waiting for him.  It was from his sister, who expressed the delight they felt on hearing of his having got a farm and built a house, and how his letter, like the one he had mailed from Montreal, had passed from house to house until everybody in the parish had read them, and they had raised quite a ‘furore’ about Canada and of emigration to its woods, for the acquisition of farms of their own dazzled all.  Father and mother were well and were kept in good spirits by anticipating the day when they would be able to join him in his fine house.  He read the letter a hundred times and vowed anew he would not turn aside until those it came from were beside him.

On speaking to Magarth of the store of ashes he had saved and of the slash of trees that were ready for burning, it was arranged he would send two men if Archie would clear a way through the woods by which a one ox-sled could pass.  His frequent comings and goings across the lot had made a foot-path, but there were decayed logs to push aside, brush to cut here and there, and a few branches that hung low.  It took three days’ work before he was satisfied a sled would have free passage.  On a Monday morning the men with the sled and oxen appeared and the burning began.  There had been a month’s drouth, so the burning went well, and when the men went back at nights the big box on the sled was filled with ashes.  At Magarth’s the ashes were measured in a bushel box and emptied into the leaches that stood beside the creek.  On coming to square accounts the ashes paid what Archie was due and left a few dollars to his credit.  Taking advantage of the return trips of the sled, he had got his chest taken to his shanty, a quantity of short boards to make a door and a bed, a bag of seed wheat, and a grindstone.  Elated by his progress he went to the scraping and hoeing of his clearance with a will, lifted his potatoes, pitted them, and sowed all his seed-wheat.  Then he tackled enlarging his clearance and his daily task was again felling trees.  The weather was now often cold.  He chinked the shanty but with a gaping hole in the roof to let out the smoke it made little difference, and often he could not get to sleep for shivering.  To light a fire made it worse, for, not being used to it, he could not stand the smoke, which choked him and made his eyes smart.  The second week in November there came a frosty snap.  Before shouldering his ax he had put the potatoes and bit of pork he intended for dinner in a tin pail and buried it in hot ashes to slowly cook.  When he came back late in the afternoon, cold and tired and hungry, he opened the pail and found it full of cinders.  The heat had been too great.  For the first time he lost heart, and starting up, with what daylight remained, made his way to Magarth’s, where supper and a welcome awaited him.  The daughter having been back for some time, he had given up his Saturday visits.  She was big and plump, and like her father voluble and fond of a joke.  When all the others