THE EARL OF EGMONT 5

This concession the Earl haughtily refuses. And to me his letter of refusal is a picture of the man himself—stubborn, proud, and unyielding.

You will please to accept my acknowledgments for this mark of civility but permit me to decline the offer as I do not conceive that I can now be able to do credit to myself or service to the public by any undertaking there.

I should like to meet the man who had the audacity to offer Egmont one hundred thousand acres when he had asked for a million or two. “Civility,” indeed!

That was in the year 1767. Three years later the Earl of Egmont died. Although he had been so insistent in his petitions, he had never seen the Island of St. John. Perhaps if he had spent one winter there . . . but it is an idle thought.

So the Earl fades out of the picture. I have a great affection for the proud, inflexible old dreamer. And, sometimes, I think that to-day his spirit still guards his romantic scheme. Perhaps some day amid the tall timbers of the Island I shall come across a mediaeval castle, cloaked in splendour, with an indomitable figure on guard. Perhaps, too, he wanders over the Island pausing now and then in the places which com- memorate his name—Egmont Bay, Enmore, Perceval River, Egmont Parish. Still he shakes his head sadly over the new-fangled ideas which are prevalent everywhere.

He was not the only schemer. There was a certain Alexander McNutt who looked with a covetous eye at the Island paradise. This energetic and ambitious man put the matter bluntly before the Board.

“Look here—I’ve got a splendid proposition to