tumps, among which struggled potatoes and
big yellow squashes. A dozen hens pecked about; a consumptive-looking
cow suspended her chewing, as also did her master his hoeing, to gaze
after the waggon, till it disappeared beyond the square frame of forest
which shut in the little clearing.

Again the long lines of stately oaks and firs, with a straight and
apparently endless road between them, like the examples of perspective
in beginners' drawing-books, but with the vanishing point always
receding.

'I see they've turnpiked this road since I was on it before,' observed
the driver.

'Where?' asked Andy, looking about. 'I don't see a turnpike--an' sure I
ought to know a tollman's dirty face in any place. Sorra house here at
all at all, or a gate; or a ha'porth except trees,' he added in a
disgusted manner.

'There,' said the Canadian, pointing to a ploughed line along each side
of the road, whence the earth had been thrown up in the centre by a
scraper; 'that's turnpiking.'

'Ye might have invented a new name,' rejoined the Irishman, with an
offended air, 'an' not be mislading people. I thought it was one of the
ould pike-gates where I used to have to pay fourpince for me, ass and
car; an' throth, much as I hated it, I'd be a'most glad to see one of
the sort here, just for company's sake. A mighty lonesome counthry ye
have, to be sure!'

'Well, we can't be far from Greenock now; and I see a bit of a snake
fence yonder.'

It was another clearing, on a more enterprising scale than the last
described; the forest had been pushed back farther, and a good wooden
house erected in the open space; zigzag rail fences enclosed a few
fields almost clear of stumps, and an orchard was growing up behind.
A man in a red shirt, who was engaged in underbrushing at a little
distance, said that 'the town' was only a mile away--Greenock, on the
Clyde.

Alas for nomenclature! The waggon scrambled down a rather steep
declivity, towards a dozen houses scattered beside a stream: stumps
stood erect in the single short street, and a ferry-boat was the only
craft enlivening the shore. A Greenock without commerce or warehouses, a
Clyde without wharves or ships, or the possibility of either--what mere
travestie effected by a name!

'A nest of Scottish emigrants, I suppose,' said Robert Wynn, as he
contemplated 'the town.'

'Yes, and they'll push their place up to something,' replied Sam Holt:
'if pluck and perseverance can do it, they wi