ut in reality conduced
to his object of intensifying the heat and blaze.

'Benny,' to the boy, who had sat on the ground staring at the
new-comers, 'go tell your mother to be spry.' The little fellow went
accordingly, by the side door through which she had disappeared a few
minutes previously; and the Irish servant, planting himself on the
vacated spot with his toes to the fire comfortably, commenced to erect
of the child's chips a two-storied mansion.

'You've got a good slice of bush there, back from the pond; though the
cedars will be troublesome, I guess.'

'Oh, we bargained for the cedars,' said Sam Holt. 'There's enough to
clear without laying an axe to _them_ for many a day.'

'It's all the doing of that spring creek, running through the middle of
the lot, as fine a water-privilege as ever I see; but the cedars are
where it gets to the pond. If the bed was deepened down below, it's my
opinion the swamp would be drained.'

'You seem to know the ground well,' said Robert, with interest.

'I guess I ought to, that have shot over it before ever a blazed line
ran through them woods. We was farthest west once, but that's over by a
long spell; the neighbourhood's pretty thick now, and the "Corner" will
be a town shortly.'

'Well, if this is a thick neighbourhood, I should like to know his idea
of a thin one,' said Arthur, _sotto voce_, to Sam Holt. 'We have met
only this house for miles.'

'Oh, they ain't many miles, only you thought they was, cos' I guess you
ain't used to the stumps,' put in the settler. 'The back lot to ours, of
the same number, is took by a Scotchman, and last week I run a blazed
line across to his clearing through the bush; for you see I'm often
away, trapping or still-hunting, and Mary here thought she'd be a trifle
less lonesome if she had a way of going over the hill to her friend
Mrs. Macpherson. The other way is round by the "Corner," which makes it
five miles full; but now Benny can run across of a message, by minding
the marks; can't you, my lad?'

'Yes, father,' answered the boy proudly. 'And I can chop a blaze myself,
too.' Benny was not much taller than an axe handle.

Arthur looked from the child round at the wife, who was often left alone
in this solitude of woods, and longed for the slender chain of a scarred
line of trees between her and some other woman. A healthy, firm outline
of face, wholly unacquainted with nervousness; quiet, self-reliant,
hard-working; perhaps of a