The common school is a log hut, built by the wayside, and the
"schoolmarm" is not a pretentious person. But, what the school cannot
supply, a long line of intelligent, independent ancestors have supplied,
robust, common sense and sagacity.

Something of the gloom and sternness of the forest, something of the
sadness which is a conscious presence, is in their faces. Their humor
has a certain savor of grimness. For the rest, it may be said that they
are poor, and that they make little effort to be anything else. They do
a little farming and a little lumbering. They get food and clothing,
they are attached to their homesteads, and the world with all its
tempting possibilities passes them by. The young people seek the States,
but even they return, and end their days in the old home. They marry,
and get farms, and life moves with even step, the alternating seasons,
with their possibilities, probably forming their deepest absorptions. It
remains only to be said that, passionately attached to the customs, the
habits of thought of their forefathers, the Highlanders of the Lake
Megantic region are intensely clannish. Splendidly generous, they would
suffer death rather than betray the man who had eaten of their salt.
Eminently law-abiding, they would not stretch out a hand to deprive of
freedom one who had thrown himself upon their mercy.




CHAPTER II.

DONALD MORRISON APPEARS ON THE SCENE.

Life, could we only be well assured of it, is at the best when it is