Robert Michael Ballantyne - Wrecked but not Ruined

“What may that be?” asked Redding, much amused at the abrupt little man’s energy.

“Won’t tell you till you’ve seen it; come.”

Without more ado they sallied forth and walked along the snowy track that led to the cottage in question. A few minutes sufficed to bring them to it, and the first glance showed the fur-trader that his friend had not exaggerated the beauty of the place. The cottage, although small, was so elegant in form and so tastefully planned in every respect that it well deserved the title of a mansion in miniature. It stood on a rising ground which was crowned with trees; and the garden in front, the summer-house, the porch, the trellis-work fence, the creepers, the flower-beds—everything in fact, told that it had been laid out and planned by a refined mind.

Of course Redding had to call in the aid of his imagination a little, for at the moment when he first beheld it, the whole scene was robed in a mantle of snow. Close to the house, and in sight of the front windows, was a small lake or pond, by the side of which rose an abrupt precipice of about fifty feet in height. Beyond this, a little to the right, lay the undulating fields of the settlement, dotted with clumps of trees and clusters of cottages.

“Most beautiful!” exclaimed the fur-trader, “but why named Loch Dhu, which, if I mistake not, is the Gaelic for Black Lake?”

“Because that little pond,” answered the surveyor, “when freed from its wintry coat, looks dark and deep even at mid-day under the shadow of that beetling cliff.”

“Truly, I like it well,” said Redding, as he turned again to look at the cottage, “are you its architect?”

“I am,” answered Mr Gambart, “but a greater mind than mine guided my pencil in the process of its creation.”

“Indeed! and what is the objection to it that you spoke of?”

“That,” replied the surveyor, with a mysterious look, “I must, on second thoughts, decline to tell you.”

“How, then, can you expect me to buy the place?” demanded Redding, in surprise.

“Why, because I, a disinterested friend, strongly recommend you to do so. You believe in me. Well, I tell you that there is no objection to the place but one, and that one won’t prove to be an objection in the long run, though it is one just now. The price is, as you know, ridiculously small, first, because the family who owned it have been compelled by reverses of fortune to part with it, and are in urgent need of ready cash; and, secondly, because few people have yet found out the beauties of this paradise, which will one day become a very important district of Canada.”

“Humph, well, I believe in your friendship, and to some extent in your wisdom, though I doubt your capacity to prophesy,” said Redding. “However, if you won’t tell me the objection, I must rest content. To-morrow we will look at it in daylight, and if I then see no objections to it myself, I’ll buy it.”

The morrow came. In the blaze of the orb of day Loch Dhu looked more beautiful than it did by moonlight. After a thorough examination of house and grounds, the fur-trader resolved to purchase it, and commissioned his plump little friend to carry out the transaction. Thereafter he and his man retraced their steps to the wilderness, still breathing unutterable things against the entire clan of McLeod.

We turn now to “the enemy”—the McLeods. The father and his two sons sat in a rude shanty, on a bench and an empty keg, drinking tea out of tin cans. They were all stalwart, dark-haired, grave-visaged mountaineers of Scotland. Unitedly they would have measured at least eighteen feet of humanity. The only difference between the father and the sons was that a few silver hairs mingled with the black on the head of the former, and a rougher skin covered his countenance. In other respects he seemed but an elder brother.

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