NEIGHBOURS

By

ROBERT STEAD

Author of "The Cow Puncher", "The Homesteaders", "Dennison Grant", "The Empire Builders", etc.

TORONTO
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED

Copyright, Canada, 1922
HODDER & STOUGHTON, LIMITED
PUBLISHERS

PRINTED IN CANADA.

NEIGHBOURS

CHAPTER I.

My earliest recollection links back to a grey stone house by a road entering a little Ontario town. Across the road was a mill-pond, and across the mill-pond was a mill; an old-fashioned woolen mill which was the occasion and support of the little town. Beside the mill was a water-wheel; not a modern turbine, but a wooden wheel which, on sunshiny days, sprayed a mist of jewels into the river beneath with the prodigality of a fairy prince.

My father worked in the mill, as did most of the men and many of the women of the town. That was before Unionism had succeeded in any general introduction of the eight-hour day; my father started work at seven in the morning and worked until six at night. His days were full of the labor of the mill, but his evenings and the early, sun-bright summer mornings belonged to his tiny farm at the border of the town. We had two cows, a pig or two, some apple and cherry trees, and little fields of corn and clover.

The mill-pond was held in check by a stone dam which crossed from the road almost in front of our door to a point on the mill itself. The stone crest of this dam rose about two feet above the level of the water in the mill-pond, and was about two feet wide. Along this crest my father walked on his way to and from the mill, but I had strict orders not to attempt the feat, with the promise that I would be thrashed "within an inch of my life" if I did.

And now I must introduce Jean Lane, daughter of our nearest neighbour, Mr. Peter Lane. Jean is to travel with us through most of the chapters of this somewhat intimate account, and you may as well meet her at four, bare-footed and golden-haired and blue-eyed, with a wisp of white cotton dress and a gleam of white teeth set between lips of rose-leaf. Demurely down the road she came to where I lay sprawled on the river bank contemplating the leisured precision of the water-wheel beyond. When she reached me she paused, sat down, and buried her feet in the soft sand of the bank.

"I want to go to the mill," she said, when her little toes were well out of sight.

"But you can't go to the mill," I said, with the mature authority of six. "You'd fall in."

"I wouldn't, neither,"—she glanced at me elfishly from under her yellow locks—"not if you helped me."

It was a difficult situation. Here was I, a young man of six, honored by a commission of great responsibility from a young woman of four. My native gallantry, as well as a pleasant feeling of competence, urged that I immediately lead her across that two foot strip of masonry. But the parental veto, and the promise of being thrashed within an inch of my life, sorely, and, as it seemed to me, unfairly, curbed my chivalry.

"I'd like to take you over, Jean," I conceded, "but my father won't let me."

"Did you' father say you mustn't take me over?" With almost uncanny intuition she thrust at the vulnerable spot in the armor of my good behavior.

"No; he didn't say anything about you."

"Then you can take me?"

I dug my toes into the sand beside hers, but did not answer.

"If my big bruvver John was here he'd take me over, quick," she continued, with a quivering lip.

John Lane was six, like me, and no bigger. The allusion to him as her big brother, who would take her over quick, and the quivering lip, were too much.

I scrambled to my feet. "Come," I said, with masculine recklessness, starting for the dam, and she followed joyously.

We were about half way over when something happened—I never knew what—but I plumped into deep water like a stone thrown from the shore. I took a great mouthful and came up spluttering, choking, frantic. The slippery wall gave no grip for my hands, and in a moment I must have gone down again, but Jean's head came out over the ledge and her little arms were reached down to mine. I grasped them and hung on—hung in water to my neck, while Jean and I both shouted lustily.

Help came quickly in the person of my father, who had seen the accident from one of the upper windows of the mill, and had come rushing out at a pace which had quite upset the operatives on his route. I was dragged up on the dam in a moment, and I can remember Jean standing beside my father, crying a little, and saying, "Please don' scold him, Mr. Hall. I made him do it."

I expected my father to scold her, but he took her up in his arms and held her to his breast.

"You're a brave little girl, Jean; you're a wonderful little girl," I heard him say, and he kissed her on the face, which he hardly ever did to me. Then homeward he led me, wet and miserable, and speculating silently on what it may mean to be thrashed within an inch of one's life.

But it proved to be a day of surprises. I was not thrashed within an inch of my life, nor at all; I was undressed, and rubbed with a warm towel, and put in bed, and given a large tumblerful of hot choke-cherry wine, because it was still early in the season and the water was cold. And my little sister Marjorie came and looked at me with large, dark, comprehending eyes, and said, "I know why you didn't get thrashed?"

"Why didn't I get thrashed?" I ventured.

"Because you were so awful wicked. When you're awful bad you don't get thrashed; its only when you're a little bad," she explained.

I had to stay in bed for the remainder of the day, which I think was more a punishment than a precaution, so I had opportunity to think on Marjorie's philosophy. It was evident that she was right; I had the proof in my own experience; I had been very wicked, and had escaped punishment. My ideas of wickedness were well defined. Wickedness consisted of telling lies, using bad words, disobeying one's parents, getting drunk, and cutting wood on Sunday. All our religion was negative; it consisted entirely of Thou Shalt Nots. It was utterly selfish. To my father, my mother, my little sister and myself the purpose of religion was to keep us from going to Hell, and, incidentally, to cause us to go to Heaven, although the hope element never weighed as much in our minds as did the fear element.

I have said that our religion was entirely a matter of Thou Shalt Nots, but I should make one exception. There was one Thou Shalt. Thou Shalt go to church every Sunday. Accordingly each Sunday morning I was crowded into a pair of boots and stockings and a suit with an uncomfortable white collar, and the four of us walked in great solemnity to the church of our faith. There were other churches in town, but I had already learned that it was almost as bad to go to them as not to go at all; in fact, our minister was suspected of believing that it was even worse. In any case we took no chances, and when, as happened on one or two occasions, our minister was unable to preach and no substitute had been found, we stayed religiously at home.

In the church we sat in a stiff, high-backed seat, where I was required to be very still through a tedious discourse of which I comprehended nothing whatever. In summer I usually contrived to enliven the time by a surreptitious killing of beetles, with which the church was infested. The building was small, but the preacher shouted at the top of his voice, as though in competition with the rival preacher two blocks down the street, which I verily believe he was. When the sermon was over