Before setting off, however, common propriety required that he should look in at Willow Creek in passing, not only to let them know what had occurred, if they had not already observed it, but to ask if there was any message for Mr Ravenshaw.
First releasing Peegwish, who now regarded him as a maniac, he embarked with him in the punt, and rowed over.
It was by that time approaching the afternoon. Before that—indeed before the house of Angus had gone afloat—Tony, Victor, and Petawanaquat had gone off to the Little Mountain in search of Mr Ravenshaw. Those of the family who remained behind had been so busy about their various avocations, that no one had observed the sudden removal of their neighbour’s dwelling.
“Cora! quick! come here!” cried Elsie, in a tone that alarmed her sister. “Am I dreaming?”
Cora looked out at the window, where the other stood as if petrified. “Angus Macdonald’s house on the knoll!” she screamed.
The scream brought her mother and Miss Trim hurriedly into the room. They stared in speechless amazement, and rubbed their eyes, but they could not rub the house of Angus Macdonald off the knoll.
“There comes Ian in the punt,” said Cora; “he will explain it.”
“He seems to be miserable enough about it if one may judge from the expression of his face,” observed Miss Trim.
Poor Ian was indeed profoundly miserable. The excitement of the recent event over, his mind insisted on reverting to his forlorn condition. “So near,” he thought, “and yet to miss her! Old Ravenshaw could not refuse her to me now, but of what avail is his consent without Elsie’s? Ah, Lambert! you’re a lucky fellow, and it is shameful in me to wish it were otherwise when it makes Elsie happy.”
Ian now tried to act philosophically, but it would not do. In the upper room he gave the ladies a brief account of his adventure. He spoke in a cold, passionless manner, without looking once at Elsie. Of course, he did not reveal the motives that had influenced him. When he had finished he rose abruptly to leave.
“Don’t go yet,” said Mrs Ravenshaw, “there’s a bit of carpentering that I want done, and there is not a man left at the house to do it. The last gale loosened some of the shingles on the roof, and one of them slipped down to-day, so that the place leaks.—Go, Elsie, and show him the shingle near the attic window.”
Ian looked at Elsie, and his resolves vanished like smoke. He went meekly to the attic.
“You are much changed,” said Elsie, “since you went on this trip.”
“Changed? Not for the worse, I hope,” said Ian.
“Well, scarcely for the better,” returned the girl with a smile. “See, here is the window, and the loose shingle is close to the sill. You won’t require to go out on the roof. There is father’s tool-box. If you want anything some of us will be in the room below. You may call, or come down.”
“Stay, Elsie,” said the youth, turning abruptly on her. “You say I am changed. Well, perhaps I am. I’ve gone through pretty severe hardships since we parted, and the injuries I received on gaining this have left their mark.”
He touched, as he spoke, the splendid bear-claw collar which still graced his neck.
“I doubt not you have suffered,” returned Elsie, in a softened tone, “but you are now well, or nearly so, and your reason is not a sufficient one to account for your being rude to all your old friends, and taking no interest in anything.”
“Am I, then, so rude, so callous?” rejoined Ian, drawing his hand across his brow. “Ah! Elsie, if—if—but what am I saying? Forgive me! I think that grizzly must have touched my brain when he had me under his paw. There can be no harm, however, in telling you that a wish, lightly expressed by you long ago, has been the motive power which led to the procuring of this collar. Will you accept it of me now? It is but a trifle, yet, being a bad hunter, and more used to grammars than to guns, it cost me no trifle of anxiety and trouble before I won it. I am afraid that the hope of procuring it for you had almost as much to do with cheering me on as the hope of finding Tony. Nay, don’t refuse it, Elsie, from one who has known you so long that he feels almost as if he might regard you as a sister.”
He took off the collar as he spoke, and, with a return of his wonted heartiness, presented it to Elsie. There was something in his manner, however, which induced her to blush and hesitate.
“Your kindness in searching for Tony we can never forget or repay,” she said quickly, “and—and—”
She paused.
“Well, well,” continued Ian, a little impatiently; “I did not mean to talk of Tony just now. Surely you won’t refuse a gift from so old a friend as I on the eve of my departure for Canada?”
“For Canada!” echoed Elsie, in surprise.
“Yes. I leave the instant I can get my affairs in Red River settled.”
“And you return?”
“Never!”
Elsie looked at the youth in undisguised astonishment. She, too, began to suspect that a claw of the collar must have touched his brain.
“But why hesitate?” continued Ian. “Surely you cannot refuse me so simple a favour! Even Lambert himself would approve of it in the circumstances.”
“Lambert!” exclaimed Elsie, with increasing amazement; “what has Lambert got to do with it?”
It was now Ian’s turn to look surprised.
“Forgive me if I have touched on a forbidden subject; but as every one in the settlement seems to know of your engagement to Lambert, I thought—”
“My engagement!” interrupted Elsie. “It is Cora who is engaged to Lambert.”
A sudden and mighty shock seemed to fall on Ian Macdonald. He slightly staggered, paled a little, then became fiery red, leaped forward, and caught the girl’s hand.
“Elsie! Elsie!” he exclaimed, in tones of suppressed eagerness, “will—will you accept the collar?”
He put it over her head as he spoke, and she blushed deeply, but did not refuse it.
“And, Elsie,” he added, in a deeper voice, drawing her nearer, “will you accept the hunter?”
“No,” answered Elsie, with such an arch smile; “but I would accept the schoolmaster if he were not going away to Canada for—”
She did not finish the sentence, because something shut her mouth.
“You’re taking a very long time to that shingle,” called Mrs Ravenshaw from below. “Have you got everything you want, Ian?”
“Yes,” replied Ian promptly; “I’ve got all that the world contains.”
“What’s that you say?”
“It will soon be done now, mother,” cried Elsie, breaking away with a soft laugh, and hurrying down-stairs.
She was right. A few minutes sufficed to put the loose shingle to rights, and then Ian descended to the room below.
“What a time you have been about it!” said Cora, with a suspicious glance at the young man’s face; “and how flushed you are! I had no idea that fixing a loose shingle was such hard work.”
“Oh yes, it’s tremendously hard work,” said Ian, recovering himself; “you have to detach it from the roof, you know, and it is wonderful the tenacity with which nails hold on sometimes; and then there’s the fitting of the new shingle to the—”
“Come, don’t talk nonsense,” said Cora; “you know that is not what kept you. You have been telling some secret to Elsie. What was it?”
Instead of answering, Ian turned with a twinkle in his eyes, and asked abruptly:
“By the way—when does Louis Lambert return?”
It was now Cora’s turn to flush.
“I don’t know,” she said, bending quickly over her work; “how should I know? But you have not answered my question.—Oh! look there!”
She pointed to the doorway, where a huge rat was seen seated, looking at them as if in solemn surprise at the trifling nature of their conversation.
Not sorry to have a reason for escaping, Ian uttered a laughing shout, threw his cap at the creature, missed, and rushed out of the room in chase of it. Of course he did not catch it; but, continuing his flight down-stairs, he jumped into the punt, pushed through the passage, and out at the front door. As he passed under the windows he looked up with a smile, and saw Cora shaking her little fist at him.
“You have not improved in your shooting,” she cried; “you missed the rat.”
“Never mind,” he replied, “Lambert will fetch his rifle and hunt for it; and, I say, Cora, ask Elsie to explain how shingles are put on. She knows all about it.”
He kissed his hand as he turned the corner of the house, and rowed away.
A dark shadow falling over him at the moment caused him to turn round, and there, to his amazement, stood one of his father’s largest barns! It had been floated, like many other houses, from its foundation, and, having been caught by a diverging current, had been stranded on the lawn at the side of Mr Ravenshaw’s house so as to completely shut out the view in that direction.
Intense amusement followed Ian’s feeling of surprise. His first impulse was to return and let the inmates of Willow Creek know what had occurred; but be thinking himself that they would find it out the first time they chanced to look from the windows on that side of the house, and observing that the day was advancing, he changed his mind and rowed away in the direction of the plains, chuckling heartily as he meditated on the very peculiar alterations which the flood had effected on the properties of his father and Samuel Ravenshaw, to say nothing of the probable result in regard to his own future.
A stiffish breeze sprang up soon after he left. Being a fair wind, he set up a rag of sail that fortunately chanced to be in the punt, and advanced swiftly on his voyage to the Little Mountain.
On their way to the same place, at an earlier part of the day, Victor and Tony, with Petawanaquat and Meekeye, touched at the mission station. Many of the people were still on the stage, but Mrs Cockran, finding that the water had almost ceased to rise, and that the parsonage still stood fast, returned to the garret of her old home. Here she received Victor and the recovered Tony with great delight. It chanced to be about the period which Tony styled feeding-time, so that, although Victor was anxious to reach his father as soon as possible, he agreed to remain there for an hour or so. While they were enjoying the hospitality of the garret, Petawanaquat was entertained in a comparatively quiet corner of the stage, by a youth named Sinclair, a Scotch half-breed, who had been a pupil in Ian Macdonald’s school, and, latterly, an assistant.
Petawanaquat had made the acquaintance of young Sinclair on his first visit to Red River. They were kindred spirits. Both were earnest men, intensely desirous of finding out truth—truth in regard to everything that came under their notice, but especially in reference to God and religion. This grave, thoughtful disposition and earnest longing is by no means confined to men of refinement and culture. In all ranks and conditions among men, from the so-called savage upwards, there have been found more or less profound thinkers, and honest logical reasoners, who, but for the lack of training, might have become pillars in the world of intellect.
Both Sinclair and Petawanaquat were naturally quiet and modest men, but they were not credulous. They did not absolutely disbelieve their opponents, or teachers; but, while giving them full credit for honesty and sincerity—because themselves were honest and sincere—they nevertheless demanded proof of every position advanced, and utterly refused to take anything on credit. Bigoted men found them “obstinate” and “troublesome.” Capable reasoners found them “interesting.” Sinclair possessed a considerable amount of education, and spoke the Indian language fluently. Petawanaquat, although densely ignorant, had an acute and logical mind.
To look at them as they sat there, spoon in hand, over a pan of burgout, one would not readily have guessed the drift of their conversation.
“It almost broke my heart,” said Sinclair, “when I heard you had stolen Mr Ravenshaw’s boy, and words cannot express my joy that you have repented and brought him back. What induced you to steal him?”
“My bad heart,” replied the Indian.
“Was it then your good heart that made you bring him back?” asked Sinclair, with a keen glance at his friend.
“No; it was the voice of the Great Spirit in Petawanaquat that made him do it. The voice said, ‘Forgive! Return good for evil!’”
“Ah; you learned these words here, and have been pondering them.”
“Petawanaquat heard them here; he did not learn them here,” returned the red man quietly. “Listen!” he continued with a sudden glow of animation on his countenance, “My brother is young, but he knows much, and is wise. He will understand his friend. In the mountains I pitched my tent. It was a lonely spot. No trappers or Indians came there, but one day in winter a paleface came. He was a servant of the Great Spirit. He talked much. I said little, but listened. The paleface was very earnest. He spoke much of Jesus. He told the story of His love, His sufferings, His death. He spoke of little else. When he was gone I asked Jesus to forgive me. He forgave. Then I was glad, but I looked at Tonyquat and my spirit was troubled. Then it was that I heard the voice of the Great Spirit. It did not fall on my ear: it fell upon my heart like the rippling of a mountain stream. It said, ‘Send the child back to his father.’ I obeyed the Voice, and I am here.”
With sparkling eyes Sinclair stretched out his right hand, and, grasping that of the red man, said in a deep voice—“My brother!”
Petawanaquat returned the grasp in silence. Before either of them could resume the conversation they were interrupted by Victor shouting from a window of the parsonage to fetch the canoe.
A few minutes later they were again on their way.
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