The stage establishment for the rest of the journey could hardly be called the finest on the continent.  The wagon was drawn by two horses.  It was a square box, covered with painted cloth.  Within were two narrow seats, facing each other, affording no room for the legs of passengers, and offering them no position but a strictly upright one.  It was a most ingeniously uncomfortable box in which to put sleepy travelers for the night.  The weather would be chilly before morning, and to sit upright on a narrow board all night, and shiver, is not cheerful.  Of course, the reader says that this is no hardship to talk about.  But the reader is mistaken.  Anything is a hardship when it is unpleasantly what one does not desire or expect.  These travelers had spent wakeful nights, in the forests, in a cold rain, and never thought of complaining.  It is useless to talk about the Polar sufferings of Dr. Kane to a guest at a metropolitan hotel, in the midst of luxury, when the mosquito sings all night in his ear, and his mutton-chop is overdone at breakfast.  One does not like to be set up for a hero in trifles, in odd moments, and in inconspicuous places.

There were two passengers besides ourselves, inhabitants of Cape Breton Island, who were returning from Halifax to Plaster Cove, where they were engaged in the occupation of distributing alcoholic liquors at retail.  This fact we ascertained incidentally, as we learned the nationality of our comrades by their brogue, and their religion by their lively ejaculations during the night.  We stowed ourselves into the rigid box, bade a sorrowing good-night to the landlady and her daughters, who stood at the inn door, and went jingling down the street towards the open country.

The moon rises at eight o’clock in Nova Scotia.  It came above the horizon exactly as we began our journey, a harvest-moon, round and red.  When I first saw it, it lay on the edge of the horizon as if too heavy to lift itself, as big as a cart-wheel, and its disk cut by a fence-rail.  With what a flood of splendor it deluged farmhouses and farms, and the broad sweep of level country!  There could not be a more magnificent night in which to ride towards that geographical mystery of our boyhood, the Gut of Canso.

A few miles out of town the stage stopped in the road before a post-station.  An old woman opened the door of the farmhouse to receive the bag which the driver carried to her.  A couple of sprightly little girls rushed out to “interview” the passengers, climbing up to ask their names and, with much giggling, to get a peep at their faces.  And upon the handsomeness or ugliness of the faces they saw in the moonlight they pronounced with perfect candor.  We are not obliged to say what their verdict was.  Girls here, no doubt, as elsewhere, lose this trustful candor as they grow older.

Just as we were starting, the old woman screamed out from the door, in a shrill voice, addressing the driver, “Did you see ary a sick man ’bout ’Tigonish?”