Chapter XX: The Log Cabin

“A summer lodge amid the wild.”—_Bryant._

“Judge! your plunder’s come—landed from the ‘Sachem’ this morning!” were the words with which the landlord greeted Mark Sutherland, as the latter, with Rosalie, descended to breakfast.

“Judge!” echoed Rosalie, looking inquiringly from one to the other.

Mark Sutherland laughed, and pinched her arm; and when their host had moved off in another direction, said:

“Nonsense, Rose. Yes, it was _I_ whom he addressed as Judge—of course it was. Every one gets an honorary title of distinction here. I don’t know what it is given for; certainly not to confer honour, but rather, I suppose, for the sake of civil brevity, as it is easier to say ‘Judge’ than ‘Mr. Thompson.’ Now, if I had ever belonged to any military company—if only as private in militia, they’d dub me here ‘Cap’n,’ if not ‘Major,’ or ‘Gen’l:’ and if I were county constable, instead of law student, they must still call me ‘Judge.’”

And just then, as if in illustration of Mr. Sutherland’s words, several men entered, eagerly inquiring for “the Colonel,” meaning the landlord. And when the host came forward to know their will, several speaking equally together, exclaimed:

“Colonel, we want your guns, and your dogs, and your company, this morning, to hunt a pack of wolves that chased Jones’s boy almost into the village!”

“A pack of wolves!” exclaimed the boarders, gathering around.

“Jones’s boy!” ejaculated the landlord, in amazement.

“Riding from McPherson’s mill;”

“So close, they caught at the boy’s boots;”

“Foremost one hung upon the horse’s flanks;”

“Wounded;”

“Nothing but the animal’s speed saved him;”

“Wet with sweat;”

“Miraculous ’scape;”

“Jones’s boy,” &c., were the broken sentences with which the tale was told by the several informants, all speaking at once.

“Well, friends, long as there’s no damage done, I don’t see any use in being so excited. As to my guns and dogs, you can have them in welcome; but as to my company, I have promised the Judge here to drive him and his wife over to see their house. And I expect they will want me to haul the plunder over too—won’t you, Judge?”

Mark Sutherland bowed.

After a little discussion, they urged “the Judge” to join their hunt, and Rosalie privately squeezed Mark’s arm in disapproval. Mark declined; and, after a little more altercation, the visitors at length departed, with three or four of the bachelor boarders, who quaffed each a “hasty” cup of coffee and followed.

When this little disturbance was over—

“I did not know,” said Mr. Sutherland, “that the wild denizens of the forest ever ventured so near the settlements.”

“No more they don’t,” replied the host; “only this go, I s’pose, the Injuns have been hunting of ’em and druv ’em close on to the village. We’ll git shut of ’em agin after a bit.”

When breakfast was over, “the Colonel” geared up the carryall to take his young guests across the prairie to Wolf’s Grove. It was a fresh, bright, blithe morning, scarcely seven o’clock, when they set out, and the prairie still glistened with dew. There was no road to Wolf’s Grove; but the driver took a beeline over the level ground, and the wheels of the carryall tracked deep through the sedgy grass and gorgeous wild flowers.

“It looks strange to me,” said Rosalie, “to see these glorious flowers—which, if they were in our eastern gardens, we should cherish with so much care—driven down and crushed by thousands under our wheels.”

“It is but the sign of the fall of the forest before the advancing march of immigration,” observed Mark.

“It reminds me, somehow, of the triumphal entries of the sanguinary old conquerors of ancient times, whose chariot wheels passed ruthlessly over the fallen, the dead, and the dying.”

Mark smiled at her fancy, and the driver took his pipe out of his mouth, and turned and looked at her in perplexity.

“But, Rose, when you look around you at the countless millions of flowers left blooming—nay, I mean to say, when you think of the countless millions of trees left standing—does it not give you an exultant sense of the exhaustless wealth, the boundless resources of our prairies and forests?”

“I know _something_ inspires me with unlimited hope just now. There is, certainly, as far as the comforts and elegances of civilized life are concerned, a look of great privation in the village and among the people we have just left. And yet—and yet—whether it is because the inhabitants are mostly young and full of health and hope, or that the houses are all new, or that the primeval wealth and exuberance of nature is not only undiminished, but almost untouched; whether it is any or _all_ of these causes, I do not know, but certainly to me there is about this country an air of youth, vigor, hope, promise, unlimited, indescribable! I feel its influence, without being able to explain it. It seems to me that here, the age, the weariness, and the sorrow of the old world has been left behind. That this is a breaking out in a new place, or rather that this country and people, and we ourselves, are a new creation, fresh from the hand of God, and with a new promise! Let us be faithful to our part of the covenant. Oh, let us be faithful; let no sin, selfishness, injustice of ours cause us to lose the glorious promise!”

A pressure of the hand, at once approving, kind, and warning, from Mark Sutherland, reminded Rosalie that they were not alone.

A little farther on, the sprightly eyes of the girl lighted upon a large, speckled bird, standing still, almost in their road.

“What a beautiful bird! What is it?” inquired Rosalie.

“It’s a prairie chicken. Now, I want you just to take notice o’ that creetur; it won’t take the trouble to move—you’ll see,” said the man, driving slowly past, and leaving the bird behind them, standing still.

“They must be very tame,” said Rosalie.

“No, they ain’t nyther, but they’ve got a heap o’ sense. We are driving. Now, if I had o’ been afoot with a gun, or anything that looks like a gun to _it_—say a stick—why, it would a-taken wing in a minute. I’ve took notice of it often and often. Same case with a deer—it’ll stand right still and look at you going past with your team; but only just let it catch its eyes on you when you’re walking ’long o’ your gun, and it’s off in an instant. Well knowing of that, you see, I often just quietly lays my gun down in the bottom of the wagon, to be ready for the creeturs.”

In desultory talk like this, which nevertheless gave our young immigrants some little insight into the manners of the country, they passed over the three miles of intervening prairie land, and entered Wolf’s Grove.

Wolf’s Grove was not what its name indicated—an isolated piece of wood, similar to those that at wide intervals dotted the prairie; it was rather a portion of that vast, unbroken, interminable forest, projecting here into the open prairie like a point of land into the sea, but stretching back and back hundreds of miles, and even to the banks of Lake Superior. Here the old primeval forest trees were of gigantic, almost fabulous size, but thinly scattered, and standing singly apart, like the outposts of a vast army.

Half a mile within the Grove, where the trees were thicker, stood the cabin originally built for a school and meeting-house, by the first settlers. There was not a wood-shed, a fence, a fruit tree, nor a foot of cultivated ground, around it; nor a house, nor a field, within three miles of it.

Mark Sutherland and Rosalie alighted, and entered the house, while the driver secured his horses and gave them water. The cabin was unusually large and well built, being nearly thirty feet square, and constructed of huge logs, well hewn, and well cemented. The cabin fronted south, where one door admitted into the only room; opposite this door, in the north wall, stood the large, open fire-place. The room was lighted by two windows, fronting each other, east and west. The floor was well laid, and a step-ladder in the corner, between the fire-place and the east window, led up to a loft. The house was in good repair, with the single exception of the broken windows.

“A very different abode from that you have left, for my sake, dear Rosalie; and yet, if you only knew, as I do, how much better this is than any other log cabin to be found anywhere! Why, Rose, it is a palace, compared to some.”

“I know it is; and I only wonder that it has been left so long untenanted, while the meanest hovels have been all taken up.”

“Why, you see, my dear, this house is too remote from the village for any one but a farmer, and as it stands upon the reserved school lands, of course, no farmer can cultivate the ground.”

“Will it not be too far for _you_?”

“With me it is different. I like to walk, and do not grudge my steps. The three miles’ walk, morning and evening, will do me good. Nay, more; that exercise will be a necessary relief from the sedentary life of the office. My only anxiety will be in leaving you here alone, all day. Will you be very lonesome, dear?”

“Lonesome? I don’t know. I should be lonesome _anywhere_ without _you_, Mark. But that is a very foolish weakness, and must be overcome, of course.”

“But you will be afraid to stay here all day long alone?”

“Afraid? Of what? Why should I be? Is there any cause of fear?”

“No, dear; no cause for fear; but, as Emilia said of jealousy, one might say of fear:

‘That fearful souls will not be _answered_ so;
They are not ever fearful for a _cause_,
But fearful for they are fearful’”——

“Well, I am not afraid with or without a cause. A child would not be afraid in this quiet place,” said Rosalie, going to one of the windows, and looking out into the waving woods.

“How still—how very still—no sound to be heard but the rustle of the leaves and the ripple of water, that must be near!” she continued, looking from the window, while Mark walked about the room and made notes of glass, putty, a door latch, and such little matters that would be needed to be brought out with their furniture. Then they went out where the driver stood watering his horses, and where the only sign of previous human presence was afforded by the narrow grass-grown path, leading down into a deep dingle, where the ripple of water was heard.

“If you’d like a drink, there’s one of the finest springs in the whole country down there,” said the landlord, taking a tin cup from the wagon and handing it to Mark. Rosalie was already going down the path. They reached the spring, and found the water cold and clear as crystal. They drank, and congratulated themselves upon this great blessing, and then went up to the cabin, and, as their host was in a hurry to be off they entered the carryall to return to the village.

“Well, are you going to take it?” asked the driver, looking around as he took the reins and started.

“Why, of course. I had _already_ taken it.”

“I knowed _that_; but I thought when _she_ saw how lonesome it was, she’d object. ’Tain’t many women—I can tell you _that_—who’d agree to live out there, by themselves, in _that_ lonesome place, and you gone all day long.”

“I am sure my wife prefers it to an inferior cabin nearer the village.”

“Yes, indeed, I do,” said Rosalie.

“Well, every one to their taste,” observed the landlord, cracking his whip, and making his horses fly.

They reached home in good time for dinner.

The afternoon was employed by Mark Sutherland in collecting together necessary provisions, to be taken with their furniture to the cabin; and by Rosalie—seated by the window of _her_ part of the upper chamber—in hemming napkins, preparatory to her housekeeping, and in looking out upon the prairie basking in the afternoon sun, and upon her distant home, Wolf’s Grove.

In the evening the hunters returned from an unsuccessful expedition; and fatigued and mortified, and inclined to be silent upon the subject of their defeated enterprise, they gathered around the supper-table. But the curiosity of the hostess, and the perseverance of the host, at last elicited from them the fact that they had not even hit upon the track of the wolves.

The next day was fixed upon by Mark Sutherland and his wife for their removal to Wolf’s Grove.