The Black Creek Stopping-House, and Other Stories

over which went the fabulously heavy loads of fur long ago-grass-grown now and broken with badger holes; there was "the trail," hard and firm, in the full pride of present patronage, defyi

lls are blue with distance and seem to promise wooded slopes, and maybe leaping streams, but a half-day's journey dispels the illusion, for when the traveller comes ne

helter of the trees there stands the Black Creek Stopping-House, which is the half-way house on the way to Brandon. Hungry men have smelled the bacon frying when more than a mile away, and it is only the men

times; events great and small were discussed there with impartial deliberation, and often with surprising results. Actions and events which seemed quite harmless, and even heroic, when discussed along the trail, often

wooden finger, and then, figuratively, retires from the scene to let you think it over; but Maggie

d there throughout its length are little shallow stretches which show a golden braid down the centre like any peaceful meadow brook where children may with safet

crop of coarse meadow grass, interspersed in the late summ

*

andolph Brydon, late of H.M. Navy, but now farmers and homesteaders. The house was built in that form of arch

d a bulge which was accidental, and when the sailor brothers were unable to make a log lie comfortably beside its neighbor by using the ax

re not wanted at home; others, with deeper meaning, said they probably were wanted at home; and, indeed, their bushy eyebrows, their fi

lly child-like trust in Nature and her methods, for in the springtime, instead of planting their potatoes in the ground the way they saw other people doing it, they sprinkled them a

the last time he milked her, and that was several days ago-she should have more now. It came out in the evidence that they only took from the cow the amount of milk that they needed, reasoning that she had

ed neighborhood seemed to take away in large measure from the "beastliness of labor," and then, too, the Sabbath calm of the Black Creek valley seemed to stimulate their imagination as they discoursed loudly and elaborately on the present and future s

king, or at least beg of them to desist, but the hot afternoon wore away, and there was no movement around any of the houses on the plain. The guardian of the morals of the neighborhood, Mrs. Maggie Corbett, had taken not

eir house they were horrified to find that a wandering dog, who also had no respect for the Sabbath, had depleted their "gr

h other. Everything that they had said about the oxen, it seemed, was equally true

but to go across to th

rs. Corbett baked bre

into the kitchen of the Stopping-House and made known his errand. He also asked for t

s far down on his nose, sat in another rocking-chair reading the life of General Booth. Peter Rockett, the chore boy, in a clean pair of overalls, and with

tmosphere, but, neverthele

aid Mrs. Corbett, stern

ke any mor

ald, feeling all at on

oes, if we only knew it, and you haven't had a very good chance either, piratin' among the black heathen in the islands of the sea; but the Bible speaks pl

really we were only ba

ld, qu

it. Of course there are some who say that the amount of work that you and your brother do any day would not break the Sabbath." Here she looked hard at her man, John Corbett, who stirred

d to closed one eye-the

of a second, and kept

's-

y calm. "I do not know which one of you you are, but anyway what I say applies to you both. Now

Reginald's plate with cold chicken and creamed potatoes, and, mellowed by them and the comfort of her wel