A Settler's Story.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 131, 5 December 1885, Page 6

A Settler's Story.

Stranger to Canada, I think you said ? First visit to Ontario? Well, you're heartily welcome to Indian Creek. Take a chair on the piazza till dinner's ready— we dine early in these new-world parts. Fine farm ? Well, yes ; Indian Creek is a nice place, if I do own it. All, as far as you can pee— grassland, corn fields, woods, and creeks—all belong to it. Stock too— they call it the best-stocked farm in Ontario, I believe, and I dare say they're right. All mine ; and yet I came to Canada, twelvo years ago, without even the traditional half-crown in my trousers' pocket. You look surprised. Would you like to hear the story ? There's a good half-hour to dinnertime yet, and it's a story I never tire of telling, somehow I began life as the son of a village carpenter in the south of England. You know that class pretty well, I dare say, and what a gulf was fixed between me and the vicar of the parish, And yet -and yet— from the time she was seven years old, and I cloven, and she fell down in the dusty road outride the carpenter's shop, and cried, and I picked her up and smoothed the little crumpled pinafore, and kissed the dust out of her golden curls, I loved but ono girl in the world, and that was the vicar's daughter Winny Branacome. Madness, you say. Well, perhaps so, and yet a man is but a man, and a woman a woman ; and love comes, whatever one may do. There's no class distinction recognised by childhood, and we were playmates and friends till she went to a boarding school. If Miss Winny had had a mother, no doubt things would have been very different ; but we are alike in never having known a woman's care, and the old vicar was blind to everything but his theological treatisos. But when she came back from her London boarding-school, a beautiful young lady, all smiles, and laces, and little lovely ways —then I knew. I had tried my best to study and work, and make myself mcc like the men she would meet ; b'.t what can a lad in an English village do? I just had enough education to make every other lad in the place hate me ; and besides the men of her would I suppose I cub rather an astonishing figure. Yet th 9 love of her was so beyond all elee in me that, mad, hopeless as I felt it, I had no power over myself ; and the first time I caught her alone in the woods — she avoided me, I saw, and I had to watch my chance -I told her the whole story, and waited for her answer. She grew searlet — a rush of colour that dyed her fair, sweot face — then deathly white. "Dick," she said, and she was trembling Trom head to foot, "you know it can never, never be ; you know you are wrong even to dream of such a thing. Some girls would think it an insult ; I know you better, but if my father heard of this he would say you had abused his kindness to you ; he would never forgive you. Forget your madness," and she ran from me. I let her go. I had seen the Wush and the tremor, and I guessed that if I had been Mr Loftus, the young squire, instead of Dick Hawtry, the carpenter's son, her answer might have been different. A great resolve sprang up in my soul, and I took a solemn vow in those June woods. That very night I sold the old shop (my father was dead, and I had taken to the business), and with the money I bought an outfit and started straight for Canada. It was pretty tough work at first, but I worked like a galley-slave — starved and pinched and saved, and never spent a penny on myself except for the books I pat up half the night to read and study. Well, in this country the man who works and doesn't drink is sure to get on ; and I had a mighty purpose in my head. By-and-by I bought some land dirt cheap, and sold it for three times what I gave for it — then I began to make money fast. I should call my luck wonderful if I believed in luck, and didn't prefer to think I was helped by a Power far abler than my own. At last, ten years to the very day after I set foot on Canadian soil, I bought Indian Creek farm and began to build this house. All the neighbours thought my good fortune had turned my brain, for I fitted it up and furnished it for a lady, down to a little rocking-chair by my study table, and a work basket with a tiny gold thimble in it. And when all was finished I took the first ship for Liverpool. Ten years built a oity over here. They don't make such a change in a Devonshire village. The very gates were left off their i

hinges, as I left them, only the people were a little older and a trifle more stupid ; and there was a new vicur. Old Mr Bransoome had been dead six months ; died very poor, they told me ; there woe nothing left; for Miss Winny. My heart gave one great leap when I heard that. And Miss Winny? Oh, she had gone governessing with Bomo people who were just off to Canada, and the ship sailed from Liverpool. The Liverpool express never seemed to crawl so slowly before I got there, to find every berth taken on board the Antarctic, and the captain ragingatthe non-appearance of two of the crew. Without a second's pauee I offered for one of the vacant places. 1 was as strong as a horee, and active enough, and though the captain eyed me rather askance— l had been to a West End tailor on my way through London— he was too glad to get me to ask any questions. Soleailedon the ship with my girl, little as she knew it 1 saw her the first day or two, looking so Sale and thin that she was like the ghost of er old self, and yet sweeter to my eyes than ever before. The children she had charge of were troublesome little creatures, who worried and badgered her till I longed to cuff them well. But there was n gentleness and a patience about her quite new to my idea of Miss Winny, and 1 only loved her the more for it After the second day out the wind freshened, and I taw no more of her. We had an awful passage. It was late in November — an early winter, and the cold was intonso. It blew one continuous gale, and some of our machinery was broken— the screw damaged— and vie could not keep our course. As we drew near the other side of tho Atlantic, wo got more and more out of our bearings, and an last the fogs told us we were somewhere oft" the banks of Newfoundland. On the tenth night, just after midnight, the awful crash and shock took placo— a fcon?atio» which no one who ha* notfolt it can imagine in the least - and wo know that the Antartic had struck. t's a foarfui thing, if you como to think of it, a great steamor filled with living souls in the full flow of life and hoalth, and in ono moment the call coming to oach of them to die. Before you could have struck a match the whole ship was in a panic cries, terror, confusion, agony- oh, it was dreadful ! 1 trust never to ccc such a scene again. I made my way through it all as if I had neither eyes nor ears, and got to the state room I had long ago found out was the one which belonged to my girl. 1 knocked at the door with a heavy hand. Even at that awful moment a thrill ran through me at the thought of standing face to face with he* again. "Winny!" I cried, "come out! make haste ! there is not a moment to lose !" The door opened as I spoke, and she stood just within, ready dressed, even to her little black cap "Dick !" she cried, "Oh, Dick, Dick!" and she fell forwaid in a dead faint on my shoulder. All my senses came buck then ; and I threw her over my arm and ran for the deck. A great fur-lined cloak had been dropped by the door of the ladies' cabin. There was no light, and I stumbled ovor it as I ran. I snatched it up and carried it with me. Up above, all was in the wildest chaos ; the boats overfillod, and pushing off; the ship settling rapidly : people shouting, crying, raving. One hears tales of calm ness and courage often enough at such times, which makes one's heart glow as one reads them ; but there was not much heroism shows in the wreck of the Antarctic. Tho captain behaved splendidly, and so did pome of the passengers, but the majority of them and the crew were mad with terror, and lost their heads altogether. I saw there was not a chance for the overcrowded boats in that pea, and I sprang for the rigging. I was not a second too soon ; a score of others followed my example, and with my precious burden I should not have harl a chance two minutes later. As it was, I scrambled to the topmast, and got a firm hold thore. Winny was just coming to herself. I had wrapped her round like a baby in the fur cloak, and with my teeth I opened a knife to cut a rope which hung loose within reach. With this I lashed her to me, and fastened us both to the topmast. The nhip sank gradually ; she did not heel ever, or I should not be tolling you the story now ; she settled down, just her deck above water, but the great seas washed over it every second, and swept it clean. The boats had gone ! How long was the longest night you ever knew 1 Multiply that by a thousand, and you will have some idea of that night's length. The cold was awful. The spray froze on the sheets where it fell ; the yards we c slippery with ice. I stamped on Winny's feet to keep them from freezing. Did you notice that I limp a little ? I shall walk lame as long as I live. Sometimes there was a splash in the black water below, as some poor fellow's stiffened hold relaxed and he fell from his place in the rigging. There was not a breath of wind — nothing but the bitter, bitter fog. How long could we hold out ? Where were we? How long would the ship be before she broke up? Would it be by drowning or by freezing ? We asked ourselves these questions again and again, but there was nc answer. Death stared us in the face ; we seemed to live ages of agony in every minute. And yet (will you believe me?] that all seemed little in comparison to the thought that, after all the struggles and the sorrows, after all these ten long, weary years, I held my girl in my arms at last. Well, well! Why should I dwell on such horrors, except to thank the mercy that brought us through them all ? Day dawned at last ; and there was the shore near by, and soon rockets were fired, and ropes secured, and one by one the halfdead living were drawn from their awful suspension between sky and sea, and landed safe on shore. They had to take Winny and me together, just as we were, and even then they had hard work to undo the clasp of my stiffened arms about her. I knew nothing then, nor for long after ; and it is wonderful that Winny was the first to recover, and that it was she who nursed me back to life and reason. And how did I ask her to marry mo 5 Upon my word, now you ask, I can't remember that I ever did. That seemed utterly unnecessary somehow. Caste distinctions look small enough when you have been staring death in the face fora few hours and words were not much needed after we had been together in the rigging that night. Somehow I was glad it was so ; glad my girl had taken me, in my cap and jersey, for a common sailor, and yet loved the old Dick through it all ; glad she never dreamed I was owner of Indian Creek Farm, and the richest man in that end of Ontario, and had wealth and a position higher than Mr Loftus, the young squire at home. The people she was with had all gone down on that awful night ; she had no one in the world. but me. We were married at Montreal—the captain of the Antarctic gave her away -and then I brought her home to Tndian Creek. There she comes with her baby on her shoulder. Come into dinner, friend, and you shall see the sweetest wife in the new country or the old j the girl I won amid the ocean's surges,