he had received on his fall to believe that he could make himself heard and understood. He shouted as if to one deaf: "The Lord is here. He is with you now, only you can't see Him. You needn't stay here. I don't know who you are, but come into my place and get warmed and fed." "How do you know He is here?" asked the old man, shaking his head slowly. "Everybody knows that." "I can't hear." "Everybody knows," shouted Trenholme. "How do you know? What do you know?" asked the other, shaking his head sorrowfully. Trenholme would have given much, to comfort him. He tried to drag him by main force in the direction of the house. The old man yielded himself a few steps, then drew back, asking, "Why do you say He is here?" I CHAP. Il] WHAT NECESSITY K'JVOIVS 163 man, dthe He the I then "Because" (Trenholme called out his words in the same liigh key) "before He died, and after, He said He would always be with His servants. Don't you believe what He said?" Again the old man yielded a few paces, evidently listen- ing and hearing with difficulty, perliaps indeed only hear- ing one or two words that attracted him, " Did the Lord say it to you ? " he asked eagerly. "No." There was blank disappointment shown instantly. They had come to a standstill again. "Do you know him?" The strong old face was peering eagerly into his, as if it had not been dark. " Have you heard his voice?" "I don't know," answered Trenholme, half angrily. Without another word the old man shook him off, and turned once more to the starry sky above. " Lord Jesus ! " he prayed, " this man has never heard thy voice. They who have heard Thee know thy voice — they know, Lord, they know." He retraced all the steps he had taken with Trenholme and continued in prayer. After that, although Trenholme besought and commanded, and tried to draw him both by gentleness and force, he obtained no further notice. It was not that he was repulsed, but that he met with absolute neglect. The old man was rock-like in his physical strength. Trenholme looked round about, but there was certainly no help to be obtained. On the one side he saw the birch Avood indistinctly; the white trunks half vanished from sight against the white ground, but the brush of upper branches hung like the mirage of a forest between heaven and earth. All round was the wild region of snow. From his own small house the lamp which he had left on the table shot out a long bright ray through a chink in the frostwork on the window. It occurred to him that when he had fetched down the lamp it was probably this ray, sudden and unex- pected in such a place, that had attracted his strange visitor 1 64 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [hook II to his house. IIjuI his poor dazed brain accepted it as some sign of the glorious appearing for wliich he waited? Trenholme lookcnl again at his companion. It mattered nothing to liim wlio or what he was; he wouhl have done much to still tliat pleading voice and pacify liim, but since he could not do this, he would go for a little while out of sight and hearing. He was fast growing numb Avith the fierce cold. He would come back and renew his care, but just now he would go home. He walked fast, and gained his own door with blood that ran less chill. He heaped his stove with fresh logs, and set on food to warm, in the hope that the stranger might eventually par- take of it, and then, opening the stove door to get the full benefit of tlie blaze, he sat down for a little while to warm himself. He looked at his watch, as it lay on the table, with that glance of interest wliich we cast at a familiar thing which has lain in tlie same jdace while our minds have undergone commotion and change. INIidnight had passed since he went out, and it was now nearly two o'clock. Whether it was that the man with whom he had been, possessed that power, wdiich great actors involuntarily possess^ of imposing their own moods on others, or whether it was that, coming into such strange companionship after his long loneliness, his sympathies were the more easily awakened, Trenholme was suffering from a misery of pity; and in pity for another there weighed a self-pity which was quite new to him. To have seen the stalwart old man, whose human needs were all so evident to Trenholme's eyes, but to his own so evidently summed up in that one need whiuii was the theme of the prayer he was offering in obstinate agony, was an experience which for the time entirely robbed him of the power of seeing the elements of life in that proportion to which his mind's eye had grown accustomed — that is, seeing the things of religion as a shadowy background for life's important activities. The blazing logs through the open stove door cast flicker- CHAP. Il] IVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 165 man, ig 111 Itime bs of rown IS a Iker- <] i ing flamelight upon tho young man, wlio was restlessly wanning himself, shifting his position constantly, as a man must who tries to warm himself too hastily. A traveller read in ancient lore, coming suddenly on this cabin amid its leagues of snow, and looking in to see its light and warmth and the goodly figure of its occupant, might have been tempted to think that the place had been raised by some magician's wand, and would vanish again when the si)ell was past. And to Alec Trenholme, ji;st then, the station to which he was so habituated, the body which usually seemed the larger part of himself, might have been no more than a thought or a dream, so intent was he upon another sort of reality. He was regardless of it all, even of the heat that, at the same time, scorched him and made liim shiver. Tie thought of the words that he — he. Alec 'rrcnholme — had lifted up his voice to say, waking the echoes of the snow-muttled silence with proclamation of He tried not to remember what he had i^roclaimed, feeling crushed with a new knowledge of his own falseness; and when perforce the thought came upon him of the invisible Actor in the night's drama whose presence, whose action, he had been so strenuously asserting, he was like a man in pain who does not know what remedy to try; and his mood was tense, he sought only relief. He essayed one thought and another to reason away the cloud that was upon him; and then he tried saying his prayers, which of late had fallen somewhat into disuse. It was only by way of a try to see if it would do any good; and he did not give himself much time, for he felt that he must go out again to try to bring in the old man. ]3efore he had put on his fur cap a second time, however, he heard the whistle of the engine he had been expecting now for nearly twenty-four hours. It came like a sudden trumpet-sound from the outside world to call him back to his ordinary thoughts and deeds. For the first moment he felt impatient at it; the second he was glad, for there would certainly be some one with it who could aid him in using 1 66 WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOWS [hook II I J : force, if necessary, to bring the old man to spend the remainder of the night within doors. Trenholme saw the bhiok and fiery monster come on into his dark and silent white world. It shook a great plumd of flaming smoke above its snorting head, and by the liglit of the blazing jewel in its front he saw that tlie iron plough it drove before it was casting the snow in misty fountains to right and left. When the engine stopped, Trenholme found that there was a small car with it, containing about twenty men sent to dig out the drifts where snow sheds had given way. These were chiefly French Canadians of a rather low type. The engine-driver was a Frenchman too; but there was a brisk English-speaking man whose business it was to set the disordered telegraph system to rights. He came into the station-room to test its condition at this point of the route. As there was a stove in their car, only a few of the men straggled in after him. At a larger place the party might have been tempted to tarry, but here they had no thought of stopping an unnecessary moment. Trenholme had no time to lose, and yet he hardly knew how to state his case. He sought the Englishman, who was at the little telegraph table. The engineer and some others lounged near. He began by recalling the incident of the dead man's disappearance. Every one connected with the railway in those parts had heard that story. " And look here ! " said he, " as far as one can judge by description, he has come back again here to-night." All who could understand were listening to him now. " See here ! " he urged, addressing the brisk telegraph man, " I'm afraid he will freeze to death in the snow. He's quite alive, you know— alive as you are j but I want help to bring him in." The other was attending to his work as well as to Tren- holme. "Why can't he come in?" "He won't. I think he's gone out of his mind. He'll die if he's left. It's a matter of life or death, I tell you. CHAP, li] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 167 in by All jSee I'm bite ling [en- ^'11 m. , He's too strong for me to manage alone. Someone must come too." The brisk man looked at the engineer, and tlie French engineer looked at him. "What's he doing out there?" '^ He's just out by tlie wood." It ended in the two men finding snow-shoes and going with Trenholme across tlie snow. They all three peered through the dimness at the space between them and the wood, and they saw nothing. They retraced the snow-slioe tracks and came to the place where the irregular circuit had been made near tlie end of the wood. Tliere was no one there. They held up a lantern and flashed it right and left, they shouted and wandered, searching into the edge of the wood. The old man was not to be found. "I dare say," said the telegraph man to Trenholme, "you'd do well to get into a place where you don't live quite so much alone. 'T'aint good for you." The whole search did not take more than twenty minutes. The railway-men went back at a quick pace. Trenholme went with them, insisting only that they should look at the track of the stranger's snow-shoes, and admit that it was not his own track. The French engineer was sufficiently superstitious to lend a half belief to the idea that the place was haunted, and that was his reason for haste. The electrician was only sorry that so much time had been purely wasted; that was his reason. He was a middle-aged man, spare, quick, and impatient, but he looked at Alec Trenholme in the lighL of the engine lamp, when they came up to it, with some kindly interest. "I say," he went on again, "don't you go on staying here alone — a good-looking fellow like you. You don't look to me like a chap to have fancies if you weren't mewed up alone." As Trenholme saw the car carried from him, saw the m. \ i: •: . I) I' hi 168 IV/ZAT JSTECESSITY Kr^OlVS [book II faces and forins of the men who stood at its door disappear in the darkness, and watched the red light at its back Diove slowly on, leaving a lengthening road of black rails behind it, he felt more mortified at the thought of the telegraph man's compassion than he cared to own, even to himself. He went out again, and hunted with a lantern till he found a track leading far into the wood in the opposite direction from liis house. This, then, was the way the old man had gone. He followed the track for a mile, but never came within sight or sound of the man who made it. At last it joined the railway line, and where the snow was rubbed smooth he could not trace it. Probably the old man had taken oif his snow-shoes here, and his light moccasins had left no mark that could be seen in the night. CHAPTER III. For two nights after that Alec Trenholme kept his lamp lit all night, placing it in his window so that all the light that could struggle through the frosted panes should cast an inviting ray into the night. He did this in the hope that the old man might still be wandering in the neighbour- hood; but it was soon ascertained that this was not the case ; the stranger had been seen by no one else in Turrifs Settlement. Though it was clear, from reports that came, that he was the ^ame who had visited other villages and been accepted as the missing Cameron, nothing more was heard of him, and it seemed that he had gone now off the lines of regular communication — unless, indeed, he had the power of appealing .,nd disappearing at will, which ..as the popular view of his case. Turrits Station had become notorious. Trenholme received jeers and gibes even by telegraph :^rom neighbouring stations. He had given ac- count to no one of t^^e midnight visit, but inventive curi- osity !iad supplied details of a truly w .nderful nature. It i i ^T!^ CHAP. Ill] IVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 169 and was not on this account that he :jave up his situation on the line, but because a new impulse had seized him, and he had no particular reason for remaining. He waited till a new caretaker arrived from the headquarters of the rail- way, and then set forth from the station the following morning on foot. Turrif had been laid up with some complaint for a week or two, and Alec went to say good-bye to him. The roads had been opened up again. He had his snow-shoes on his back, and some clothes in a small pack. Turrif's wife opened the door, and Trenholme disburdened himself and went and sat by the bed. The little children were about, as usual, in blue gowns ; he had made friends in the house since his first supper there, so they stood near now, and laughed at him a great deal without being afraid. In the long large wooden room, the mother and eldest girl pursued the housework of the morning tranquilly. Turrif lay upon a bed in one corner. The baby's cradle, a brown box on rockers, was close to the bed, and when the child stirred the father put out his hand and rocked it. The cliild's head was quite covered witli the clothes, so that Trenholme wondered how it could breathe. He sat by the foot of the bed, and Turrif talked to him in his slow English. '' You are wise to go — a young man and genteel-man like you." " I know you think I was a fool to take the place, but a man might as well earn his bread-and-butter while he is looking round the country." *' You have looked round at this bit of country for two months " — with a shrug of the shoulders. " I should have sought your bright eyes could see all what sere is to see in two days." " You'll think me a greater fool when you know where I am going." ''I hope" (Turrif spoke with a shade of greater gravity on his placid face) — " I hope sat you are going to some 170 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book n I ill ai 1! I I city where sere is money to be made, and where sere is ladies and other genteel-men like you." " I knew you would think me mad. I'm going to Bates's clearing to cut down his trees." "Why?" The word came with a certain authority. "You would almost be justified in writing to the authori- ties to lock me up in an asylum, wouldn't you? But just consider what an awful condition of loneliness that poor wretch must be in by this time. You think I've been more alone than's good for me; think of him, shut up with an old woman in her dotage. He was awfully cut up about this affair of old Cameron and the girl, and he is losing all his winter's lumbering for want of 3 man. Now, there's a fix, if you will, where I say a man is to be pitied." "Yes," said Turrif, gravely, "it is sad; but sat is liees trouble." "Look here: he's not thirty miles away, and you and I know that if he isn't fit to cut his tliroat by this time it isn't for want of trouble to make him, and you say that that state of things ought to be only his own affair?" "Eh?" " Well, / say that you and I, or at least I, have something to do with it. You know very well I might go round here for miles, and offer a h^nidred pounds, and I couldn't get a single man to go and work for Bates; they're all scared. Well, if they're scared of a ghost, let them stay away; but Vni not frightened, and I suppose I could learn to chop down trees as well as any of them. He's offered good wages; I can take his wages and do his work, and save him from turning into a blethering idiot." Probably, in his heat to argue, he had spoken too quickly for the Frenchman to take in all his words. That his drift was understood and pondered on was evident from the slow answer. "It would be good for Monsieur Bates, but poor for you." "I'm not going to turn my back on this country and leave the fellow in that pickle. I should feel as if his blood were on my head." I ■: I: CHAP. Ill] IVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 171 jckly jdrift blow lou." 3ave /■ere "Since?" "How since?" "Since what day did you have his care on you? Last time 70U came you did not mean sen to help him." It was true, but so strongly did Trenholme see his point that he had not realised how new was the present aspect of the case to him. "Well," said he, meaning that this was not a matter of importance. "But why?" said Turrif again. "Oh, I don't know." Trenholme looked down at his moccasined feet. " I thought " (he gave a laugh as if he were ashamed) " I'd turn over a new leaf this year, and do something that's more worth doing. I was well enough off here so far as looking out for myself was concerned. " Turrif looked at him with kind and serious disapproval. " And when will you begin to live se life of a man f " "How do you mean — 'a man'?" "When will you make money and get married?" " Do you think time is all wasted when one isn't making money and getting married? " "For a hoy, no; for a man, yes." Trenholme rose. " Good-bye, and thank you for all your hospitality," said he. "I'll come back in spring and tell you what I'm going to do next." He was moving out, when he looked again at the little shrine in the middle of the wall, the picture of the Vir- gin, and, below, the little altar shelf, with its hideous paper roses. He looked back as it caught his eye, arrested, surprised, by a difference of feeling in him towards it. Noticing the direction of Trenholme's glance, the French- man crossed himself. It was a day of such glory as ip only seen amid North- ern snow-fields. Alec Trenholme looked up into the sky, and the blue of other skies that he remembered faded be- side it, as the blue of violets fades beside the blue of gen- tian flowers. There was no cloud, no hint of vapour; the 172 WHAT NECESSITY KISTOWS [book II \ I I sky, as one looked for it, was not there, but it was as if the sight leaped through the sunlit ether, so clear it was, and saw the dark blue gulfs of space that were beyond the reac^i of the sun's lighting. The earth was not beyond the reach of the sunlight, and in all that wide white land, in mile after mile of fields, of softened hillock and buried hollow, there was not a frozen crystal that did not thrill to i^j centre with the sunlight and throw it back in a soft glow of myriad rays. Trenholme retraced his steps on the road from Turrif's door to a point nearer his old railv/ay-station ; then he put on his snow-shoes and set out for the gap in the hills that led to the Bates and Cameron clearing. As he mounted the soft snow that was heaped by the roadside and struck out across the fields, his heart bounded with a sense of power and freedom, such as a man might have who found means to walk upon the ocean. Little need had he of map or guide to mark the turning or crossing of his road ; the gap in the hills was clear to his eyes fifteen miles away; the world was white, and he strode across it. When the earth is made up of pearl-dust and sunshine, and the air is pure as the air of heaven, the heart of man loses all sense of effort, and action is as spontaneous as breath itself. Trenholme was half-way to the hills before he felt that he had begun his day's journey. When he got past the unbroken snow of the farm lands and the blueberry flats, the white surface was broken by the tops of brushwood. He did not take the line of the straight corduroy road; it was more free and exciting to make a meandering track wherever the sno\/ lay sheer over a chain of frozen pools that intersected the thickets. There was no perceptible heat in the rays the sun poured down, but the light was so great that where the delicate skeletons of the young trees were massed together it was a relief to let the eye rest upon them. That same element of pleasure, relief, was found also in the restful deadness of the wooded sides of the hills when f CHAP. Ill] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 173 Liids the to >ver [lere Kvn, ons to in uen lie came near them. Grey there was of deciduous trees in the basin of the river, and dull green of spruce firs that grew up elsewhere. Intense light has the effect of lack of light, taking colour from the landscape. Even the green of the lir trees, as they stood in full light on the hill sum- mits, w as faded in comparison with the blue beyond. This was while he was in the open plain; but when he walked into the forest, passing into the gap in the hills, all was changed. The snow, lightly shadowed by the branches overhead, was more quiet to the sight, and where his path lay near fir trees, the snow, where fell their heavy shade, looked so dead and cold and grey that it recalled thoughts of night-time, or of storm, or of other gloomy things; and this thought of gloom, which the dense sliadow brought, had fascination, because it was such a wondrous contrast to the rest of the happy valley, in which the sunbeams, now aslant, were giving a golden tinge to the icy facets of crags, to high-perched circling drifts, to the basin of unbroken snow, to the brown of maple trunks, and to the rich verdure of the very firs Avhich cast the shadow. It was after four o'clock in the afternoon when he stopped his steady tramp, arrested by the sight of the first living things he had seen — a flock of birds upon a wild vine that, half snow-covered, hung out the remnant of its frozen berries in a cleft of the hill. The birds did not fly at his approach, and, going nearer and nearer on the silent snow, he at last stopped, taking in greedily the sight of their pretty, fluttering life. They were rather large birds, large as the missel thrush; they had thick curved beaks and were somewhat heavy in form; but the plumage of the males was like the rose -tint of dawn or evening when it falls lightly upon some grey cloud. They uttered no note, but, busy with their feast, fluttered and hopped with soft sound of wings. In lieu of gun or net, Trenholme broke a branch from a tree beside him and climbed nearer to the bi.vds in order I 174 Pi^'I/AT NECESSITY KNOWS [book II \ i \ to strike one down if possible. To his surprise, as he advanced deftly with the weapon, the little creatures only- looked at him with bright eyed interest, and made no attempt to save themseb js. The conviction forced itself upon him with a certain awe that these birds had never seen a man before. His arm dropped beside him; some- thing of that feeling which comes to the explorer when he thinks that he sets his foot where man has never trod came to him now as he leaned against the snow-bank. The birds, it is true, had fluttered beyond his arm's length, but they had no thouglit of leaving their food. Twice his arm twitched with involuntary impulse to raise the stick and strike the nearest bird, and twice the impulse failed him, till he dropped the stick. The slight crust which usually forms on snow-banks had broken with the weight of his figure as he leaned against it, and he lay full length against the soft slope, enjoying rest upon so downy a couch, until the birds forgot him, and then he put out his hand and grasped the nearest, hardly more to its own surprise than to his. The bird feigned dead, as frightened birds will, and when he was cheated into thinking it dead, it got away, and it was only by a very quick movement that he caught it again. He put it in a hanging pocket of his coat, and waited till he could catch a companion to fill the opposite pocket. Thus weighted, he continued his journey. It gave him the cheerful feeling that a boy has when choice marbles are in his pocket. Neither birds nor marbles under such cir- cumstances have absolute use, but then there is always the pleasant time ahead when it will be suitable to take them out and look at them. The man did not finger his birds as a boy might have done his marbles, but he did not for- get them, and every now and then he lifted the flaps of the baggy pockets to refill them with air. He was tramping fast now down the trough of the little valley, under trees that, though leafless, were thick enough to shut out the surrounding landscape. The pencils of the I CHAP. Ill] WHAT NEC ESS I TV KJVOUS 175 the lem rds 'or- bhe tie Ihe evening sunlight, it is true, found their way all over the rounded snow -ground, but the sunset was hidden by the branches about him, and nothing but the snow and the tree trunks was forced upon his eye, except now and then a bit of blue seen through the branches — a blue that had lost much depth of colour with the decline of day, and come nearer earth — a pale cold blue that showed exquisite ten- derness of contrast as seen tlirough the dove-coloured grey of maple boughs. Where the valley dipped under water and the lake in the midst of the hills had its shore, Trenholme came out from under the trees. Tlie sun had set. The plain of the ice and the snowclad hills looked blue with cold — unutter- ably cold, and dead as lightless snow looks when the eye has grown accustomed to see it animated with light. He could not see where, beneath the snow, the land ended and the ice began; but it mattered little. He walked out on the white plain scanning the south-eastern hill-slope for the house toward which he intended to bend his steps. He was well out on the lake before he saw far enough round the first cliff to come in sight of the log house and its clearing, and no sooner did he see it than he heard his approach, although he was yet so far away, heralded by the barking of a dog. Before he had gone much farther a man came forth with a dog to meet him. The two men had seen one another before, in the days when the neighbourhood had turned out in the fruitless search for Cameron's daughter and for Cameron himself. At that time a fevered eye and haggard face had been the signs that Bates was taking his misfortune to heart j now Tren- holme looked, half expecting to see the same tokens devel- oped by solitude into some demonstration of manner; but this was not the case. His flesh had certainly wasted, and his eye had the excitement of expectation in it as he met his visitor; but the man was the same man still, with the stiff, unexpressive manner which was the expression of his pride. Bates spoke of the weather, of the news Trenholme 176 IVNAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book II T III i I ? brought from Turrifs Settlement, of the railway — all briefly, and without warmth of interest j then he asked why Trenholme had come. " You haven't been able to get any one yet to fell your trees for you? " Bates replied in the negative. "They think the place is dangerous," said the other, as if giving information, although he knew perfectly that Bates was aware of this. He had grown a little diffident in stating why he had come. " Fools they are ! " said Bates, ill-temperedly. Trenholme said that he was willing to do the Avork Bates had wanted a man for, at the same wages. "It's rough work for a gentlemany young man like you." Trenholme's face twitched with a peculiar smile. "I can handle an axe. I can learn to fell trees." "I mean, the living is rough, and all that; and of course " (this was added with suspicious caution) " it wouldn't be worth my while to pay the same wages to an inexperienced hand." Trenholme laughed. This reception was slightly differ- ent from what he had anticipated. He remarked that he might be taken a week on trial, and to this liates agreed, not without some further hesitation. Trenholme inquired after the health of the old aunt of whom he had heard. "In bodily health," said Bates, "she is well. You may perhaps have heard that in mind she has failed somewhat." The man's reserve was his dignity, and it produced its result, although obvious dignity of appearance and manner was entirely lacking to him. The toothless, childish old man woman Trenholme en- countered when he entered the house struck him as an odd exaggeration of the report he had just received. He did not feel at home when he sat down to eat the food Bates set before him ; he perceived that it was chiefly because in a new country hospitality is considered indispensable to an easy conscience that he had received any show of welcome. { i CHAP. IV] WHAT NECE^'SJTV A'AV IVS \77 Yet the lank brown hand that set his mug beside hiui shook so that some tea was spilt. ]3ates was in as dire need of the man he received so unwillingly as ever man was in need of his fellowman. It is v.iien the fetter of solitude has begun to eat into a man's flesh that he begins to pro- claim his indifference to it, and the human mind is never in such need of companionship as when it shuns com- panions. The two spent most of the evening endeavouring to re- store to liveliness the birds that Trenholme had taken from his jjockets, and in discussing them. Bates produced a very old copy of a Halifax newspaper which contained a sonnet to this bird, in which the local poet addressed it as *'Tlie Sunset-tinted grosbeak of the north." Trenholme marvelled at his resources. Such newspapers as he stored up were kept under the cushion of the old aunt's armchair. Bates brought out some frozen cranberries for the birds. They made a rough coop and settled them in it outside, in lee of one of the sheds. It is extraordinary how much time and trouble people will expend on such small matters if they just take it into their heads to do it. CHAPTER IV. There was no very valuable timber on Bates's land. The romance of the lumber trade had already passed f ,'om this part of the country, but the farmers still spent their winters in getting out spruce logs, which were sold at the nearest saw-mills. Bates and Cameron had possessed themselves of a large portion of the hill on which they had settled, with a view to making money by the trees in this way — money that was necessary to the household, frugal 178 WHAT NEC/£S\S/'J'V KNOWS [hook II ! i ■W ^! .J! as it was, for, so far, all their gains had boon spent in ncoossary improvonionts. Theirs had beiMi a far-seeing })olicy that would in the end have brouglit prosperity, had the years of uninterrupted toil on which they calculated been realised. It was not until the next day that Trenholnie fully under- stood how hel[)less the poor Scotchman really was in his present circumstances. In the early morning there was the live-stock to attend to, which took him tlie more time because he was not in strong health; and when tliat was done it seemed that there was nuudi ado in the house before the old woman would sit down jjcace fully for the day. lie apologised to Trenholme for his liouse-work by explaining that she was restless and uneasy all day unless the place was somewhat as she had been accustomed to see it; he drudged to anpease her, and when at last he could follow to the bush, whither he had sent Trenholme, it transpired that he dared not leave her more tlian an hour or two alone, for fear she slioidd do herself a mischief with the fire. In the bush it was obvious how pitifully small was the amount of work accomplished. Many trees had been felled before Cameron's death; but they still had to be lopped and squared, cut into twelve-foot lengths, dragged by an ox to the log-slide, and passed down on to the ice of the lake. Part of the work recpiired two labourers ; only a small part of what could be done single-handed had been accom- plished; and Trenholme strongly suspected that moonlight nights had been given to this, while the old woman slept. It is well known that no line can be drawn between labour and play ; it is quite as much fun making an ox pull a log down a woodland path as playing at polo, if one will only admit it, especially when novelty acts as playmate. Most healthy men find this fascination hidden in labour, provided it only be undertaken at their own bidding, although few have the grace to find it when necessity com- pels to the task. Alec Trenholme found the new form of labour to which he had bidden himself toilsome and delight- CHAP. IV] IVIIAT NECESSITY KNOWS '79 light ?pt. Iveen Ipiill Iwill late. lour, ing, lom- 11 of rht- ful; liko a true son of Adam, ho was iiioro conscious of his toil than of his delight — still both were there; there was physical inspiration in the light of the snow, the keen still air, and the sweet smell of the lumber. So he grew more expert, and the days went i)ast, hardly distinguished from one another, so entire was the unconsciousness of the slumber between tliem. lie had not come without some sensation of romance in his kniglit-errantry. Hates was the centre, the kernel as it were, of a wild story that was not yet explained. Turrif had disbelieved the details Saul had given of Bates's cruelty to Cameron's daughter, and Trenholme had acc(^i>ted Turrif 's judgment; but in the popular judgment, if Came- ron's rising was not a sufficient proof of Bates's guilt, the undoubted disappearance of the daughter was. Whatever had been his fault, rough justice and superstitious fear had imposed on Bates a term of solitary confinement and penal servitude which so far he had accepted without explanation or complaint. He still expressed no satisfaction at Tren- lioline's arrival that would have been a comment on his own hard case and a confession of his need. Yet, on the whole, Trenholme's interest in him would have been heightened rather than decreased by a nearer view of his monotonous life and his dry reserve, had it not been that the man waL to the last degree contentious and difficult to deal with. Taking for granted that Trenholme was of gentle extrac- tion, he treated him with the generosity of pride in the matter of rations; but he assumed airs of a testy authority which were in exact proportion to his own feeling of physi- cal and social inferiority. Seen truly, there was a pathos in this, for it was a weak man's way of trying to be man- ful ; but his new labourer could not be expected to see it in that light. Then, too, on all impersonal subjects of con- versation which arose, it was the nature of Bates to contra- dict and argue ; whereas Trenholme, who had little capacity for reasonable argument, usually dealt with contradiction IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 1.1 IttlM ■50 ■^~ z 1^ 11.25 i 1.4 ■ 25 1.6 <^ ^> /> / ^:^>? ^i^^" ^/v^ > y ><^ ,-v 4^ i\ k :i>^ :\ \ <«> \ ^\ 1?V>^ ¥ ^^ ,#3 i8o WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book II as a pot of gunpowder deals with an intruding spark. As regarded the personal subject of his own misfortune — a subject on which Trenholine felt he had a certain right to receive confidence — Bates's demeanour was like an iron mask. Bates scorned the idea, which Turrif had always held, that Cameron had never really died; he vowed, as before, that the box he had sent in Saul's cart had contained noth- ing but a dead body; he would hear no description of the old man who, it would seem, had usurped Cameron's name ; he repeated stolidly that Saul had put his charge into some shallow grave in the forest, and hoaxed Trenholme, with the help of an accomplice ; and he did not scruple to hint that if Trenholme had not been a coward he would have seized the culprit, and so obviated further mystery and after difficur ies. There was enough truth in this view of the case to make it very insulting to Trenholme. But Bates did not seem to cherish anger for that part of his trouble that had been caused by this defect; rather he showed an annoying indifference to the whole affair. He had done what he could to bary his late partner decently ; he neither expressed nor appeared to experience further emotion concerning his fate. When a man has set himself to anything, he generally sticks to it, for a time at least ; this seemed to be the largest reason that Trenholme had the first four weeks for remain- ing where he was. At any rate, he did remain; and from these unpromising materials, circumstance, as is often the case, beat out a rough sort of friendship between the two men. The fact that Bates was a partial wreck, that the man's nerve and strength in him were to some extent gone, bred in Trenholme the gallantry of the strong toward the weak — a gallantry which was kept from rearing into self- conscious virtue by the superiority of Bates's reasoning powers, which always gave him a certain amount of real authority. Slowly they began to be more confidential. "It's no place for a young man like you to be here," Bates observed with disfavoar. CHAP. IV] WHAT NEC ESS /TV KNOWS i8i It was Sunday. The two were sitting in front of the house in the sunshine, not because the sun was warm, but because it was bright; dressed, as they were, in many plies of clothes, they did not feel the cold. In flat, irregular shape the white lake lay beneath their hill. On the oppo- site heights the spruce-trees stood up clear and green, as perfect often in shape as yews that are cut into old-fashioned cones. " I was told that about the last place I was in, and the place before too," Trenholme laughed. He did not seem to take his own words much to heart. "Well, the station certainly wasn't much of a business," assented Bates; "and, if it's not rude to ask, where were ye before?" " Before that — why, I was just going to follow my own trade in a place '■here there was a splendid opening for me ; but my own brother put a stop to that. He said it was no fit position for a young man like me. My brother's a fine fellow," the young man sneered, but not bitterly. "He ought to be," said Bates, surveying the sample of the family before him rather with a glance of just criticism than of admiration. " What's your calling, then? " Alec pulled his mitts out of his pocket and slapped his moccasins with them to strike off the melting snow. " What do you think it is, now?" Bates eyed him with some interest in the challenge. " I don't know," he said at last. "Why didn't your brother want ye to do it?" " 'Twasn't grand enough. I came out naturally thinking I'd set up near my brother; but, well, I found he'd grown a very fine gentleman — all honour to him for it! He's a good fellow." There was no sneer just now. Bates sat subjecting all he knew of Alec to a process of consideration. The result was not a guess; it was not in him to hazard anything, even a guess. " What does your brother do? " "Clergyman, and he has a school." I 182 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book II 1 ;i i! "Where?" " Chellaston, on the Grand Trunk." "Never heard of it. Is it a growing place?" "It's thriving along now. It was just right for my busi- » ness. " Did the clergyman think your business was wrong? " The young man laughed as a man laughs who knows the answer to an amusing riddle and sees his neighbour's mental floundering. " He admits that it's an honest and respectable line of life." "Did ye give in, then?" " I took a year to think over it. I'm doing that now." "Thinking?" "Yes." "I've not observed ye spending much time in medita- tion." The young man looked off across the basin of the frozen lake. What is more changeful than the blue of the sky? To-day the far firmament looked opaque, an even, light blue, as if it were made of painted china. The blue of Alec Trenholme's eyes was very much like the sky; sometimes it was deep and dark, sometimes it was a shadowy grey, sometimes it was hard and metallic. A woman having to deal with him would probably have imagined that something of his inward mood was to be read in these changes ; but, indeed, they were owing solely to those causes which change the face of the sky — degrees of light and the position of that light. As for Bates, he did not even know that his companion had blue eyes ; he only knew in a general way that he was a strong, good-looking fellow, whose ligure, even under the bulgy shapes of multiplied garments, managed to give suggestion of that indefinite thing we call style. He himself felt rather thinner, weaker, more rusty in knowledge of the world, more shapeless as to apparel, than he would have done had he sat alone. After a minute or two he said, "What's your trade?" Trenholme, sitting there in the clear light, would have CHAP. IV] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 183 blushed as he answered had his face not been too much weathered to admit of change of colour. He went through that momentary change of feeling that we connect with blushes. He had been perfectly conscious that this ques- tion was coming, and perfectly conscious, too, that when he answered it he would fall in Bates's estimation, that his prestige would be gone. He thought he did not mind it, but he did. "Butcher," he said. " Ye're not in earnest?" said Bates, with animosity. "Upon my word.*' " Ye don't look like that " — with disappointment. " Look like what?" — fiercely — " What would you have me look like? My father was as good-looking a man as you'd see in the three kingdoms, and as good a butcher, too. He got rich, had three shops, and he sent us boys to the best school he could find. He'd have set me up in any business I liked; if I chose his it was because — I did choose it." He was annoyed at Bates's open regret, just as we are constantly more annoyed at fresh evidence of a spirit we know to be in a man than with the demonstration of some unexpected fault, because we realise the trait we have fathomed and see how poor it is. " How did your brother come to be a minister? " "He's a clergyman of the Church of England" — with loftiness. "Well, that's more of a thing than a minister; how did he come by it?" "He was clever, and father was able to send him to Oxford. He was a good deal older than I was. I suppose he took to the Church because he thought it his duty." " And now that he's out here he wants to sink the shop? " " Oh, as to that " — coldly — " when he was quite young, in England, he got in with swells. He's tremendously clever. There were men in England that thought no end of him." "Did he lie low about the shop there?" " I don't know " — shortly — " I was at school then." M!i I ':•■- 184 PV//AT NECESSITY KNOWS [book II Bates, perceiving that his questions were considered vastly offensive, desisted, but not with that respectfulness of mind that he would have had had Alec's father been a clergyman as well as his brother. Bates's feeling in this matter was what it was by inheritance, exactly as was the shape of his nose or the length of his limbs; it required no exercise of thought on his part to relegate Alec Trenholme to a place of less consequence. Trenholme assuaged his own ill-temper by going to take out his pink and grey grosbeaks and give them exercise. He was debating in his mind whether they were suffering from confinement or not — a question which the deportment of the birds never enabled him to solve completely — when Bates wandered round beside him again, and betrayed that his mind was still upon the subject of their conversation. "Ye know," he began, with the deliberate interest of a Scotchman in an argument, " I've been thinking on it, and I'm thinking your brother's in the right of it." "You do!" The words had thunderous suggestion of rising wrath. "Well," said the other again, "ye're hard to please; ye were vexed a while since because ye thought I was criticis- ing him for lying low." The answer to this consisted in threats thrown out at any man who took upon himself to criticise his brother. " And now, when I tell ye I'm thinking he's in the right of it, ye're vexed again. Now, I'll tell ye : ye don't like to think the Rev. Mr. Trenholme's in the right, for that puts ye in the wrong; but ye don't like me to think he's in the wrong, because he's your brother. Well, it's natural! but just let us discuss the matter. Now, ye'U agree with me it's a man's duty to rise in the world if he can." Upon which he was told, in a paraphrase, to mind his own business. CHAP. V] IVHAT NECESSITY KNOiVS i8s CHAPTER V. It was a delightful proof of the blessed elasticity of inconsistency in human lives, a proof also that there was in these two men more of good than of evil, that that same evening, when the lamp was lit, they discussed the prob- lem that had been mooted in the afternoon with a fair amount of good temper. As they sat elbowing the deal table, sheets of old newspapers under their inspection, Trenholme told his story more soberly. He told it roughly, emphasising detail, slighting important matter, as men tell stories who see them too near to get the just propor- tion; but out of his words Bates had wit to glean the truth. It seemed that his father had been a warm-hearted man, with something superior in his mental qualities and ac- quirements. Having made a moderate fortune, he had liberally educated his sons. There is nothing in which families differ more by nature than in the qualities of heart which bind them together or easily release them from the bonds of kinship. The members of this small family had that in them which held them together in spite of the pulling of circumstance; for although the elder son had come on the stage of manhood ten years before the younger, although he had had talents that advanced him among scholarly men, and had been quickly taken from his first curacy to fill a superior position in a colony, he had never abated an affectionate correspondence with Alec, and had remained the hero of his young brother's imagination. This younger son, not having the same literary tastes, and having possibly a softer heart, gratified his father by going into business with him ; but at that good man's death he had had sufficient enterprise, sufficient distaste, possibly, for his English position, to sell the business that was left in his hands, and affection drew him, as a loadstone a mag- net, to his brother's neighbourhood. He brought with i86 WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book II ! I I him securities of the small fortune they were to divide between them, and expected nothing but happiness in the meeting and prosperity in his future career. Unfortunately, a cause of dispute between the two brothers arose instantly on Alec's arrival : there was an exceptionally good opening in Chellaston for one of Alec's calling; the brothers took different views concerning that calling; they had quarrelled with all the fire of warm natures, and were parted almost as soon as met. " And did ye think it would be pleasing to your brother to have a tradesman of the same name and blood as him- self in the same place?" asked Bates with lack of tolera- tion in his tone. "That's all very fine!" — scornfully. "You know as well as I do that my lord and my gentleman come out to this country to do what farm-hands and cattle-men would hardly be paid to do at home " "When they've ruined themselves first, but not till then," Bates put in. " And besides, old Robert sets up to be a saint. I didn't suppose he'd look upon things in the vulgar way." This reflection was cast on Bates as one of a class. "Was I likely to suppose he'd think that to kick one's heels on an office stool was finer than honest labour, or that my partic- ular kind of labour had something more objectionable about it than any other? In old times it was the most honoura- ble office there was. Look at the priests of the Old Testa- ment ! Bead Homer ! " "I don't know that I'm understanding ye about Homer." " Why, hear him tell the way the animals were cut up, and the number of them — yards and yards of it." "But in the Bible the animals were used for sacrifice; that's very different." Bates said this, but felt that a point had been scored against him in the poetry of Homer; the Old Testament was primeval, but Homer, in spite of ancient date, seemed to bring with him the authority of modern culture. wJf CHAP. V] IVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 187 "If they were, the people feasted upon them all the sa^ne, and the office of preparing them was the most hon- ourable. I'm not claiming to be a priest (I leave that to my respected brother) ; I claim my right in a new country, where Adam has to delve again, to be a butcher and a gen- tleman." All his words were hot and hasty. "But ye see," said Bates, "in the towns here, things are beginning to regulate themselves much in the shape they take in the old country." "My brother cares more what people think than I do." "And a verra good thing too; for with the majority there is wisdom," put in Bates, keen and contentious. "You think so, do you?" — with sarcasm. "Ye must remember ye're young yet; your brother has seen more of the world " Now Alec Trenholme had had no intention of telling what, to his mind, was the worst of his brother's conduct, but here he slapped the table and burst out angrily : " And I tell you he believes as I do, but he hasn't pluck to act up to it. He's not even told one of his fine friends what his brother does; he says it's for the sake of his school. He's living a lie for his own pride. He's got himself made master of a college, fine as a fiddle, and he cares more about that than about his brother. With all his prayers and his sermons in church every Sunday, he'd let me go to the dogs rather than live out the truth. He thinks I've gone to the devil now, because I left him in a rage, and I told him I'd go and learn to spend my money, and drink, and swear, and gamble as a gentleman should. He thinks I've done it, and he writes and implores me, by all that's holy, to forsake evil courses; but never a word like 'Come back and set up your shop, old fellow, and I'll be your customer.' That's the amount of his religion." "It was a hard choice ye put upon him," said Bates, solemnly. "You think it was? Well!" The young man gave a boisterous laugh. i88 WHAT NEC ESS/TV KNOWS [book II I "For, in the first placo, it's not his fault, but your own entirely, if ye go to the bad." "I've not gone to the bad; but if I had, if I'd gone straight there, it would have been his fault." "'Twould just have been your own. There's just one man that's responsible for your actions,. and that's your- self. If your brother was a complete blackguard, instead of a good man, that's no excuse for you. God never put any man into this world and said, 'Be good if some other man is.' " "When a man sets up to preach, and then throws away his influence over his own brother for a little finery opposi- tion, it's more than being a blackguard. What does a man mean by standing up to preach if he doesn't mean that he's taking some responsibility for other people?" " Well, but it wasn't he that threw away his influence over you; it was you. He never said 'Don't be influenced any more by me.' If ye thought he was an angel before then, more fool ye were, for no man is an angel. What business had you to make all the influence of his godly life condeetion on his doing right, or what you thought right, on a certain point of opinion ? " "He's living a lie, I tell you." "I'm not sure but he's right not to have blazoned it. I'm not sure but I'd have done the same myself." " Well, as you just remarked, men are not angels. That you would have done it doesn't prove anything." Next morning Trenholme, whose half-awaked mind had not yet recurred to the night's dispute, stepped out of the house into a white morning fog, not uncommon in fierce weather when holes for fishing had been made in the ice of the lake. The air, seemingly as dry as smoke, but keen and sweet, was almost opaque, like an atmosphere of white porcelain, if such might be. The sun, like a scarlet ball, was just appearing; it might have been near, it might have been far; no prospect was seen to mark the distance. Tren- holme was walking round by the white snow path, hardly IHi CHAP. V] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 189 discerning the ox-shed to which he was bound, when he suchlenly came upon the dark figure of Bates, who was pitoliing hay for his cattle. Bates let down his fork and stood in his path. "For God's sake, Mr. Trenholme," said he, "let your brother know whe^'e you are." Trenholme started: Bates's figure stood not unlike some gnarled thorn that might have appeared to take hunum shape in the mist. " For God's sake, man, write ! If ye only knew what it was to feel the weight of another soul on ye, and one that ye had a caring fori Ye're easy angered yourself; ye might .as easy anger another, almost without knowing it; and if he or she was to go ye didn't know where, or per- haps die, be sure ye would blame yourself without heeding their blame." Bates's voice was trembling. The solemnity of his mien and the feminine pronoun he had let slip revealed to Tren- holme the direction his thoughts had taken. He went on, holding out an arm, as though by the ges- ture swearing to his own transgression : " I counted myself a good man, and I'll not say now but I did more for " — some name died upon his lips — "than one man in a hundred would have done; but in my folly I angered her, and Avhen I'd have given my life ten times over " This, then, was the sorrow that dogged his life. Tren- holme knew, without more ado, that Bates loved the lost girl, that it was her loss that outweighed all other misfor- tune. He felt a great compassion: he said impatiently: "There's no use trying to interfere between brothers. You can't see the thing as I see it. Let's leave it." "Ay, leave it," cried the other, voice and limb shaking, " and life is short, and the time to die is every time, and if some accident is to sweep us away to-night, who's to tell him that your death, and your soul too, isn't on his head? " " Bother my soul ! " said Alec ; and yet there was a cer- tain courtesy expressed in the gentler tone in which he ' II I 190 WHAT NI'ICESS/TV KNOWS [hook II w spoko, and what he thouglit was, " How much he must have loved her! " When the io^ had "anished, leaving daylight absolute, this scene of the morning seemed like a dream, and in the evening, as much from curiosity to see if he could revive its essence again as from a friendly desire to relieve the overcharged heart of his comrade, he said : "Tell me about her, Bates. What was she like?" Bates responded to the question like a man whose heart is beating against the walls of his silence as a bird beats upon its cage. He spoke a few words, hardly noticing that he was telling his memories; then the mask of his self- bound habit was resumed; then again the dignity of his sorrow found some expression; and still again he would retire into dumbness, setting the questioner aside slight- ingly ; and when he had forgotten that he had drawn back within himself some further revealing would come from him. It was little that he said in all, but language that has been fused in the furnace of so strong a sorrow and silence has little of the dross of common speech — the un- meaning, misleading, unnecessary elements: his veritable memory and thought and feeling were painted by his meagre tale. Was that tale true? John Bates would have thought it a great sin to deceive himself or another, and yet, such was the power of his love, blown to white heat by the breath of regret and purified, that when he spoke of the incidents of Sissy's childhood, of the cleverness she displayed when he taught her, of her growth until the day in which he had offended her by speaking of marriage, when he told of her tears, and prayers, and anger, and of his own despotism, the picture of it all that arose in Trenholme's imagination was exceedingly different from what would have been there had he seen the reality. He would not have liked Cameron's daughter had he seen her, but, seeing her through the medium of a heart that loved her, all the reverence that is due to womanly sweetness stirred in him. CHAP. V] WHAT NECESSITY K'NOU'S 191 ,e Cupid may be blind, but to the eyes of chastened love is given the vision of God. When it appeared that Bates had said all tliat he was going to say, Alec Trenholme sat pondering the problem of this girl's disappearance with more mental energy than he had before given to it. Knowing the place now, he knew that what Bates and Saul had averred was true — that there were but two ways by which any one could leave it while water was unfrozen, one by the boat, and the other by striking at random across the hill to the back of the farm — a route that could only lead either to one of several iso- lated farms, or, by a forty-mile tramp round by the nearest river bridge, to the railway. At no farm-house had she been seen, and the journey by the bridge was too long to have been accomplished before the snow storm must have impeded her. It was in attempting this journey, Bates was convinced, that she had perished. Tliere was, of course, another possibility that had been mooted at Turrifs Settlement; but the testimony of Bates and Saul, agreeing in the main points, had entirely silenced it. Trenholme, thinking of this now, longed to question more nearly, yet hardly dared. "Do you think she could have gone mad? People some- times do go stark mad suddenly. Because, if so, and if you could be mistaken in thinking you saw her in the house when you went " The Scotchman was looking keenly at him with sharp eyes and haggard face. "I understand ye," he said, with a sigh of resignation, "the noise 0' the thing has been such that there's no evil men haven't thought of me, or madness of her. Ye think the living creature ye saw rise from the coffin was, maybe, the dead man's daughter?" "I think it was much too big for a woman." "Oh, as to that, she was a good height." Perhaps, with involuntary thought of what might have been, he drew himself up to his full stature as he said, " A grand height for a woman J but as to this idea of yours, I'll not sayye're 192 IVHAT NECESSITY KNOWS [book II 11 I I insulting her by it, though that's true too; but I've had the same notion; and now I'll tell ye something. She was not mad; she took clothes; she left everything in order. Was that the act of a maniac? and if she wasn't mad, clean out of her wits, would she have done such a thing as ye're thinking of? " "No"— thoughtfully— "I should think not." "And, furthermore; if she had wished to do it, where is it she could have laid him? D'ye think I haven't looked the ground over? Tliere's no place where she could have buried him, and to take him to the lake was beyond her strength." There was nothing of the everyday irascibility about his voice; the patience of a great grief was upon him, as he argued away the gross suspicion. " That settles it." Trenholme said this willingly enough. "Yes, it settles it; for if there was a place where the earth was loose I dug with my own hands down to the very rock, and neither man nor woman lay under it." Trenholme was affected; he again renounced his sus- picion. "And now I've told ye that," said Bates, "I'll tell ye something else, for it's right ye should know that when the spring comes it'll not be in my power to help ye with the logs — not if we should lose the flood and have to let 'em lie till next year — for when the snow passes, I must be on the hills seeking her." (He had put a brown, bony hand to shade his eyes, and from out its shade he looked. ) " There were many to help me seek her alive; I'll take none wi' me when I go to give her burial." The other saddened. The weary length and uncertainty of such a search, and its dismal purpose, came to him. " You've no assurance that she hasn't drowned herself in the lake here," he cried, remonstrating. "But I have that; and as ye'll be naturally concerned at me leaving the logs, I'll tell ye what it is, if ye'll give me your word as an honest man that ye'll not repeat it at any time or place whatsoever." CHAP. Vl] WHAT NECESSITY KNOWS 193 He looked so like a man seeking courage to confess some secret sin that Trenholme drew back. " I'll not