Were they not thinking of the Canadian exiles to-day, at home, at dear old Dunore? For nothing better than exiles did the young men feel themselves, this snow-white Christmas morning, in the log-hut among the backwoods, without a friendly face to smile a greeting, except poor Andy's; and his was regretful and wistful enough too.
'I say, Bob, what shall we do with ourselves? I'm sure I wish I didn't know 'twas Christmas day at all. It makes a fellow feel queer and nonsensical--homesick, I suppose they call it--and all that sort of thing. I vote we obliterate the fact, by chopping as hard as any other day.'
So, after reading the chapters for the day (how the words brought up a picture of the wee country church in Ireland, with its congregation of a dozen, its whitewashed walls and blindless lancet windows!), they went forth to try that relief for all pains of memory--steady hard work. The ten acres allotted for December were nearly chopped through by this time, opening a considerable space in front of the shanty, and beginning to reveal the fair landscape of lake and wooded slopes that lay beyond. The felled trees lay piled in wind rows and plan heaps so far as was possible without the help of oxen to move the huge logs; snow covered them pretty deeply, smoothing all unsightliness for the present.
'How I long to have something done towards the building of our house!' said Robert, pausing after the fall of a hemlock spruce, while Arthur attacked the upper branches. 'I'd like so much to have it neatly finished before my father and mother and Linda come next summer.'
'Well, haven't you no end of shingles made for the roof?' said the other, balancing his axe for a blow. 'You're working at them perpetually; and Andy isn't a bad hand either at wooden slates, as he calls them.'
'We must have a raising-bee in spring,' concluded Robert, after some rumination--'as soon as the snow melts a little. Really, only for such co-operative working in this thinly peopled country, nothing large could be ever effected. Bees were a great device, whoever invented them.'
'By the way,' said Arthur presently, returning from chopping apart the trunk into two lengths of fifteen feet, 'did you hear that the Scotchman between us and the "Corner," at Daisy Burn, wants to sell his farm and improvements, and is pushing out into the wild land farther up the pond? Nim told me yesterday. He expects three pounds sterling an acre, including fixtures, and he got the ground for nothing; so that's doubling one's capital, I imagine.'