before; among them a bundle of
the provincial print nearest Dunore. Linda had learned not to love the
arrival of these. It was a pebble thrown in to trouble their still
forest life. The yearning of all hearts for home--why did they never
dream of calling Canada home?--was intensified perhaps to painfulness.
She could interpret the shadow on her father's brow for days after into
what it truly signified; that, however the young natures might take root
in foreign soil, he was too old an oak for transplantation. Back he
looked on fifty-eight years of life, since he could remember being the
petted and cherished heir of Dunore; and now--an exile! But he never
spoke of the longing for the old land; it was only seen in his poring
over every scrap of news from Britain, in his jealous care of things
associated with the past, nay, in his very silence.

Now, the dear old gentleman was letting his tea grow cool beyond all
remedy, while, with gold double eyeglass in hand, he read aloud various
paragraphs of Irish news. Diverging at last into some question of party
politics uppermost at the time, though now, in 1861, extinct as the
bones of the iguanodon, he tried to get Davidson interested in the
subject, and found him so totally ignorant of even the names of public
men as to be a most unsatisfactory listener.

''Deed, then, Mr. Wynn, to tell you truth, I hae never fashed my head
wi' politics sin' I cam' oot to Canada,' observed the Scotchman a little
bluntly. ''Twas nae sae muckle gude I gained by't at hame; though I mind
the time that a contested election was ane o' my gran' holidays, an' I
thought mair o' what bigwig was to get into Parliament for the borough
than I did o' my ain prospects in life, fule that I was; until I found
the bairns comin', an' the loom going to the wall a'thegither before
machinery and politics wouldna mak' the pot boil, nor gie salt to our
parritch. So I came oot here, an' left politics to gentlefolk.'

Mr. Wynn, rather scandalized at Davidson's want of public spirit, said
something concerning a citizen's duty to the State.

'Weel, sir, my thought is, that a man's first earthly duty is to himsel'
and his bairns. When I mind the workin' men at hame, ruggin', an' rivin',
an' roarin' themselves hoarse for Mr. This or Sir Somebody That, wha are
scramblin' into Parliament on their shouthers, while the puir fallows
haen't a pound in the warld beyond their weekly wage, an' wull never be
a saxpence the better