ere children may with safety float their little boats,
but Black Creek, with its precipitous holes, is no safe companion for
any living creature that has not webbed toes or a guardian angel.

The banks, which are of a spongy black loam, grow a heavy crop of
coarse meadow grass, interspersed in the late summer with the umbrella-
like white clusters of water hemlock.

* * * * *

About a mile from the Stopping-House there stood a strange log
structure, the present abode of Reginald and Randolph Brydon, late of
H.M. Navy, but now farmers and homesteaders. The house was built in
that form of architecture known as a "Red River frame," and the corners
were finished in the fashion called "saddle and notch."

Whatever can be done to a house to spoil its appearance had been done
to this one. There was a "join" in each side, which was intended, and a
bulge which was accidental, and when the sailor brothers were unable to
make a log lie comfortably beside its neighbor by using the axe, they
resorted to long iron spikes, and when these split the logs, as was
usually the case, they overcame the difficulty by using ropes.

What had brought the Brydon brothers to Manitoba was a matter of
conjecture in the Black Creek neighborhood. Some said they probably
were not wanted at home; others, with deeper meaning, said they
probably _were_ wanted at home; and, indeed, their bushy eyebrows,
their fierce black eyes, the knives which they carried in their belts,
and their general manner of living, gave some ground to this
insinuation.

The Brydon brothers did not work with that vigor and zeal which brings
success to the farmer. They began late and quit early, with numerous
rests in between. They showed a delightfully child-like trust in Nature
and her methods, for in the springtime, instead of planting their
potatoes in the ground the way they saw other people doing it, they
sprinkled them around the "fireguard," believing that the birds of the
air strewed leaves over them, or the rain washed them in, or in some
mysterious way they made a bed for themselves in the soil.

They bought a cow from one of the neighbors, but before the summer was
over brought her back indignantly, declaring that she would give no
milk. Randolph declared that he knew she had it, for she had plenty the
last time he milked her, and that was several days ago--she should have
more now. It came out in the evidence that they only took fr