"Not long," said Hobby rather sadly. "They'll go, and we'll go too, most of us. The big dam will be built, some time or other; we'll be offered some real money. We'll grab it and drift. Strangers will take comfort where we've grubbed out stumps. We are the scene shifters. The play will take place later. 'Sall right; I hope the actors get a hand. But I hate to think of strangers living--well, in this old house. Say, we've had some happy times here." "Won't you please hush?" said Adam. "Why so doleful? There's more happy times in stock. This bunch don't have to move away. Why, when I get my gold mine in action we can all live happy ever after. To-morrow--" "Hobby is right," said Aunt Peg. "Pick your words as you please, bad luck or improvidence on the one side, thrift or greed on the other--yes, and as many more words of praise or blame as you care for; and the fact remains that the people who care for other things more than they do for money are slowly crowded out by the people who care more for money than for anything else." "Uncle Dan, is that why you grasping Scotchmen have crowded out the Irish round these parts?" inquired Charlie. "McClintock, MacCleod, Simpson, Forbes, Campbell, Monroe, Fenderson, Stewart, Buchanan--why, say, there's a raft of you here; and across the river it is worse." "You touch there on a very singular thing, Mr. Charlie. Not that we crowded out the Irish. There were only a few families, and most of them are here yet. They happened to come first, and named the settlements--that's all. But for the Scotch--you find more good Scots' names to the hundred, once you strike the hills, than you will find to the thousand on the plain country. Love of the hills is in the blood of them; they followed the Rocky Mountains down from Canada." "But, Uncle Dan," said Hobby, "how did so many of them happen to be in Canada?" "Scotland was a poor country and a cold country, England was rich and warm, Canada was cold and hard. The English had no call to Canada, the Hudson Bay Company captained their outflung posts with Scotchmen; the easier that the Hanoverian kings, as a matter of policy, harried the Jacobite clans by fair means and foul. You were speaking of across the river. That is another curious matter. The California Company, now--ruling a dozen dukedoms--California lends the name of it and supplied the money; but the heads that first dreamed it were four long Scottish heads. And their brand is the John Cross. Any stranger cowman would read that brand as J Half Circle Cross. But we call it John Cross. And why, sirs?" "I'm sure I don't know," said Hobby. "It was always the John Cross and it never entered my head to ask why."