The Doctor : a Tale of the Rockies | Page 6

be
doing you good. I will just call for you, and speak to your father this
afternoon."
"Oh, I don't know, Mrs. Boyle. I hardly think I ought."
"Hoots, lassie! Come away, then, into the milk-house."
Back among the overhanging willows stood the little whitewashed log
milkhouse, built over a little brook that gurgled clear and cool over the
gravelly floor.
"What a lovely place," said Margaret, stepping along the foot stones.
"Ay, it's clean and sweet," said Mrs. Boyle. "And that is what you most
need with the milk and butter."
She took up an earthen jar from the gravelly bed and filled the girl's
pail with buttermilk.
"Thank you, Mrs. Boyle. And now for that recipe for the scones."
"Och, yes!" said Mrs. Boyle. "There's no recipe at all. It is just this
way--" And she elucidated the mysteries of sconemaking.
"But they will not taste a bit like yours, I'm sure," cried Margaret, in
despair.
"Never you fear, lassie. You hurry away home now and get your dinner
past, and we will call for you on our way."
"Here, lassie," she cried, "your father will like this. It is only churned
th' day." She rolled a pat of butter in a clean linen cloth, laid it between
two rhubarb leaves and set it in a small basket.
"Good-bye," said the girl as she kissed the dark cheek. "You're far too
kind to me."
"Poor lassie, poor lassie, I would I could be kinder. It's a good girl you

are, and a brave one."
"Not very brave, I fear," replied the girl, as she quickly turned away
and ran up the hill and out of sight.
"Poor motherless lassie," said Mrs. Boyle, looking after her with loving
eyes; "it's a heavy care she has, and the minister, poor man, he can't see
it. Well, well, she has the promise."

III
THE RAISING
The building of a bank-barn was a watershed in farm chronology.
Toward that event or from it the years took their flight. For many
summers the big boulders were gathered from the fields and piled in a
long heap at the bottom of the lane on their way to their ultimate
destination, the foundation of the bank-barn. During the winter,
previous the "timber was got out." From the forest trees, maple, beech
or elm--for the pine was long since gone--the main sills, the plates, the
posts and cross-beams were squared and hauled to the site of the new
barn. Hither also the sand from the pit at the big hill, and the stone from
the heap at the bottom of the lane, were drawn. And before the snow
had quite gone the lighter lumber--flooring, scantling, sheeting and
shingles--were marshalled to the scene of action. Then with the spring
the masons and framers appeared and began their work of organising
from this mass of material the structure that was to be at once the pride
of the farm and the symbol of its prosperity.
From the very first the enterprise was carried on under the
acknowledged, but none the less critical, observation of the immediate
neighbourhood. For instance, it had been a matter of free discussion
whether "them timbers of McLeod's new barn wasn't too blamed
heavy," and it was Jack McKenzie's openly expressed opinion that "one
of them 'purline plates' was so all-fired crooked that it would do for
both sides at onct." But the confidence of the community in Jack

Murray, framer, was sufficiently strong to allay serious forebodings.
And by the time the masons had set firm and solid the many-coloured
boulders in the foundation, the community at large had begun to take
interest in the undertaking.
The McLeod raising was to be an event of no ordinary importance. It
had the distinction of being, in the words of Jack Murray, framer, "the
biggest thing in buildin's ever seen in them parts." Indeed, so
magnificent were its dimensions that Ben Fallows, who stood just five
feet in his stocking soles, and was, therefore, a man of considerable
importance in his estimation, was overheard to exclaim with an air of
finality, "What! two twenty-foot floors and two thirty-foot mows! It
cawn't be did." Such was, therefore, the magnitude of the undertaking,
and such the far-famed hospitality of the McLeods, that no man within
the range of the family acquaintance who was not sick, or away from
home, or prevented by some special act of Providence, failed to appear
at the raising that day.
It was still the early afternoon, but most of the men invited were
already there when the mill people drove up in the family democrat.
The varied shouts of welcome that greeted them proclaimed their
popularity.
"Hello, Barney! Good-day, Mrs. Boyle," said Mr. McLeod, who stood
at the gate receiving his guests.
"Ye've