you,
till you were compelled to submit in self-defence. He wakes up young
people on principle, he says.'

'Well, he practises his precepts,' rejoined Arthur, 'and seems to have
trained his children in the same.'

'Yes, he has made us all practical men; seven chips of the old block,'
observed Sam.

'Seven brothers!' ejaculated Arthur. 'I saw only three last night. And
are they all as tall as you?'

'About forty-four feet of length among us,' said Sam. 'We're a long
family in more ways than one;' and he looked down from his altitude of
seventy-five inches on the young Irishman.

'It is quite a pleasant surprise to see your sister,' Arthur remarked.

'Bell hasn't kept up the family tradition of height, I must say. She's a
degenerate specimen of the Holts;' and the speaker's brown eyes softened
with a beam of fondness; 'for which reason, I suppose, she'll not bear
the name long.'

'And who's the lucky man?' asked Arthur, feeling an instant's disagreeable
surprise, and blushing at the sensation.

'Oh, out of half-a-dozen pretenders, 'twould be hard to say. We all
marry early in Canada; most of my contemporaries are Benedicts long ago.
Three brothers younger than I have wives and children, and are settled
in farms and mills of their own.'

'And might I ask'--began Arthur, hesitating when the very personal
nature of the inquiry struck him.

'To be sure you might. Well, in the first place, I took a fancy to go
through college, and my father left me in Toronto for four years at the
University of Upper Canada. That brought me up to twenty-three years
old; and then--for the last two years nobody would have me,' added Sam,
elevating his black brows.

'Perhaps you are too fastidious; I remark that about men who have nice
sisters,' said Mr. Arthur, with an air of much experience: 'now, Robert
and I never see anybody so nice as Linda--at least hardly ever.'

'A saving clause for Bell,' said her brother, laughing, 'which is polite,
at all events. I must tell her there's a young lady at home that you
prefer immensely.'

Which he accordingly did, at the ensuing breakfast; and pretty Miss Holt
pretended to take the matter greatly to heart, and would not permit
Arthur to explain; while mischievous Sam scouted the notion of the
unknown 'Linda' being his sister, except by the rather distant tie of
Adam and Eve.

What a plentiful table was this at Maple Grove! Several sorts of meat
and wild fowl, several species of bread a