FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90  
91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   >>   >|  
You won't be much older by then. Yes'm," she turned to business, "I don't say but what it's high for rhubarb, but there ain't another bunch in the market, and won't be for a week yet." Under cover of this discussion Lorne bade the Crows good morning, retreating in the rear of the lady who found the rhubarb high. Mrs Crow's drop of acid combined with his saving sense of the humour of it to adjust all his courage and his confidence, and with a braver face than ever he involuntarily hastened his steps to keep pace with his happy chance. CHAPTER X In the wide stretches of a new country there is nothing to bound a local excitement, or to impede its transmission at full value. Elgin was a manufacturing town in southern Ontario, but they would have known every development of the Federal Bank case at the North Pole if there had been anybody there to learn. In Halifax they did know it, and in Vancouver, B.C., while every hundred miles nearer it warmed as a topic in proportion. In Montreal the papers gave it headlines; from Toronto they sent special reporters. Of course, it was most of all the opportunity of Mr Horace Williams, of the Elgin Express, and of Rawlins, who held all the cards in their hands, and played them, it must be said, admirably, reducing the Mercury to all sorts of futile expedients to score, which the Express would invariably explode with a guffaw of contradiction the following day. It was to the Express that the Toronto reporters came for details and local colour; and Mr Williams gave them just as much as he thought they ought to have and no more. It was the Express that managed, while elaborately abstaining from improper comment upon a matter sub judice, to feed and support the general conviction of young Ormiston's innocence, and thereby win for itself, though a "Grit" paper, wide reading in that hotbed of Toryism, Moneida Reservation, while the Conservative Mercury, with its reckless sympathy for an old party name, made itself criminally liable by reviewing cases of hard dealing by the bank among the farmers, and only escaped prosecution by the amplest retraction and the most contrite apology. As Mr Williams remarked, there was no use in dwelling on the unpopularity of the bank, that didn't need pointing out; folks down Moneida way could put any newspaper wise on the number of mortgages foreclosed and the rate for secondary loans exacted by the bank in those parts. That consideration, no doubt,
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90  
91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Express

 

Williams

 

Moneida

 

Toronto

 

Mercury

 

rhubarb

 

reporters

 
Ormiston
 

matter

 

comment


innocence

 

judice

 

conviction

 

general

 

support

 

invariably

 
explode
 

guffaw

 

expedients

 

futile


admirably

 

reducing

 

contradiction

 

managed

 

elaborately

 

abstaining

 
thought
 

details

 

colour

 

improper


sympathy

 

pointing

 

remarked

 

dwelling

 

unpopularity

 

newspaper

 

exacted

 

consideration

 
secondary
 

number


mortgages
 
foreclosed
 

apology

 
contrite
 

reckless

 
Conservative
 

played

 

Reservation

 

Toryism

 

reading