le-pie. 'I wondher might I make
bould to ax you for one of them sthrings? they're sich a curiosity to
me.' And he had the cord of leathern pieces stowed away in one of the
provision hampers before the others came in from the fields.

There they had seen the invariable abundance and wastefulness of
bush-farming; no trace of the economy of land, which need perforce be
practised in older countries, but an extravagance about the very zigzag
fences, which unprofitably occupied, with a succession of triangular
borderings, as much space as would make scores of garden beds. 'Nobody
cares for the selvedges when there is a whole continent to cut from,'
remarked Sam Holt, in a sententious way he had.

A yield of from twenty to five-and-twenty bushels per acre of wheat, and
two hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes, were mentioned by the farmer
as an average crop. His barns and root-house were full to repletion.
Nothing of all this property was locked up: a latch on the door
sufficed.

'I suppose, then, you have no rogues in the bush?' said Robert.

'Where everybody's as well off as another, there ain't no thievin',' was
the pithy answer. 'A wolf now and then among our sheep, is all the robbers
we has.'

After breakfast the bullocks were yoked afresh.

'I guess as how you've stumps before you to-day, a few,' said the farmer,
coming out axe on shoulder. ''Tain't only a blaze up beyond your place
at the Cedars, and not much better than a track of regulation width from
the "Corner" to there. Only for that job of underbrushing I want to get
finished, I'd be along with you to-day.'

He and his boy Benny walked with the travellers so far as their way lay
together. The wife stood at the door, shading her eyes with her hand,
till the lumbering waggon was lost to view round the edge of the woods.

The day's journey was just a repetition of yesterday's, with the stumps
and the mud holes rather worse. The 'Corner' with its single sawmill and
store, offered no inducement for a halt; and a tedious two miles farther
brought them to 'hum.'

CHAPTER XII.

CAMPING IN THE BUSH.

'Well!' exclaimed Robert Wynn, 'here is my estate; and neither pond, nor
swamp, nor yet spring creek do I behold.'

He looked again at the landmark--an elm tree at the junction of the lot
line and the concession road, which bore the numbers of each, 'Nine,
Fifteen,' in very legible figures on opposite sides. A 'blaze' had been
made by chopping away a s