Grace having engaged her passage home, we were turning from the office, when a stranger bounded to us, and caught her by the hand.  Grace Marley, he exclaimed—­my own, my beautiful.  I felt her lean heavily on my arm; she had fainted.  And so deep was that trance, we fancied she was gone—­but joy rarely kills, and she awoke to the passionate exclamations of her lover—­for such he was, come o’er the deep sea to seek her.  An explanation ensued.  Their letters to each other had all miscarried.  None had been received by either. (All this bitter disappointment, however, happened before the establishment of our post.) So Grace, instead of returning to Ireland, was wedded next day, her husband having brought means with him to settle in the country.  The magician, Love, flung his rose-light o’er her path, and, when I saw her last, she fancied the emerald glades of Oromot, where her home now lay, almost as beautiful as those by the blue lakes of Killarney, in the land of her birth.

With the end of September commence the night frosts.  The woods now lose their greenness; and the most brilliant hues of crimson, and gold, and purple, are flung in gorgeous flakes of beauty over their boughs, as though each leaf were crystal, and reflected and retained the light of some glorious sunset.  In this lovely season, which is most appropriately termed the fall, we wished to get along with our church, and have it enclosed before the winter.  This was rather an arduous undertaking in young settlement like ours; but there were those here who loved

    “Old England’s holy church,
    And loved her form of prayer right well.”

And liberally they came forward to raise a temple to their faith in the wilderness.  The “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Lands” had promised assistance; but the frame must first be erected and enclosed ere it could be claimed.  In this country cash is a most scarce commodity, and many species of speculation are made with the aid of little real specie.  Large sums are spoken of, but rarely appear bodily:  and our church got on in the same way.  The owner of the saw-mill signed twenty pounds as his subscription towards it, and paid it in boards—­the carpenters who did the work received from the subscribers pork and flour for their pay—­and our neighbour, the embarrassed lumber-man, who was still wooden-headed enough to like anything of a timber spec, got out the frame by contract, himself giving most generously five pounds worth of work towards it.  And thus the church was raised, and now it stands, with white spire, pointing heavenward, above the ancient forest trees.