The Major Part 53

"Me too, me too," shrieked two wee girls in bare legs and sandals, clutching Jane about the legs.

"All right, Isabel; all right, Helen. I'll take you with me," said Jane.

"But you must let me go, you know."

They all raced around the house and began to climb the sheer, rocky hill that rose straight up from the rear.

"Here, Jim, help me with these kiddies," said Jane to a lank lad of fifteen, whom she ran into at the corner of the house just where the climb began.

Jim swung the younger, little Helen, upon his shoulder and together they raced to the top, scrambling, slipping, falling, but finally arriving there, breathless and triumphant. Before them lay a bit of Canada's loveliest lake, the Lake of the Woods, so-called from its myriad, heavily wooded islands, that make of its vast expanse a maze of channels, rivers and waterways. Calm, without a ripple, lay the gla.s.sy, sunlit surface, each island, rock and tree meeting its reflected image at the water line, the sky above flecked with floating clouds, making with the mirrored sky below one perfect whole.

"Oh, Ethel, I had forgotten just how beautiful this is," breathed Jane, while the rest stood silent looking down upon the mirrored rocks and islands, trees and sky.

Even the two little girls stood perfectly still, for they had been taught to take the first views from the top in silence.

"Look at the Big Rock," said Helen. "They are two rocks kissing each other."

"Oh, you little sweetheart," said Jane, kissing her. "That is just what they are doing. It is not often that you get it so perfectly still as this, is it, Jim?"

"Not so very often. Sometimes just at sunrise you get it this way."

"At sunrise! Do you very often see it then?"

"Yes, he gets up to catch fishes," said wee Helen.

"Do you?"

Jim nodded. "Are you game to come along to-morrow morning?"

"At what hour?"

"Five o'clock."

"Don't do it, Jane," said Ethel. "It tires you for the day."

"I will come, Jim; I would love to come," said Jane.

For some time they stood gazing down upon the scene below them. Then turning to the children abruptly, Ethel said, "Now, then, children, you run down and get ready; that is, if you are going to church. Take them down, Jim."

"All right, Ethel," said Jim. "See there, Jane," he continued, "that neck of land across the traverse--that's where the old Hudson Bay trail used to run that goes from the Big Lakes to Winnipeg. It's the old war trail of the Crees too. Wouldn't you like to have seen them in the old days?"

"I would run and hide," said Isabel, "so they could not see me."

"I would not be afraid," said Helen, straightening up to her full height of six years. "I would shoot them dead."

"Poor things," said Jane, in a pitiful voice. "And then their little babies at home would cry and cry."

Helen looked distressed. "I would not shoot the ones that had babies."

"But then," said Jane, "the poor wives would sit on the ground and wail and wail, like the Indians we heard the other night. Oh, it sounded very sad."

"I would not shoot the ones with wives or babies or anything," said Helen, determined to escape from her painful dilemma.

"Oh, only the boys and young men?" said Jane. "And then the poor old mothers would cry and cry and tear their hair for the boys who would never come back."

Helen stood in perplexed silence. Then she said shyly, "I wouldn't shoot any of them unless they tried to shoot me or Mother or Daddy."

"Or me," said Jane, throwing her arms around the little girl.

"Yes," said Helen, "or you, or anybody in our house."

"That seems a perfectly safe place to leave it, Helen," said Ethel.

"I think even the most p.r.o.nounced pacifist would accept that as a justification of war. I fancy that is why poor little Servia is fighting big bullying Austria to-day. But run down now; hurry, hurry; the launch will be ready in a few minutes, and if you are not ready you know Daddy won't wait."

But they were ready and with the round dozen, which with the visitors const.i.tuted the Murray household at their island home, they filled the launch, Jim at the wheel. It was a glorious Sunday morning and the whole world breathed peace. Through the mazes of the channels among the wooded islands the launch made its way, across open traverse, down long waterways like rivers between high, wooded banks, through cuts and gaps, where the waters boiled and foamed, they ran, for the most part drinking in silently the exquisite and varied beauty of lake and sky and woods.

Silent they were but for the quiet talk and cheery laughter of the younger portion of the company, until they neared the little town, when the silence that hung over the lake and woods was invaded by other launches outbound and in. The Kenora docks were crowded with rowboats, sailboats, canoes and launches of all sorts and sizes, so that it took some steering skill on Jim's part to land them at the dock without b.u.mping either themselves or any one else.

"Oh, look!" exclaimed Isabel, whose sharp eyes were darting everywhere.

"There's the Rushbrooke's lovely new launch. Isn't it beautiful!"

"Huh!" shouted Helen. "It is not half as pretty as ours."

"Oh, hush, Helen," said the scandalised Isabel. "It is lovely, isnt it, Jane? And there is Lloyd Rushbrooke. I think he's lovely, too. And who is that with him, Jane--that pretty girl? Oh, isn't she pretty?"

"That's Helen Brookes," said Jane in a low voice.

"Oh, isn't she lovely!" exclaimed Isabel.

"Lovely bunch, Isabel," said Jim with a grin.

"I don't care, they are," insisted Isabel. "And there is Mr. McPherson, Jane," she added, her sharp eyes catching sight of their Winnipeg minister through the crowd. "He's coming this way. What are the people all waiting for, Jane?"

The Reverend Andrew McPherson was a tall, slight, dark man, straight but for the student's stoop of his shoulders, and with a strikingly Highland Scotch cast of countenance, high cheek bones, keen blue eyes set deep below a wide forehead, long jaw that clamped firm lips together. He came straight to where Mr. Murray and Dr. Brown were standing.

"I have just received from a friend in Winnipeg the most terrible news,"

he said in a low voice. "Germany has declared war on Russia and France."

"War! War! Germany!" exclaimed the men in awed, hushed voices, a startled look upon their grave faces.

"What is it, James?" said Mrs. Murray.

Mr. Murray repeated the news to her.

"Germany at war?" she said. "I thought it was Austria and Servia. Isn't it?"

"Yes, my dear," said Mr. Murray hastily, as if anxious to cover up his wife's display of ignorance of the European situation. "Austria has been at war with Servia for some days, but now Germany has declared war apparently upon France and Russia."

"But what has Germany to do with it, or Russia either, or France?"