“All in good time,” said Tom.  “I hope to have the pleasure of meeting you in the backwoods of Canada before three months are over.  What adventures we shall have to tell one another!  It will be capital.  Good-bye.”

* * * * * *

“Tom has sailed,” said Captain Charles Wilson, stepping into my little parlour a few days after his eccentric brother’s last visit.  “I saw him and Duchess safe on board.  Odd as he is, I parted with him with a full heart; I felt as if we never should meet again.  Poor Tom! he is the only brother left me now that I can love.  Robert and I never agreed very well, and there is little chance of our meeting in this world.  He is married, and settled down for life in New South Wales; and the rest—­John, Richard, George, are all gone—­all!”

“Was Tom in good spirits when you parted?”

“Yes.  He is a perfect contradiction.  He always laughs and cries in the wrong place.  ‘Charles,’ he said, with a loud laugh, ’tell the girls to get some new music against I return:  and, hark ye! if I never come back, I leave them my Kangaroo Waltz as a legacy.’”

“What a strange creature!”

“Strange, indeed; you don’t know half his oddities.  He has very little money to take out with him, but he actually paid for two berths in the ship, that he might not chance to have a person who snored sleep near him.  Thirty pounds thrown away upon the mere chance of a snoring companion!  ‘Besides, Charles,’ quoth he, ’I cannot endure to share my little cabin with others; they will use my towels, and combs, and brushes, like that confounded rascal who slept in the same berth with me coming from New South Wales, who had the impudence to clean his teeth with my toothbrush.  Here I shall be all alone, happy and comfortable as a prince, and Duchess shall sleep in the after-berth, and be my queen.’  And so we parted,” continued Captain Charles.  “May God take care of him, for he never could take care of himself.”

“That puts me in mind of the reason he gave for not going with us.  He was afraid that my baby would keep him awake of a night.  He hates children, and says that he never will marry on that account.”

* * * * * *

We left the British shores on the 1st of July, and cast anchor, as I have already shown, under the Castle of St. Louis, at Quebec, on the 2nd of September, 1832.  Tom Wilson sailed the 1st of May, and had a speedy passage, and was, as we heard from his friends, comfortably settled in the bush, had bought a farm, and meant to commence operations in the fall.  All this was good news, and as he was settled near my brother’s location, we congratulated ourselves that our eccentric friend had found a home in the wilderness at last, and that we should soon see him again.