He noticed a general warmness before evening, but it was at night that
he really felt the punishment of his indiscretion. He was in a burning
heat. He scarcely slept all night. Next day he was worse, and his arm
and shoulder were blistered. He bore it bravely, fearing only that the
Home Government might find it out, in which case he would have fared
worse. He had read that the Indians grease the skin for sunburn, so he
went to the bathroom and there used goose grease for lack of Buffalo
fat. This did give some relief, and in a few days he was better and
had the satisfaction of peeling the dead skin from his shoulders and
arms.

Yan made a number of vessels out of Birch bark, stitching the edges
with root fibers, filling the bottom with a round wooden disc, and
cementing the joints with pine gum so that they would hold water.

In the distant river he caught some Catfish and brought them
home--that, is, to his shanty. There he made a fire and broiled
them--very badly--but he ate them as a great delicacy. The sharp bone
in each of their side fins he saved, bored a hole through its thick
end, smoothed it, and so had needles to stitch his Birch bark. He kept
them in a bark box with some lumps of resin, along with some bark
fiber, an Indian flint arrow-head given him by a schoolmate, and
the claws of a large Owl, found in the garbage heap back of the
taxidermist's shop.

One day on the ash heap in their own yard in town he saw a new,
strange bird. He was always seeing new birds, but this was of unusual
interest. He drew its picture as it tamely fed near him. A dull, ashy
gray, with bronzy yellow spots on crown and rump, and white bars on
its wings. His "Birds of Canada" gave no light; he searched through
all the books he could find, but found no clew to its name. It was
years afterward before he learned that this was the young male Pine
Grosbeak.

Another day, under the bushes not far from his shanty, he found a
small Hawk lying dead. He clutched it as a wonderful prize, spent an
hour in looking at its toes, its beak, its wings, its every feather;
then he set to work to make a drawing of it. A very bad drawing it
proved, although it was the labour of days, and the bird was crawling
with maggots before he had finished. But every feather and every spot
was faithfully copied, was duly set down on paper. One of his
friends said it was a Chicken-hawk. That name stuck in Yan's memory.
Thenceforth the Chicken-hawk and its every marking were familiar to
him. Even in after years, when he had learned that this must have been
a young "Sharp-shin," the name "Chicken-hawk" was always readier on
his lips.

But he met with another and a different Hawk soon afterward. This one
was alive and flitting about in the branches of a tree over his head.
It was very small--less than a foot in length. Its beak was very
short, its legs, wings and tail long; its head was bluish and its back
coppery red; on the tail was a broad, black crossbar. As the bird flew
about and balanced on the boughs, it pumped its tail. This told him
it was a Hawk, and the colours he remembered were those of the male
Sparrow-hawk, for here his bird book helped with its rude travesty of
"Wilson's" drawing of this bird. Yet two other birds he saw close at
hand and drew partly from memory. The drawings were like this, and
from the picture on a calendar he learned that one was a Rail; from
a drawing in the bird book that the other was a Bobolink. And these
names he never forgot. He had his doubts about the sketching at
first--it seemed an un-Indian thing to do, until he remembered that
the Indians painted pictures on their shields and on their teepees. It
was really the best of all ways for him to make reliable observation.

The bookseller of the town had some new books in his window about this
time. One, a marvellous work called "Poisonous Plants," Yan was eager
to see. It was exposed in the window for a time. Two of the large
plates were visible from the street; one was Henbane, the other
Stramonium. Yan gazed at them as often as he could. In a week they
were gone; but the names and looks were forever engraved on his
memory. Had he made bold to go in and ask permission to see the work,
his memory would have seized most of it in an hour.




IX

Tracks


In the wet sand down by the edge of the brook he one day found some
curious markings--evidently tracks. Yan pored over them, then made a
life-size drawing of one. He shrewdly suspected it to be the track of
a Coon--nothing was too good or wild or rare for his valley. As soon
as he could, he showed the track to the stableman whose dog was said
to have killed a Coon once, and hence the man must be an authority on
the subject.

"Is that a Coon track?" asked Yan timidly.

"How do I know?" said the man roughly, and went on with his work. But
a stranger standing near, a curious person with shabby clothes, and
a new silk hat on the back of his head, said, "Let me see it." Yan
showed it.

"Is it natural size?"

"Yes, sir."

"Yep, that's a Coon track, all right. You look at all the big trees
near about whar you saw that; then when you find one with a hole in
it, you look on the bark and you will find some Coon hars. Then you
will know you've got a Coon tree."

[Illustration: The Coon track]

Yan took the earliest chance. He sought and found a great Basswood
with some gray hairs caught in the bark. He took them home with him,
not sure what kind they were. He sought the stranger, but he was gone,
and no one knew him.

How to identify the hairs was a question; but he remembered a friend
who had a Coon-skin carriage robe. A few hairs of these were compared
with those from the tree and left no doubt that the climber was a
Coon. Thus Yan got the beginning of the idea that the very hairs of
each, as well as its tracks, are different. He learned, also, how wise
it is to draw everything that he wished to observe or describe. It
was accident, or instinct on his part, but he had fallen on a sound
principle; there is nothing like a sketch to collect and convey
accurate information of form--there is no better developer of true
observation.

One day he noticed a common plant like an umbrella. He dug it up by
the root, and at the lower end he found a long white bulb. He tasted
this. It was much like a cucumber. He looked up "Gray's School
Botany," and in the index saw the name, Indian Cucumber. The
description seemed to tally, as far as he could follow its technical
terms, though like all such, without a drawing it was far from
satisfactory. So he added the Indian Cucumber to his woodlore.

On another occasion he chewed the leaves of a strange plant because he
had heard that that was the first test applied by the Indians. He soon
began to have awful pains in his stomach. He hurried home in agony.
His mother gave him mustard and water till he vomited, then she boxed
his ears. His father came in during the process and ably supplemented
the punishment. He was then and there ordered to abstain forever from
the woods. Of course, he did not. He merely became more cautious about
it all, and enjoyed his shanty with the added zest of secret sin.




X

Biddy's Contribution


An Irish-Canadian servant girl from Sanger now became a member of
their household. Her grandmother was an herb-doctor in great repute.
She had frequently been denounced as a witch, although in good
standing as a Catholic. This girl had picked up some herb-lore, and
one day when all the family were visiting the cemetery she darted into
various copses and produced plants which she named, together with the
complaint that her grandmother used them for.

"Sassafras, that makes tea for skin disease; Ginseng, that's good to
sell; Bloodroot for the blood in springtime; Goldthread, that cures
sore mouths; Pipsissewa for chills and fever; White-man's Foot, that
springs up wherever a White-man treads; Indian cup, that grows where
an Indian dies; Dandelion roots for coffee; Catnip tea for a cold;
Lavender tea for drinking at meals; Injun Tobacco to mix with boughten
tobacco; Hemlock bark to dye pink; Goldthread to dye yellow, and
Butternut rinds for greenish."

All of these were passing trifles to the others, but to Yan they were
the very breath of life, and he treasured up all of these things
in his memory. Biddy's information was not unmixed with error and
superstition:

"Hold Daddy Longlegs by one leg and say, 'tell me where the cows are,'
and he will point just right under another leg, and onct he told me
where to find my necklace when I lost it.

"Shoot the Swallows and the cows give bloody milk. That's the way old
Sam White ruined his milk business--shooting Swallows.

"Lightning never strikes a barn where Swallows nest. Paw never rested
easy after the new barn was built till the Swallows nested in it. He
had it insured for a hundred dollars till the Swallows got round to
look after it.

"When a Measuring-worm crawls on you, you are going to get a new suit
of clothes. My brother-in-law says they walk over him every year in
summer and sure enough, he gets a new suit. But they never does it in
winter, cause he don't get new clothes then.

"Split a Crow's tongue and he will talk like a girl. Granny knowed a
man that had a brother back of Mara that got a young Crow and
split his tongue an' he told Granny it was _just_ like a girl
talking--an' Granny told me!

"Soak a Horse-hair in rainwater and it will turn into a Snake. Ain't
there lots uv Snakes around ponds where Horses drink? Well!

"Kill a Spider an' it will rain to-morrow. Now, that's worth knowin'.
I mind one year when the Orangeman's picnic was comin', 12th of July,
Maw made us catch twenty Spiders and we killed them all the day
before, and law, how it did rain on the picnic! Mebbe we didn't laugh.
Most of them hed to go home in boats, that's what our paper said. But
next year they done the same thing on us for St. Patrick's Day, but
Spiders is scarce on the 16th of March, an' it didn't rain so much as
snow, so it was about a stand-off.

"Toads gives warts. You seen them McKenna twins--their hands is a
sight with warts. Well, I seen them two boys playing with Toads like
they was marbles. So! An' they might a-knowed what was comin'. Ain't
every Toad just covered with warts as thick as he can stick?

"That there's Injun tobacco. The Injuns always use it, and Granny
does, too, sometimes." (Yan made special note of this--he must get
some and smoke it, if it was _Indian_.)

"A Witch-hazel wand will bob over a hidden spring and show where to
dig. Denny Scully is awful good at it. He gets a dollar for showing
where to sink a well, an' if they don't strike water it's because they
didn't dig where he said, or spiled the charm some way or nuther, and
hez to try over.

"Now, that's Dandelion. Its roots makes awful good coffee. Granny
allers uses it. She says that it is healthier than store coffee, but
Maw says she likes boughten things best, and the more they cost the
better she likes them.

"Now, that's Ginseng. It has a terrible pretty flower in spring.
There's tons and tons of it sent to China. Granny says the Chinese
eats it, to make them cheerful, but they don't seem to eat enough.

"There's Slippery Elm. It's awfully good for loosening up a cold, if
you drink the juice the bark's bin biled in. One spring Granny made a
bucketful. She set it outside to cool, an' the pig he drunk it all up,
an' he must a had a cold, for it loosened him up so he dropped his
back teeth. I seen them myself lying out there in the yard. Yes, I
did.

"That's Wintergreen. Lots of boys I know chew that to make the girls
like them. Lots of them gits a beau that way, too. I done it myself
many's a time.

"Now, that is what some folks calls Injun Turnip, an' the children
calls it Jack-in-a-Pulpit, but Granny calls it 'Sorry-plant,' cos she
says when any one eats it it makes them feel sorry for the last fool
thing they done. I'll put some in your Paw's coffee next time he licks
yer and mebbe that'll make him quit. It just makes me sick to see ye
gettin' licked fur every little thing ye can't help.

"A Snake's tongue is its sting. You put your foot on a Snake and see
how he tries to sting you. An' his tail don't die till sundown. I seen
that myself, onct, an' Granny says so, too, an' what Granny don't know
ain't knowledge--it's only book-larnin'."

These were her superstitions, most of them more or less obviously
absurd to Yan; but she had also a smattering of backwoods lore and Yan
gleaned all he could.

She had so much of what he wanted to know that he had almost made up
his mind to tell her where he went each Saturday when he had finished
his work.

A week or two longer and she would have shared the great secret, but
something took place to end their comradeship.




XI

Lung Balm


One day as this girl went with him through a little grove on the edge
of the town, she stopped at a certain tree and said:

"If that ain't Black-cherry!"

"You mean Choke-cherry."

"No, Black-cherry. Choke-cherry ain't no good; but Black-cherry bark's
awful good for lung complaint. Grandma always keeps it. I've been
feeling a bit queer meself" [she was really as strong as an ox].
"Guess I'll git some." So she and Yan planned an expedition together.
The boldness of it scared the boy. The girl helped herself to a
hatchet in the tool box--the sacred tool box of his father.

Yan's mother saw her with it and demanded why she had it. With ready
effrontery she said it was to hammer in the hook that held the
clothesline, and proceeded to carry out the lie with a smiling face.
That gave Yan a new lesson and not a good one. The hatchet was at once
put back in the box, to be stolen more carefully later on.

Biddy announced that she was going to the grocery shop. She met Yan
around the corner and they made for the lot. Utterly regardless of
property rights, she showed Yan how to chip off the bark of the
Black-cherry. "Don't chip off all around; that's bad luck--take it
on'y from the sunny side." She filled a basket with the pieces and
they returned home.

Here she filled a jar with bits of the inner layer, then, pouring
water over it, let it stand for a week. The water was then changed to
a dark brown stuff with a bitter taste and a sweet, aromatic smell.

"It's terrible good," she said. "Granny always keeps it handy. It
cures lots of people. Now there was Bud Ellis--the doctors just guv
him up. They said he didn't have a single lung left, and he come
around to Granny. He used to make fun of Granny; but now he wuz plumb
scairt. At first Granny chased him away; then when she seen that he
was awful sick, she got sorry and told him how to make Lung Balm. He
was to make two gallons each time and bring it to her. Then she took
and fixed it so it was one-half as much and give it back to him. Well,
in six months if he wasn't all right."

Biddy now complained nightly of "feelin's" in her chest. These
feelings could be controlled only by a glass or two of Lung Balm.
Her condition must have been critical, for one night after several
necessary doses of Balm her head seemed affected. She became
abusive to the lady of the house and at the end of the month a less
interesting help was in her place.

There were many lessons good and bad that Yan might have drawn from
this; but the only one that he took in was that the Black-cherry bark
is a wonderful remedy. The family doctor said that it really was so,
and Yan treasured up this as a new and precious fragment of woodcraft.

Having once identified the tree, he was surprised to see that it was
rather common, and was delighted to find it flourishing in his own
Glenyan.

This made him set down on paper all the trees he knew, and he was
surprised to find how few they were and how uncertain he was about
them.

  Maple--hard and soft.
  Beach.
  Elm--swamp and slippery.
  Ironwood.
  Birch--white and black.
  Ash--white and black.
  Pine.
  Cedar.
  Balsam.
  Hemlock and Cherry.

He had heard that the Indians knew the name and properties of every
tree and plant in the woods, and that was what he wished to be able to
say of himself.

One day by the bank of the river he noticed a pile of empty shells of
the fresh-water Mussel, or Clam. The shells were common enough, but
why all together and marked in the same way? Around the pile on the
mud were curious tracks and marks. There were so many that it was hard
to find a perfect one, but when he did, remembering the Coon track,
he drew a picture of it. It was too small to be the mark of his old
acquaintance. He did not find any one to tell him what it was, but one
day he saw a round, brown animal hunched up on the bank eating a clam.
It dived into the water at his approach, but it reappeared swimming
farther on. Then, when it dived again, Yan saw by its long thin
tail that it was a Muskrat, like the stuffed one he had seen in the
taxidermist's window.

He soon learned that the more he studied those tracks the more
different kinds he found. Many were rather mysterious, so he could
only draw them and put them aside, hoping some day for light. One
of the strangest and most puzzling turned out to be the trail of a
Snapper, and another proved to be merely the track of a Common Crow
that came to the water's edge to drink.

The curios that he gathered and stored in his shanty increased in
number and in interest. The place became more and more part of
himself. Its concealment bettered as the foliage grew around it again,
and he gloried in its wild seclusion and mystery, and wandered through
the woods with his bow and arrows, aiming harmless, deadly blows at
snickering Red-squirrels--though doubtless he would have been as sorry
as they had he really hit one.

Yan soon found out that he was not the only resident of the shanty.
One day as he sat inside wondering why he had not made a fireplace, so
that he could sit at an indoor fire, he saw a silent little creature
flit along between two logs in the back wall. He remained still. A
beautiful little Woodmouse, for such it was, soon came out in plain
view and sat up to look at Yan and wash its face. Yan reached out for
his bow and arrow, but the Mouse was gone in a flash. He fitted a
blunt arrow to the string, then waited, and when the Mouse returned he
shot the arrow. It missed the Mouse, struck the log and bounded back
into Yan's face, giving him a stinging blow on the cheek. And as Yan
rolled around grunting and rubbing his cheek, he thought, "This is
what I tried to do to the Woodmouse." Thenceforth, Yan made no attempt
to harm the Mouse; indeed, he was willing to share his meals with it.
In time they became well acquainted, and Yan found that not one, but a
whole family, were sharing with him his shanty in the woods.

Biddy's remark about the Indian tobacco bore fruit. Yan was not a
smoker, but now he felt he must learn. He gathered a lot of this
tobacco, put it to dry, and set about making a pipe--a real Indian
peace pipe. He had no red sandstone to make it of, but a soft red
brick did very well. He first roughed out the general shape with his
knife, and was trying to bore the bowl out with the same tool, when
he remembered that in one of the school-readers was an account of the
Indian method of drilling into stone with a bow-drill and wet sand.
One of his schoolmates, the son of a woodworker, had seen his father
use a bow-drill. This knowledge gave him new importance in Yan's eyes.
Under his guidance a bow-drill was made, and used much and on many
things till it was understood, and now it did real Indian service by
drilling the bowl and stem holes of the pipe.

He made a stem of an Elderberry shoot, punching out the pith at home
with a long knitting-needle. Some white pigeon wing feathers trimmed
small, and each tipped with a bit of pitch, were strung on a stout
thread and fastened to the stem for a finishing touch; and he would
sit by his camp fire solemnly smoking--a few draws only, for he did
not like it--then say, "Ugh, heap hungry," knock the ashes out, and
proceed with whatever work he had on hand.

Thus he spent the bright Saturdays, hiding his accouterments each
day in his shanty, washing the paint from his face in the brook, and
replacing the hated paper collar that the pride and poverty of his
family made a daily necessity, before returning home. He was a little
dreamer, but oh! what happy dreams. Whatever childish sorrow he found
at home he knew he could always come out here and forget and be happy
as a king--be a real King in a Kingdom wholly after his heart, and all
his very own.




XII

A Crisis


At school he was a model boy except in one respect--he had strange,
uncertain outbreaks of disrespect for his teachers. One day he amused
himself by covering the blackboard with ridiculous caricatures of the
principal, whose favourite he undoubtedly was. They were rather clever
and proportionately galling. The principal set about an elaborate plan
to discover who had done them. He assembled the whole school and began
cross-examining one wretched dunce, thinking him the culprit. The lad
denied it in a confused and guilty way; the principal was convinced of
his guilt, and reached for his rawhide, while the condemned set up a
howl. To the surprise of the assembly, Yan now spoke up, and in a tone
of weary impatience said:

"Oh, let him alone. I did it."

His manner and the circumstances were such that every one laughed. The
principal was nettled to fury. He forgot his manhood; he seized Yan
by the collar. He was considered a timid boy; his face was white; his
lips set. The principal beat him with the rawhide till the school
cried "Shame," but he got no cry from Yan.

That night, on undressing for bed, his brother Rad saw the long black
wales from head to foot, and an explanation was necessary. He was
incapable of lying; his parents learned of his wickedness, and new and
harsh punishments were added. Next day was Saturday. He cut his usual
double or Saturday's share of wood for the house, and, bruised and
smarting, set out for the one happy spot he knew. The shadow lifted
from his spirit as he drew near. He was already forming a plan for
adding a fireplace and chimney to his house. He followed the secret
path he had made with aim to magnify its secrets. He crossed the open
glade, was, nearly at the shanty, when he heard voices--loud, coarse
voices--_coming from his shanty_. He crawled up close. The door
was open. There in his dear cabin were three tramps playing cards and
drinking out of a bottle. On the ground beside them were his shell
necklaces broken up to furnish poker chips. In a smouldering fire
outside were the remains of his bow and arrows.

Poor Yan! His determination to be like an Indian under torture
had sustained him in the teacher's cruel beating and in his home
punishments, but this was too much. He fled to a far and quiet corner
and there flung himself down and sobbed in grief and rage--he would
have killed them if he could. After an hour or two he came trembling
back to see the tramps finish their game and their liquor; then they
defiled the shanty and left it in ruins.

The brightest thing in his life was gone--a King discrowned,
dethroned. Feeling now every wale on his back and legs, he sullenly
went home.

This was late in the summer. Autumn followed last, with shortening
days and chilly winds. Yan had no chance to see his glen, even had he
greatly wished it. He became more studious; books were his pleasure
now. He worked harder than ever, winning honour at school, but
attracting no notice at the home, where piety reigned.

The teachers and some of the boys remarked that Yan was getting very
thin and pale. Never very robust, he now looked like an invalid; but
at home no note was taken of the change. His mother's thoughts were
all concentrated on his scapegrace younger brother. For two years she
had rarely spoken to Yan peaceably. There was a hungry place in
his heart as he left the house unnoticed each morning and saw his
graceless brother kissed and darlinged. At school their positions
were reversed. Yan was the principal's pride. He had drawn no more
caricatures, and the teacher flattered himself that that beating was
what had saved the pale-faced head boy.

He grew thinner and heart-hungrier till near Christmas, when the
breakdown came.

       *       *       *       *       *

"He is far gone in consumption," said the physician. "He cannot live
over a month or two"

[Illustration: "There in his dear cabin were three tramps"]

"He _must_ live," sobbed the conscience-stricken mother. "He must
live--O God, he must live."

All that suddenly awakened mother's love could do was done. The
skilful physician did his best, but it was the mother that saved him.
She watched over him night and day; she studied his wishes and comfort
in every way. She prayed by his bedside, and often asked God to
forgive her for her long neglect. It was Yan's first taste of
mother-love. Why she had ignored him so long was unknown. She was
simply erratic, but now she awoke to his brilliant gifts, his steady,
earnest life, already purposeful.




XIII

The Lynx


As winter waned, Yan's strength returned. He was wise enough to use
his new ascendency to get books. The public librarian, a man of broad
culture who had fought his own fight, became interested in him, and
helped him to many works that otherwise he would have missed.

"Wilson's Ornithology" and "Schoolcraft's Indians" were the most
important. And they were sparkling streams in the thirst-parched land.

In March he was fast recovering. He could now take long walks; and one
bright day of snow he set off with his brother's Dog. His steps bent
hillward. The air was bright and bracing, he stepped with unexpected
vigour, and he made for far Glenyan, without at first meaning to go
there. But, drawn by the ancient attraction, he kept on. The secret
path looked not so secret, now the leaves were off; but the Glen
looked dearly familiar as he reached the wider stretch.

His eye fell on a large, peculiar track quite fresh in the snow. It
was five inches across, big enough for a Bear track, but there were no
signs of claws or toe pads. The steps were short and the tracks had
not sunken as they would for an animal as heavy as a Bear.

As one end of each showed the indications of toes, he could see what
way it went, and followed up the Glen. The dog sniffed at it uneasily,
but showed no disposition to go ahead. Yan tramped up past the ruins
of his shanty, now painfully visible since the leaves had fallen, and
his heart ached at the sight. The trail led up the valley, and crossed
the brook on a log, and Yan became convinced that he was on the track
of a large Lynx. Though a splendid barker, Grip, the dog, was known to
be a coward, and now he slunk behind the boy, sniffing at the great
track and absolutely refusing to go ahead.

Yan was fascinated by the long rows of footprints, and when he came
to a place where the creature had leaped ten or twelve feet without
visible cause, he felt satisfied that he had found a Lynx, and the
love of adventure prompted him to go on, although he had not even a
stick in his hand or a knife in his pocket. He picked up the best club
he could find--a dry branch two feet long and two inches through, and
followed. The dog was now unwilling to go at all; he hung back, and
had to be called at each hundred yards.

They were at last in the dense Hemlock woods at the upper end of the
valley, when a peculiar sound like the call of a deep-voiced cat was
heard.

_Yow! Yow! Yowl!_

Yan stood still. The dog, although a large and powerful retriever,
whimpered, trembled and crawled up close.

The sound increased in volume. The yowling _meouw_ came louder,
louder and nearer, then suddenly clear and close, as though the
creature had rounded a point and entered an opening. It was positively
blood-curdling now. The dog could stand it no more; he turned and went
as fast as he could for home, leaving Yan to his fate. There was no
longer any question that it was a Lynx. Yan had felt nervous before
and the abject flight of the dog reacted on him. He realized how
defenseless he was, still weak from his illness, and he turned and
went after the dog. At first he walked. But having given in to his
fears, they increased; and as the yowling continued he finally ran his
fastest. The sounds were left behind, but Yan never stopped until he
had left the Glen and was once more in the open valley of the river.
Here he found the valiant retriever trembling all over. Yan received
him with a contemptuous kick, and, boylike, as soon as he could find
some stones, he used them till Grip was driven home.

       *       *       *       *       *

Most lads have some sporting instinct, and his elder brother, though
not of Yan's tastes, was not averse to going gunning when there was a
prospect of sport.

Yan decided to reveal to Rad the secret of his glen. He had never been
allowed to use a gun, but Rad had one, and Yan's vivid account of his
adventure had the desired effect. His method was characteristic.

[Illustration: "It surely was a Lynx."]

"Rad, would you go huntin' if there was lots to hunt?"

"Course I would."

"Well, I know a place not ten miles away where there are all kinds of
wild animals--hundreds of them."

"Yes, you do, I don't think. Humph!"

"Yes, I do; and I'll tell you, if you will promise never to tell a
soul."

"Ba-ah!"

"Well, I just had an adventure with a Lynx up there now, and if you
will come with your gun we can get him."

Then Yan related all that had passed, and it lost nothing in his
telling. His brother was impressed enough to set out under Yan's
guidance on the following Saturday.

Yan hated to reveal to his sneering, earthy-minded brother all the
joys and sorrows he had found in the Glen, but now that it seemed
compulsory he found keen pleasure in playing the part of the crafty
guide. With unnecessary caution he first led in a wrong direction,
then trying, but failing, to extort another promise of secrecy, he
turned at an angle, pointed to a distant tree, saying with all the
meaning he could put into it: "Ten paces beyond that tree is a trail
that shall lead us into the secret valley." After sundry other
ceremonies of the sort, they were near the inway, when a man came
walking through the bushes. On his shoulders he carried something.
When he came close, Yan saw to his deep disgust that that something
was the Lynx--yes, it surely was _his_ Lynx.

They eagerly plied the man with questions. He told them that he had
killed it the day before, really. It had been prowling for the last
week or more about Kernore's bush; probably it was a straggler from up
north.

This was all intensely fascinating to Yan, but in it was a jarring
note. Evidently this man considered the Glen--his Glen--as an
ordinary, well-known bit of bush, possibly part of his farm--not by
any means the profound mystery that Yan would have had it.

The Lynx was a fine large one. The stripes on its face and the wide
open yellow eyes gave a peculiarly wild, tiger-like expression that
was deeply gratifying to Yan's romantic soul.

It was not so much of an adventure as a might-have-been adventure;
but it left a deep impress on the boy, and it also illustrated the
accuracy of his instincts in identifying creatures that he had never
before seen, but knew only through the slight descriptions of very
unsatisfactory books.




XIV

Froth


From now on to the spring Yan was daily gaining in strength, and he
and his mother came closer together. She tried to take an interest in
the pursuits that were his whole nature. But she also strove hard to
make him take an interest in her world. She was a morbidly religious
woman. Her conversation was bristling with Scripture texts. She had
a vast store of them--indeed, she had them all; and she used them on
every occasion possible and impossible, with bewildering efficiency.

If ever she saw a group of young people dancing, romping, playing any
game, or even laughing heartily, she would interrupt them to say,
"Children, are you sure you can ask God's blessing on all this? Do you
think that beings with immortal souls to save should give rein to such
frivolity! I fear you are sinning, and be sure your sin will find
you out. Remember, that for every idle word and deed we must give an
account to the Great Judge of Heaven and earth."

She was perfectly sincere in all this, but she never ceased, except
during the time of her son's illness, when, under orders from the
doctor, she avoided the painful topic of eternal happiness and tried
to simulate an interest in his pursuits. This was the blessed truce
that brought them together.

He found a confidante for the first time since he met the collarless
stranger, and used to tell all his loves and fears among the woodfolk
and things. He would talk about this or that bird or flower, and hoped
to find out its name, till the mother would suddenly feel shocked that
any being with an immortal soul to save could talk so seriously
about anything outside of the Bible; then gently reprove her son and
herself, too, with a number of texts.

He might reply with others, for he was well equipped. But her
unanswerable answer would be: "There is but one thing needful. What
profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

These fencing bouts grew more frequent as Yan grew stronger and the
doctor's inhibition was removed.

After one of unusual warmth, Yan realized with a chill that all her
interest in his pursuits had been an affected one. He was silent a
long time, then said: "Mother! you like to talk about your Bible. It
tells you the things that you long to know, that you love to learn.
You would be unhappy if you went a day without reading a chapter or
two. That is your nature; God made you so.

"I have been obliged to read the Bible all my life. Every day I read a
chapter; but I do not love it. I read it because I am forced to do it.
It tells me nothing I want to know. It does not teach me to love God,
which you say is the one thing needful. But I go out into the woods,
and every bird and flower I see stirs me to the heart with something,
I do not know what it is; only I love them: I love them with all my
strength, and they make me feel like praying when your Bible does not.
They are my Bible. This is my nature. God made me so."

The mother was silent after this, but Yan could see that she was
praying for him as for a lost soul.

A few days later they were out walking in the early spring morning.
A Shore-lark on a clod whistled prettily as it felt the growing
sunshine.

Yan strained his eyes and attention to take it in. He crept up near
it. It took wing, and as it went he threw after it a short stick he
was carrying. The stick whirled over and struck the bird. It fell
fluttering. Yan rushed wildly after it and caught it in spite of his
mother's calling him back.

He came with the bird in his hand, but it did not live many minutes.
His mother was grieved and disgusted. She said. "So this is the great
love you have for the wild things; the very first spring bird to sing
you must club to death. I do not understand your affections. Are not
two sparrows sold for one farthing, and yet not one of them falls to
the ground without the knowledge of your heavenly Father."

Yan was crushed. He held the dead bird in his hand and said,
contradictorily, as the tears stood in his eyes, "I wish I hadn't; but
oh, it was so beautiful."

He could not explain, because he did not understand, and yet was no
hypocrite.

Weeks later a cheap trip gave him the chance for the first time in his
life to see Niagara. As he stood with his mother watching the racing
flood, in the gorge below the cataract, he noticed straws, bubbles and
froth, that seemed to be actually moving upstream. He said:

"Mother, you see the froth how it seems to go up-stream."

"Well!"

"Yet we know it is a trifle and means nothing. We know that just below
the froth is the deep, wide, terrible, irresistible, arrowy flood,
surging all the other way."

"Yes, my son."

"Well, Mother, when I killed the Shore-lark, that was froth going the
wrong way, I did love the little bird. I know now why I killed it.
Because it was going away from me. If I could have seen it near and
could have touched it, or even have heard it every day, I should never
have wished to harm it. I didn't mean _to kill it_, only _to
get it_. You gather flowers because you love to keep them near you,
not because you want to destroy them. They die and you are sorry. I
only tried to gather the Shore-lark as you would a flower. It died,
and I was very, very sorry."

"Nevertheless," the mother replied, "the merciful man is merciful unto
his beast. He who hearkens when the young Ravens cry, surely took note
of it, and in His great Book of Remembrance it is written down against
you."

And from that time they surely drifted apart.






PART II

SANGER & SAM




I

The New Home


Yan was now fourteen years old long-legged, thin, and growing fast The
doctor marked this combination and said: "Send him on a farm for a
year."

Thus it was that an arrangement was made for Yan to work for his board
at the farmhouse of William Raften of Sanger.

Sanger was a settlement just emerging from the early or backwoods
period.

The recognized steps are, first, the frontier or woods where all
is unbroken forest and Deer abound; next the backwoods where small
clearings appear; then a settlement where the forest and clearings are
about equal and the Deer gone; last, an agricultural district, with
mere shreds of forest remaining.

Thirty years before, Sanger had been "taken up" by a population
chiefly from Ireland, sturdy peasantry for the most part, who brought
with them the ancient feud that has so long divided Ireland--the
bitter quarrel between the Catholics or "Dogans" (why so called none
knew) and Protestants, more usually styled "Prattisons." The colours
of the Catholics were green and white; of the Protestants orange
and blue; and hence another distinctive name of the latter was
"Orangemen."

These two factions split the social structure in two vertically. There
were, in addition, several horizontal lines of cleavage which, like
geological seams, ran across both segments.

In those days, the early part of the nineteenth century, the British
Government used to assist desirable persons who wished to emigrate to
Canada from Ireland. This aid consisted of a free ocean passage. Many
who could not convince the Government of their desirability and yet
could raise the money, came with them, paying their regular steerage
rate of $15. These were alike to the outside world, but not to
themselves. Those who paid their way were "passengers," and were, in
their own opinion, many social worlds above the assisted ones, who
were called "Emmy Grants." This distinction was never forgotten among
the residents of Sanger.

Yet two other social grades existed. Every man and boy in Sanger was
an expert with the axe; was wonderfully adroit. The familiar phrase,
"He's a good man," had two accepted meanings: If obviously applied to
a settler during the regular Saturday night Irish row in the little
town of Downey's Dump, it meant he was an able man with his fists;
but if to his home life on the farm, it implied that he was unusually
dexterous with the axe. A man who fell below standard was despised.
Since the houses of hewn logs were made by their owners, they
reflected the axemen's skill. There were two styles of log
architecture; the shanty with corners criss-cross, called hog-pen
finish, and the other, the house with the corners neatly finished,
called dovetail finish. In Sanger it was a social black eye to live in
a house of the first kind. The residents were considered "scrubs" or
"riff-raff" by those whose superior axemanship had provided the
more neatly finished dwelling. A later division crept in among the
"dovetailers" themselves when a brickyard was opened. The more
prosperous settlers put up neat little brick houses. To the surprise
of all, one Phil O'Leary, a poor but prolific Dogan, leaped at once
from a hog-pen log to a fine brick, and caused no end of perplexity
to the ruling society queens, simply paralyzing the social register,
since his nine fat daughters now had claims with the best. Many,
however, whose brick houses were but five years old, denounced the
O'Learys as upstarts and for long witheld all social recognition.
William Raften, as the most prosperous man in the community, was
first to appear in red bricks. His implacable enemy, Char-less (two
syllables) Boyle, egged on by his wife, now also took the red brick
plunge, though he dispensed with masons and laid the bricks himself,
with the help of his seventeen sons. These two men, though Orangemen
both, were deadly enemies, as the wives were social rivals. Raften was
the stronger and richer man, but Boyle, whose father had paid his own
steerage rate, knew all about Raften's father, and always wound up
any discussion by hurling in Raften's teeth: "Don't talk to me, ye
upstart. Everybody knows ye are nothing but a Emmy Grant." This was
the one fly in the Raften ointment. No use denying it. His father
had accepted a free passage, true, and Boyle had received a free
homestead, but what of that--that counted for nothing. Old Boyle had
been a "PASSENGER," old Raften an "EMMY GRANT."

This was the new community that Yan had entered, and the words Dogan
and Prattison, "green" and "orange and blue," began to loom large,
along with the ideas and animosities they stood for.

The accent of the Sangerite was mixed. First, there was a rich Irish
brogue with many Irish words; this belonged chiefly to the old folks.
The Irish of such men as Raften was quite evident in their speech, but
not strong enough to warrant the accepted Irish spelling of books,
except when the speaker was greatly excited. The young generation
had almost no Irish accent, but all had sifted down to the peculiar
burring nasal whine of the backwoods Canadian.

Mr. and Mrs. Raften met Yan at the station. They had supper together
at the tavern and drove him to their home, where they showed him into
the big dining-room--living-room--kitchen. Over behind the stove was
a tall, awkward boy with carroty hair and small, dark eyes set much
aslant in the saddest of faces. Mrs. Raften said, "Come, Sam, and
shake hands with Yan." Sam came sheepishly forward, shook hands in a
flabby way, and said, in drawling tones, "How-do," then retired behind
the stove to gaze with melancholy soberness at Yan, whenever he could
do so without being caught at it. Mr. and Mrs. Raften were attending
to various matters elsewhere, and Yan was left alone and miserable.
The idea of giving up college to go on a farm had been a hard one for
him to accept, but he had sullenly bowed to his father's command and
then at length learned to like the prospect of getting away from
Bonnerton into the country. After all, it was but for a year, and it
promised so much of joy. Sunday-school left behind. Church reduced to
a minimum. All his life outdoors, among fields and woods--surely this
spelled happiness; but now that he was really there, the abomination
of desolation seemed sitting on all things and the evening was one
of unalloyed misery. He had nothing to tell of, but a cloud of black
despair seemed to have settled for good on the world. His mouth was
pinching very hard and his eyes blinking to keep back the tears when
Mrs. Raften came into the room. She saw at a glance what was wrong.
"He's homesick," she said to her husband. "He'll be all right
to-morrow," and she took Yan by the hand and led him upstairs to bed.

Twenty minutes later she came to see if he was comfortable. She tucked
the clothes in around him, then, stooping down for a good-night kiss,
she found his face wet with tears. She put her arms about him for a
moment, kissed him several times, and said, "Never mind, you will feel
all right to-morrow," then wisely left him alone.

Whence came that load of misery and horror, or whither it went, Yan
never knew. He saw it no more, and the next morning he began to
interest himself in his new world.

William Raften had a number of farms all in fine order and clear
of mortgages; and each year he added to his estates. He was sober,
shrewd, even cunning, hated by most of his neighbours because he was
too clever for them and kept on getting richer. His hard side was for
the world and his soft side for his family. Not that he was really
soft in any respect. He had had to fight his life-battle alone,
beginning with nothing, and the many hard knocks had hardened him, but
the few who knew him best could testify to the warm Irish heart that
continued unchanged within him, albeit it was each year farther
from the surface. His manners, even in the house, were abrupt and
masterful. There was no mistaking his orders, and no excuse for not
complying with them. To his children when infants, and to his wife
only, he was always tender, and those who saw him cold and grasping,
overreaching the sharpers of the grain market, would scarcely have
recognized the big, warm-hearted happy-looking father at home an hour
later when he was playing horse with his baby daughter or awkwardly
paying post-graduate court to his smiling wife.

He had little "eddication," could hardly read, and was therefore
greatly impressed with the value of "book larnin'," and determined
that his own children should have the "best that money could git in
that line," which probably meant that they should read fluently. His
own reading was done on Sunday mornings, when he painfully spelled out
the important items in a weekly paper; "important" meant referring
to the produce market or the prize ring, for he had been known and
respected as a boxer, and dearly loved the exquisite details of the
latest bouts. He used to go to church with his wife once a month to
please her, and thought it very unfair therefore that she should take
no interest in his favourite hobby--the manly art.

Although hard and even brutal in his dealings with men, he could not
bear to see an animal ill used. "The men can holler when they're hurt,
but the poor dumb baste has no protection." He was the only farmer in
the country that would not sell or shoot a worn-out horse. "The poor
brute has wurruked hard an' hez airned his kape for the rest av his
days." So Duncan, Jerry and several others were "retired" and lived
their latter days in idleness, in one case for more than ten years.

Raften had thrashed more than one neighbour for beating a horse, and
once, on interfering, was himself thrashed, for he had the ill-luck to
happen on a prizefighter. But that had no lasting effect on him. He
continued to champion the dumb brute in his own brutal way.

Among the neighbours the perquisites of the boys were the calfskins.
The cows' milk was needed and the calves of little value, so usually
they were killed when too young for food. The boys did the killing,
making more or less sport of it, and the skins, worth fifty cents
apiece green and twenty-five cents dry, at the tannery, were their
proper pay. Raften never allowed his son to kill the calves. "Oi can't
kill a poor innocent calf mesilf an' I won't hev me boy doin' it," he
said. Thus Sam was done out of a perquisite, and did not forget the
grievance.

Mrs. Raften was a fine woman, a splendid manager, loving her home and
her family, her husband's loyal and ablest supporter, although she
thought that William was sometimes a "leetle hard" on the boys. They
had had a large family, but most of the children had died. Those
remaining were Sam, aged fifteen, and Minnie, aged three.

Yan's duties were fixed at once. The poultry and half the pigs and
cows were to be his charge. He must also help Sam with various other
chores.

There was plenty to do and clear rules about doing it. But there was
also time nearly every day for other things more in the line of his
tastes; for even if he were hard on the boys in work hours, Raften
saw to it that when they did play they should have a good time. His
roughness and force made Yan afraid of him, and as it was Raften's
way to say nothing until his mind was fully made up, and then say it
"strong," Yan was left in doubt as to whether or not he was giving
satisfaction.




II

Sam


Sam Raften turned out to be more congenial than he looked. His slow,
drawling speech had given a wrong impression of stupidity, and, after
a formal showing of the house under Mr. Raften, a real investigation
was headed by Sam. "This yer's the paaar-le-r," said he, unlocking a
sort of dark cellar aboveground and groping to open what afterward
proved to be a dead, buried and almost forgotten window. In Sanger
settlement the farmhouse parlour is not a room; it is an institution.
It is kept closed all the week except when the minister calls, and
the one at Raften's was the pure type. Its furniture consisted of six
painted chairs (fifty cents each), two rockers ($1.49), one melodeon
(thirty-two bushels of wheat--the agent asked forty), a sideboard made
at home of the case the melodeon came in, one rag carpet woofed at
home and warped and woven in exchange for wool, one center-table
varnished (!) ($9.00 cash, $11.00 catalogue). On the center-table was
one tintype album, a Bible, and some large books for company use.
Though dusted once a week, they were never moved, and it was years
later before they were found to have settled permanently into the
varnish of the table. In extremely uncostly frames on the wall were
the coffin-plates of the departed members of the family. It was the
custom at Sanger to honour the dead by bringing back from the funeral
the name-plate and framing it on a black background with some supposed
appropriate scripture text.

The general atmosphere of the room was dusty and religious as it
was never opened except on Sundays or when the parson called, which
instituted a sort of temporary Sunday, and the two small windows were
kept shut and plugged as well as muffled always, with green paper
blinds and cotton hangings. It was a thing apart from the rest of the
house--a sort of family ghost-room: a chamber of horrors, seen but
once a week.