money-help all they can claim from me? Is sending
them so many dollars a month all the command to honor father and mother
means? Do they not desire to be beside me and is it not my duty to
sustain and comfort them while life lasts? Shall I place other cares
between them and me, leaving them second instead of first? So he went on
arguing mentally, until the larger consideration came uppermost, Was it
justifiable to marry a woman for whom he had no special regard, because
by so doing it would be to his worldly advantage? Then he, for the first
time in his life, tried to define what marriage was. Was marriage for
comfort and ease such a union as his conscience could approve? It was a
searching question, and while he swung the ax he argued it aloud. What
was marriage without love? No marriage, he shouted, as his ax delved
into the side of a tree. Love alone can blend two lives, and without
love marriage is sacrilege. No, he would not think of Magarth's offer,
he would cast it behind him, and go on as he was doing. Then peace came
to him, and he dwelt on the communings with his sister, and the pledge
he had given her on parting. For the first time that day he began to
sing, and when he sat on a log to eat the bread he had brought for his
dinner, he threw crumbs to a squirrel that left her hole to survey him.

Two days later he found he would have to go to Magarth's to get the
steel of his ax renewed, for it had chipped. He found only Mrs Magarth
at home, her husband and Norah had left on a visit. In the store were
two men, and he listened to their talk with interest, for one was
telling how a thriving nearby settlement had built a school and were
unable to find a teacher. Asking the name of the man who had the
engaging of one, and where he lived, Archie's resolution was made, he
would go and offer himself. A tramp of over a mile brought him to the
house. In five minutes he was engaged at a salary of six dollars a month
and to board round. The engagement was for four months. He spent the
night with the settler and left in the morning to get what clothes he
needed and to set his shanty in order. Word had gone round that a
teacher had been secured, and on his return in the afternoon there were
several callers curious to see him. His host was a North of Ireland man,
with a large family, who he was determined should learn to read and
write. He had been the leader in the building of the school-house, to
which he walked with Archie