A nurse was obtained for my poor motherless babe, the babe over whom I shed so many tears—­a sad welcome, this, to as fine a boy as ever a father’s eye looked upon!

I followed the remains of my beloved wife to the grave; and then tarried for a month in that house of sorrow.  My only consolation was derived from my knowledge that Emma loved her Saviour, and put her trust in him while passing through the valley of the shadow of death.

 “How many hopes have sprung in radiance hence;
 Their trace yet lights the dust where thou art sleeping. 
 A solemn joy comes o’er me, and a sense
 Of triumph blent with nature’s gush of weeping.”

I left my little son in the care of his Irish nurse, and quitted my friend’s house, with a heavy heart, for my new settlement at Otonabee.

CHAPTER IX.

RETURN TO OTONABEE. —­ BENEVOLENCE OF MY NEIGHBOUR. —­ SERIOUS ACCIDENT TO A SETTLER. —­ HIS SINGULAR MISFORTUNES. —­ PARTICULARS OF HIS LIFE.

I returned in sadness to my lonely and desolate home, feeling like a shipwrecked mariner, cast upon a desert shore.  In fact, I had to begin life again, without the stimulus of domestic love to quicken my exertions.  I had left my land unsown, and therefore the prospect of a crop of wheat for the next year’s harvest was, I felt assured, entirely gone.  Upon reaching my clearing, I was surprised to find my fallow not only sown but showing the green blade, for some friendly hands had been at work for me in my absence, that pecuniary losses might not be added to my heavy domestic bereavement.

On inquiry, I found I was indebted to the considerate kindness of my excellent neighbour Mr. Reid and his sons, for this act of Christian benevolence.  I hurried to his house to thank him for the important service he had rendered one, to whom he was almost a stranger.  He considered, however, that he had done nothing more than a neighbourly duty, and insisted that I should take up my abode with him, instead of returning to my unfinished and melancholy home.

My residence under his hospitable roof increased my esteem for his character, which my long experience of six-and-twenty years has never diminished.  Mrs. Reid treated me with maternal kindness; and in their amiable family-circle my bruised heart recovered its peace, and my spirits their healthy tone.  The kindly disposition of my host in all his domestic relations, his cheerful activity, pure morality, and unaffected piety, presented an admirable example to a young man left without guidance in a distant colony.  But I did not at that time think about becoming his son-in-law, though I had been several months domesticated in his family, till the alacrity displayed by his eldest daughter in hastening to the assistance of a wounded neighbour, through the unknown intricacies of a Canadian forest, led me to consider her character in a new and endearing point of view.