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'And the loveliest!' he could have added, without even a saving clause for his own old Emerald Isle, when they passed the western point of the high wooded island of Orleans, and came in view of the superb Falls of Montmorenci; two hundred and fifty feet of sheer precipice, leaped by a broad full torrent, eager to reach the great river flowing beyond, and which seemed placidly to await the turbulent onset. As Robert gazed, the fascination of a great waterfall came over him like a spell. Who has not felt this beside Lodore, or Foyers, or Torc? Who has not found his eye mesmerized by the falling sheet of dark polished waters, merging into snowy spray and crowned with rainbow crest, most changeable, yet most unchanged?

Thousands of years has this been going on; you may read it in the worn limestone layers that have been eaten through, inches in centuries, by the impetuous stream. Thus, also, has the St. Lawrence carved out its mile-wide bed beneath the Heights of Abraham—the stepping-stone to Wolfe's fame and Canadian freedom.

CHAPTER IV

WOODEN-NESS

Piled on the summit of Cape Diamond, and duplicated in shadow upon the deep waters at its base, three hundred feet below, stands the fortress of Quebec. Edinburgh and Ehrenbreitstein have been used as old-world symbols to suggest its beauty and strength; but the girdle of mighty river is wanting to the former, and the latter is a trifling miniature of the Canadian city-queen. Robert Wynn knew of no such comparisons; he only felt how beautiful was that mass of interwoven rock, and wood, and town, reflected and rooted in the flood; he scarcely heard Captain Armytage at his left reminding him for the tenth time that he had been here before with his regiment.

'There's Point Levi to the south, a mile away, in front of the mountains. Something unpleasant once befell me in crossing there. I and another sub. hired a boat for a spree, just because the hummocks of ice were knocking about on the tide, and all prudent people stayed ashore; but we went out in great dreadnought boots, and bearskin caps over our ears, and amused ourselves with pulling about for a while among the floes. I suppose the grinding of the ice deafened us, and the hummocks hid us from view of the people on board; at all events, down came one of the river steamers slap on us. I saw the red paddles laden with ice at every revolution, and the next instant was sinking, with my boots dragging me down like a cannon-ball at my feet. I don't know how I kicked them off, and rose: Gilpin, the other sub., had got astride on the capsized boat; a rope flung from the steamer struck me, and you may believe I grasped it pretty tightly. D'ye see here?' and he showed Robert a front tooth broken short: 'I caught with my hands first, and they were so numb, and the ice forming so fast on the dripping rope, that it slipped till I held by my teeth; and another noose being thrown around me lasso-wise, I was dragged in. A narrow escape, eh?'

'Very narrow,' echoed Robert. He noticed the slight shiver that ran through the daughter's figure, as she leaned on her father's arm. His handsome face looked down at her carelessly.

'Edith shudders,' said he; 'I suppose thinking that so wonderful an escape ought to be remembered as more than a mere adventure.' To which he received no answer, save an appealing look from her soft eyes. He turned away with a short laugh.

'Well, at all events, it cured me of boating among the ice. Ugh! to be sucked in and smothered under a floe would be frightful.'

Mr. Wynn wishing to say something that would prove he was not thinking of the little aside-scene between father and daughter, asked if the St. Lawrence was generally so full of ice in winter.

It was difficult to believe now in the balmy atmosphere of the Indian summer, with a dreamy sunshine warming and gladdening all things,—the very apotheosis of autumn,—that wintry blasts would howl along this placid river, surging fierce ice-waves together, before two months should pass.

'There's rarely a bridge quite across,' replied Captain Armytage; 'except in the north channel, above the isle of Orleans, where the tide has less force than in the southern, because it is narrower; but in the widest place the hummocks of ice are frequently crushed into heaps fifteen or twenty feet high, which makes navigation uncomfortably exciting.'

'I should think so,' rejoined Robert drily.

'Ah, you have yet to feel what a Canadian winter is like, my young friend;' and Captain Armytage nodded in that mysterious manner which is intended to impress a 'griffin' with the cheering conviction that unknown horrors are before him.

'I wonder what is that tall church, whose roof glitters so intensely?'

'The cathedral, under its tin dome and spires. The metal is said to hinder the lodging and help the thawing of the snow, which might otherwise lie so heavy as to endanger the roof.'

'Oh, that is the reason!' ejaculated Robert, suddenly enlightened as to the needs-be of all the surface glitter.

'Rather a pretty effect, eh? and absolutely unique, except in Canadian cities. It suggests an infinitude of greenhouses reflecting sunbeams at a variety of angles of incidence.'

'I presume this is the lower town, lying along the quays?' said Robert.

'Yes, like our Scottish Edinburgh, the old city, being built in dangerous times, lies huddled close together under protection of its guardian rock,' said the Captain. 'But within, you could fancy yourself suddenly transported into an old Normandy town, among narrow crooked streets and high-gabled houses: nor will the degree of cleanliness undeceive you. For, unlike most other American cities, Quebec has a Past as well as a Present: there is the French Past, narrow, dark, crowded, hiding under a fortification; and there is the English Present, embodied in the handsome upper town, and the suburb of St. John's, broad, well-built, airy. The line of distinction is very marked between the pushing Anglo-Saxon's premises and the tumble-down concerns of the stand-still habitan.'

Perhaps, also, something is due to the difference between Protestant enterprise and Roman Catholic supineness.

'There's a boat boarding us already,' said Robert.

It proved to be the Custom-house officers; and when their domiciliary visit was over, Robert and Arthur went ashore. Navigating through a desert expanse of lumber rafts and a labyrinth of hundreds of hulls, they stepped at last on the ugly wooden wharves which line the water's edge, and were crowded with the usual traffic of a port; yet singularly noiseless, from the boarded pavement beneath the wheels.

Though the brothers had never been in any part of France, the peculiarly French aspect of the lower town struck them immediately. The old-fashioned dwellings, with steep lofty roofs, accumulated in narrow alleys, seemed to date back to an age long anterior to Montcalm's final struggle with Wolfe on the heights; even back, perchance, to the brave enthusiast Champlain's first settlement under the superb headland, replacing the Indian village of Stadacona. To perpetuate his fame, a street alongside the river is called after him; and though his 'New France' has long since joined the dead names of extinct colonies, the practical effects of his early toil and struggle remain in this American Gibraltar which he originated.

Andy Callaghan had begged leave to accompany his young masters ashore, and marched at a respectful distance behind them, along that very Champlain Street, looking about him with unfeigned astonishment. 'I suppose the quarries is all used up in these parts, for the houses is wood, an' the churches is wood, and the sthreets has wooden stones ondher our feet,' he soliloquized, half audibly. 'It's a mighty quare counthry intirely: between the people making a land on top of the wather for 'emselves by thim big rafts, an' buildin' houses on 'em, and kindlin' fires'–

Here his meditation was rudely broken into by the sudden somerset of a child from a doorstep he was passing; but it had scarcely touched the ground when Andy, with an exclamation in Irish, swung it aloft in his arms.

'Mono mush thig thu! you crathur, is it trying which yer head or the road is the hardest, ye are? Whisht now, don't cry, me fine boy, and maybe I'd sing a song for ye.'

'Wisha then, cead mille failthe a thousand times, Irishman, whoever ye are!' said the mother, seizing Andy's hand. 'And my heart warms to the tongue of the old counthry! Won't you come in, honest man, an' rest awhile, an' it's himself will be glad to see ye?'

'And who's himself?' inquired Andy, dandling the child.

'The carpenter, Pat M'Donagh of Ballinoge'—

'Hurroo!' shouted Andy, as he executed a whirligig on one leg, and then embraced the amazed Mrs. M'Donagh fraternally. 'My uncle's son's wife! an' a darling purty face you have of yer own too.'

'Don't be funnin', now,' said the lady, bridling; 'an' you might have axed a person's lave before ye tossed me cap that way. Here, Pat, come down an' see yer cousin just arrived from the ould counthry!'

Robert and Arthur Wynn, missing their servitor at the next turn, and looking back, beheld something like a popular émeute in the narrow street, which was solely Andy fraternizing with his countrymen and recovered relations.

'Wait a minit,' said Andy, returning to his allegiance, as he saw them looking back; 'let me run afther the gentlemen and get lave to stay.'

'Lave, indeed!' exclaimed the republican-minded Mrs. M'Donagh; 'it's I that wud be afther askin lave in a free counthry! Why, we've no masthers nor missusses here at all.'

'Hut, woman, but they're my fostherers—the young Mr. Wynns of Dunore.'

Great had been that name among the peasantry once; and even yet it had not lost its prestige with the transplanted Pat M'Donagh. He had left Ireland a ragged pauper in the famine year, and was now a thriving artisan, with average wages of seven shillings a day; an independence with which Robert Wynn would have considered himself truly fortunate, and upon less than which many a lieutenant in Her Majesty's infantry has to keep up a gentlemanly appearance. Pat's strength had been a drug in his own country; here it readily worked an opening to prosperity.

And presently forgetting his sturdy Canadian notions of independence, the carpenter was bowing cap in hand before the gentlemen, begging them to accept the hospitality of his house while they stayed in Quebec. 'The M'Donaghs is ould tenants of yer honours' father, an' many a kindness they resaved from the family, and 'twould be the joy of me heart to see one of the ancient stock at me table,' he said; 'an' sure me father's brother's son is along wid ye.'

'The ancient stock' declined, with many thanks, as they wanted to see the city; but Andy, not having the same zeal for exploring, remained in the discovered nest of his kinsfolk, and made himself so acceptable, that they parted subsequently with tears.

Meanwhile the brothers walked from the Lower to the Upper Town, through the quaint steep streets of stone houses—relics of the old French occupation. The language was in keeping with this foreign aspect, and the vivacious gestures of the inhabitants told their pedigree. Robert and Arthur were standing near a group of them in the market-square, assembled round a young bear brought in by an Indian, when the former felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, and the next instant the tenacity of his wrist was pretty well tested in the friendly grasp of Hiram Holt.

CHAPTER V

DEBARKATION

The chill of foreignness and loneliness which had been creeping over Robert Wynn's sensations since he had entered the strange city, was dissipated as if a cloud had suddenly lifted off. The friendly face of the colossal Canadian beaming a welcome upon him, with that broad sunshiny smile which seems immediately to raise the temperature of the surrounding air, did certainly warm his heart, and nerve it too. He was not altogether a stranger in a strange land.

'And so you've followed my advice! Bravo, young blood! You'll never be sorry for adopting Canada as your country. Now, what are your plans?' bestowing an aside left-hand grasp upon Arthur. 'Can Hiram Holt help you? Have the old people come out? So much the better; they would only cripple you in the beginning. Wait till your axe has cut the niche big enough. You rush on for the West, I suppose?'

All these inquiries in little longer than a breath; while he wrung Robert's hand at intervals with a heartiness and power of muscle which almost benumbed the member.

'We have letters to friends on Lake Erie, and to others on Lake Simcoe,' said Robert, rescuing his hand, which tingled, and yet communicated a very pleasurable sensation to his heart. 'We are not quite decided on our line of march.'

'Well, how did you come? Emigrant vessel?'

Adopting the laconic also, Robert nodded, and said it was their first day in Quebec.

'Get quit of her as soon as you can; haul your traps ashore, and come along with me. I'll be going up the Ottawa in a day or two, home; and 'twill be only a step out of your way westward. You can look about you, and see what Canadian life is like for a few weeks; the longer, the more welcome to Hiram Holt's house. Is that fixed?'

Robert was beginning to thank him warmly—

'Now, shut up, young man; I distrust a fellow that has much palaver. You look too manly for it. I calculate your capital ain't much above your four hands between you?'

Arthur was rather discomfited at a query so pointed, and so directly penetrating the proud British reserve about monetary circumstances; but Robert, knowing that the motive was kind-hearted, and the manner just that of a straightforward unconventional settler, replied, 'You are nearly right, Mr. Holt; our capital in cash is very small; but I hope stout bodies and stout hearts are worth something.'

'What would you think of a bush farm? I think I heard you say you had some experience on your father's farm in Ireland?'

'My father's estate, sir,' began Arthur, reddening a little.

Holt measured him by a look, but not one of displeasure. 'Farms in Canada grow into estates,' said he; 'by industry and push, I shouldn't be surprised if you became a landed proprietor yourself before your beard is stiff.' Arthur had as yet no symptom of that manly adornment, though anxiously watching for the down. The backwoodsman turned to Robert.

'Government lands are cheap enough, no doubt; four shillings an acre, and plenty of them. If you're able, I'd have you venture on that speculation. Purchase-money is payable in ten years; that's a good breathing time for a beginner. But can you give up all luxuries for a while, and eat bread baked by your own hands, and sleep in a log hut on a mess of juniper boughs, and work hard all day at clearing the eternal forests, foot by foot?'

'We can,' answered Arthur eagerly. His brother's assent was not quite so vivacious.

Hiram Holt thought within himself how soon the ardent young spirit might tire of that monotony of labour; how distasteful the utter loneliness and uneventfulness of forest life might become to the undisciplined lad, accustomed, as he shrewdly guessed, to a petted and idling boyhood.

'Well said, young fellow. For three years I can't say well done; though I hope I may have that to add also.'

By this time they had passed from the Market Square to the Esplanade, overhanging the Lower Town, and which commands a view almost matchless for extent and varied beauty. At this hour the shades of evening were settling down, and tinging with sombre hues the colouring of the landscape: over the western edge the sun had sunk; far below, the noble river lay in black shadow and a single gleaming band of dying daylight, as it crept along under the fleets of ships.

Indistinct as the details were becoming, the outlined masses were grander for the growing obscurity, and Robert could not restrain an exclamation of 'Magnificent!'

'Well, I won't deny but it is handsome,' said Mr. Holt, secretly gratified; 'I never expect to see anything like it for situation, whatever other way it's deficient. Now I'm free to confess it's only a village to your London, for forty thousand wouldn't be missed out of two or three millions; but bigness ain't the only beauty in the world, else I'd be a deal prettier than my girl Bell, who's not much taller than my walking-stick, and the fairest lass in our township.'

The adjective 'pretty' seemed so ridiculously inappropriate to one of Mr. Holt's dimensions and hairy development of face, that Robert could not forbear a smile. But the Canadian had returned to the landscape.

'Quebec is the key of Canada, that's certain; and so Wolfe and Montcalm knew, when they fought their duel here for the prize.'

Arthur pricked up his ears at the celebrated names. 'Oh, Bob, we must try and see the battlefield,' he exclaimed, being fresh from Goldsmith's celebrated manual of English history.

'To-morrow,' said Mr. Holt. 'It lies west on top of the chain of heights flanking the river. A monument to the generals stands near here, in the Castle gardens, with the names on opposite sides of the square block. To be sure, how death levels us all! Lord Dalhousie built that obelisk when he was Governor in 1827. You see, as it is the only bit of history we possess, we never can commemorate it enough; so there's another pillar on the plains.'

Lights began to appear in the vessels below, reflected as long brilliant lines in the glassy deeps. 'Perhaps we ought to be getting back to the ship,' suggested Robert, 'before it is quite dark.'

'Of course you are aware that this is the aristocratic section of the town,' said Mr. Holt, as they turned to retrace their steps. 'Here the citizens give themselves up to pleasure and politics, while the Lower Town is the business place. The money is made there which is spent here; and when our itinerating Legislature comes round, Quebec is very gay, and considerably excited.'

'Itinerating Legislature! what's that?' asked Arthur.

'Why, you see, in 1840 the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada were legally united; their representatives met in the same House of Assembly, and so forth. Kingston was made the capital, as a central point; however, last year ('49) the famous device of itineration was introduced, by which, every four years, his Excellency the Governor and the Right Honourable Parliament move about from place to place, like a set of travelling showmen.'

'And when will Quebec's turn come?'

'In '51, next year. The removal of court patronage is said to have injured the city greatly: like all half-and-half measures, it pleases nobody. Toronto growls, and Kingston growls, and Quebec growls, and Montreal growls; Canada is in a state of chronic dissatisfaction, so far as the towns go. For myself, I never feel at home in Quebec; the lingo of the habitans puzzles me, and I'm not used to the dark narrow streets.'

'Are you a member of the Parliament, Mr. Holt?' asked Arthur.

'No, though I might be,' replied Hiram, raising his hat for a moment from his masses of grizzled hair. 'I've been town reeve many times, and county warden once. The neighbours wanted to nominate me for the House of Assembly, and son Sam would have attended to the farms and mills; but I had that European trip in my eye, and didn't care. Ah, I see you look at the post-office, young fellow,' as they passed that building just outside the gate of the Upper Town wall; 'don't get homesick already on our hands; there are no post-offices in the bush.'

Arthur looked slightly affronted at this speech, and, to assert his manliness, could have resigned all letters for a twelvemonth. Mr. Holt walked on with a preoccupied air until he said,—

'I must go now, I have an appointment; but I'll be on board to-morrow at noon. The brig Ocean Queen, of Cork, you say? Now your path is right down to Champlain Street; you can't lose your way. Good-bye;' and his receding figure was lost in the dusk, with mighty strides.

'He's too bluff,' said Arthur, resenting thus the one or two plain-spoken sentences that had touched himself.

'But sound and steady, like one of his own forest pines,' said Robert.

'We have yet to test that,' rejoined Arthur, with some truth. 'I wonder shall we ever find the house into which Andy was decoyed; those wooden ranges are all the image of one another. I am just as well pleased he wasn't mooning after us through the Upper Town during the daylight; for, though he's such a worthy fellow, he hasn't exactly the cut of a gentleman's servant. We must deprive him of that iligant new frieze topcoat, with its three capes, till it is fashioned into a civilised garment.'

Mr. Pat M'Donagh's mansion was wooden—one of a row of such, situated near the dockyard in which he wrought. Andy was already on the look-out from the doorstep; and, conscious that he had been guilty of some approach to excess, behaved with such meek silence and constrained decorum, that his master guessed the cause, and graciously connived at his slinking to his berth as soon as he was up the ship's side.

But when Mr. Wynn walked forward next morning to summon Andy's assistance for his luggage, he found that gentleman the focus of a knot of passengers, to whom he was imparting information in his own peculiar way. 'Throth an' he talks like a book itself,' was the admiring comment of a woman with a child on one arm, while she crammed her tins into her red box with the other.

'Every single ha'porth is wood, I tell ye, barrin' the grates, an' 'tisn't grates they are at all, but shtoves. Sure I saw 'em at Pat M'Donagh's as black as twelve o'clock at night, an' no more a sign of a blaze out of 'em than there's light from a blind man's eye; an' 'tisn't turf nor coal they burns, but only wood agin. It's I that wud sooner see the plentiful hearths of ould Ireland, where the turf fire cooks the vittles dacently! Oh wirra! why did we ever lave it?'

But Mr. Wynn intercepted the rising chorus by the simple dissyllable, 'Andy!'

'Sir, yer honour!' wheeling round, and suddenly resuming a jocose demeanour; 'I was only jokin' about bein' back. I must be kapin' up their sperits, the crathurs, that dunno what's before them at all at all; only thinks they're to be all gintlemin an' ladies.' This, as he followed his master towards the cabins: 'Whisht here, Misther Robert,' lowering his tone confidentially.' You'd laugh if you heard what they think they're goin' to get. Coinin' would be nothin' to it. That red-headed Biddy Flannigan' (Andy's own chevelure was of carrot tinge, yet he never lost an opportunity of girding at those like-haired), 'who couldn't wash a pair of stockings if you gev her a goold guinea, expects twenty pund a year an' her keep, at the very laste; and Murty Keefe the labourin' boy, that could just trench a ridge of praties, thinks nothing of tin shillins a day. They have it all laid out among them iligant. Mrs. Mulrooney is lookin' out for her carriage by'ne-by; and they were abusin' me for not sayin' I'd cut an' run from yer honours, now that I'm across.'

'Well, Andy, I'd be sorry to stand in the way of your advancement—'

'Me lave ye, Misther Robert!' in accents of unfeigned surprise; 'not unless ye drove me with a whip an' kicked me—is it your poor fostherer Andy Callaghan? Masther Bob, asthore, ye're all the counthry I have now, an' all the frinds; an' I'll hold by ye, if it be plasing, as long as I've strength to strike a spade.'

Tears actually stood in the faithful fellow's eyes. 'I believe you, Andy,' said his master, giving his hand to the servant for a grasp of friendship, which, if it oftener took place between the horny palm of labour and the whiter fingers of the higher born, would be for the cementing of society by such recognition of human brotherhood.

When Andy had all their luggage on deck in order for the boats, he came up mysteriously to Mr. Wynn, where he stood by the taffrail.

'There's that poor young lady strivin' and strugglin' to regulate them big boxes, an' her good-for-nothin' father an' brother smokin' in the steerage, an' lavin' everything on her. Fine gintlemin, indeed! More like the Injins, that I'm tould lies in bed while their wives digs the praties!'

Edith Armytage was so well accustomed to such unequal division of labour in her family, that it had long ceased to seem singular to her that she was invariably the worker, who bore the brunt of every labour and of every trouble—on whose forecasting care depended the smooth arrangement of her father's designs; for he could plan well enough, but had a lofty disdain of details. The small matter of the luggage was type of all her experience.

Jay rather enjoyed the hauling about of huge articles, and attempting to bring on deck things much larger than her strength; and when she and Edith were jointly essaying to push and pull up the companion-ladder a carpet-bag of unusual size, it was suddenly lifted from between them, over Jay's head, and borne on deck.

'Oh, Mr. Wynn, thank you!' said the little thing demurely. 'It was a little too big for me and Edith. There is a leather valise besides, that's very heavy;' and she looked a wistful request. Robert thought internally that it would have been good business for the captain to bring, at least, his own things on deck; and he could not prevail on himself to do more than offer Andy's services as porter, which were gratefully received. Did Miss Armytage's grey eyes, as they rested upon his for a minute, understand his thoughts? Probably; he believed she did. Presently up sauntered her worthy father, wiping his silky moustache and beard from the smoke.

'Well, dear, how have you managed? Beautifully, I have no doubt. She's a model of a daughter, Wynn!'

'Papa, I hope we may soon land; I positively long to tread the firm earth again.'

'What would you do if you were rocking and rolling in a transport five months round the Cape? All in good time, dear: I have one or two trifling matters to settle;' and he went down to the cabins.

Just before noon Hiram Holt stepped on deck.

'I hope you're ready,' were the second words of his greeting. 'Glorious day for sight-seeing; I've arranged to drive to Cape Rouge over the plains; for we must be off to-morrow, up the river to Montreal. Where are your boxes?'

During a few minutes' delay for the transit of the luggage to the boat, Captain Armytage approached, and with those peculiarly pleasing manners which made him a fascinating man to all who did not know him somewhat deeper than the surface, he engaged Mr. Holt in conversation: he was invited to join the excursion to Wolfe's Cove, and stepped over the side of the ship after the others.

'Reginald! take care of your sisters till my return. They need not go on shore till the afternoon. Au revoir;' and he kissed his hand gaily to Miss Armytage and Jay, who stood at the vessel's side. But Robert could not help remembering their expressed anxiety to get ashore, and the captain's fascinations were lost upon him for a good part of their expedition.

Always thus: postponing business and anybody else's pleasure to his own whim or amusement,—for he was intrinsically the most selfish of men,—Captain Armytage had hitherto contrived never to succeed in any undertaking. He considered himself the victim of unprecedented ill-fortune, forgetting that he had himself been his own evil genius. His son could hardly be otherwise than a chip of the old block. Now he turned away from the taffrail with a scowl; and, vowing that he would not be mewed up while 'the governor' was enjoying himself, presently hailed a boat and went ashore, leaving his sisters to walk up and down the deck and long for the land.