“Faith, madam! an’ I thought the captain was stark, staring mad to fire his fallow on such a windy day, and that blowing right from the lake to the house.  When Old Wittals came in and towld us that the masther was not to the fore, but only one lad, an’ the wife an’ the chilther at home,—­thinks I, there’s no time to be lost, or the crathurs will be burnt up intirely.  We started instanther, but, by Jove! we were too late.  The swamp was all in a blaze when we got to the landing, and you might as well have thried to get to heaven by passing through the other place.”

This was the eloquent harangue with which the honest creature informed me the next morning of the efforts he had made to save us, and the interest he had felt in our critical situation.  I felt comforted for my past anxiety, by knowing that one human being, however humble, had sympathised in our probable fate, while the providential manner in which we had been rescued will ever remain a theme of wonder and gratitude.

The next evening brought the return of my husband, who listened to the tale of our escape with a pale and disturbed countenance; not a little thankful to find his wife and children still in the land of the living.

For a long time after the burning of that fallow, it haunted me in my dreams.  I would awake with a start, imagining myself fighting with the flames, and endeavouring to carry my little children through them to the top of the clearing, when invariably their garments and my own took fire just as I was within reach of a place of safety.

THE FORGOTTEN DREAM

  Ere one ruddy streak of light
  Glimmer’d o’er the distant height,
  Kindling with its living beam
  Frowning wood and cold grey stream,
  I awoke with sudden start,
  Clammy brow and beating heart,
  Trembling limbs, convulsed and chill,
  Conscious of some mighty ill;
  Yet unable to recall
  Sights that did my sense appal;
  Sounds that thrill’d my sleeping ear
  With unutterable fear;
  Forms that to my sleeping eye
  Presented some strange phantasy—­
  Shadowy, spectral, and sublime,
  That glance upon the sons of time
  At moments when the mind, o’erwrought,
  Yields reason to mysterious thought,
  And night and solitude in vain
  Bind the free spirit in their chain. 
  Such the vision wild that press’d
  On tortur’d brain and heaving chest;
  But sight and sound alike are gone,
  I woke, and found myself alone;
  With choking sob and stifled scream
  To bless my God ’twas but a dream! 
  To smooth my damp and stiffen’d hair,
  And murmur out the Saviour’s prayer—­
  The first to grateful memory brought,
  The first a gentle mother taught,
  When, bending o’er her children’s bed,
  She bade good angels guard my head;
  Then paused, with tearful eyes, and smiled
  On the calm slumbers of her child—­
  As God himself had heard her prayer,
  And holy angels worshipped there.