The news of our fire travelled far and wide.  I was reported to have done prodigies, and to have saved the greater part of our household goods before help arrived.  Reduced to plain prose, these prodigies shrink into the simple, and by no means marvellous fact, that during the excitement I dragged out chests which, under ordinary circumstances, I could not have moved; and that I was unconscious, both of the cold and the danger to which I was exposed while working under a burning roof, which, had it fallen, would have buried both the children and myself under its ruins.

These circumstances appeared far more alarming, as all real danger does, after they were past.  The fright and over-exertion gave my health a shock from which I did not recover for several months, and made me so fearful of fire, that from that hour it haunts me like a nightmare.  Let the night be ever so serene, all stoves must be shut up, and the hot embers covered with ashes, before I dare retire to rest; and the sight of a burning edifice, so common a spectacle in large towns in this country, makes me really ill.  This feeling was greatly increased after a second fire, when, for some torturing minutes, a lovely boy, since drowned, was supposed to have perished in the burning house.

Our present fire led to a new train of circumstances, for it was the means of introducing to Moodie a young Irish gentleman, who was staying at my brother’s house.  John E—–­ was one of the best and gentlest of human beings.  His father, a captain in the army, had died while his family were quite young, and had left his widow with scarcely any means beyond the pension she received at her husband’s death, to bring up and educate a family of five children.  A handsome, showy woman, Mrs. E—–­ soon married again; and the poor lads were thrown upon the world.  The eldest, who had been educated for the Church, first came to Canada in the hope of getting some professorship in the college, or of opening a classical school.  He was a handsome, gentlemanly, well-educated young man, but constitutionally indolent—­a natural defect which seemed common to all the males of the family, and which was sufficiently indicated by their soft, silky, fair hair and milky complexions.  R—–­ had the good sense to perceive that Canada was not the country for him.  He spent a week under our roof, and we were much pleased with his elegant tastes and pursuits; but my husband strongly advised him to try and get a situation as a tutor in some family at home.  This he afterwards obtained.  He became tutor and travelling companion to the young Lord M—–­, and has since got an excellent living.

John, who had followed his brother to Canada without the means of transporting himself back again, was forced to remain, and was working with Mr. S—–­ for his board.  He proposed to Moodie working his farm upon shares; and as we were unable to hire a man, Moodie gladly closed with his offer; and, during the time he remained with us, we had every reason to be pleased with the arrangement.