Dan returned with a yellow, smoke-dried string of pieces, dangling from his arm.  Thinking that these were a specimen of the whole, I inquired when we were to send the barrel for the rest.

“Lord, ma’am, this is all there be.”

“Impossible!  All out of twenty bushels of apples!”

“Yes,” said the boy, with a grin.  “The old witch told me that this was all that was left of your share; that when they were fixed enough, she put them under her bed for safety, and the mice and the children had eaten them all up but this string.”

This ended my dealings with Betty Fye.

I had another incorrigible borrower in the person of old Betty B—–.  This Betty was unlike the rest of my Yankee borrowers; she was handsome in her person, and remarkably civil, and she asked for the loan of everything in such a frank, pleasant manner, that for some time I hardly knew how to refuse her.  After I had been a loser to a considerable extent, and declined lending her any more, she refrained from coming to the house herself, but sent in her name the most beautiful boy in the world; a perfect cherub, with regular features, blue, smiling eyes, rosy cheeks, and lovely curling auburn hair, who said, in the softest tones imaginable, that mammy had sent him, with her compliments, to the English lady to ask the loan of a little sugar or tea.  I could easily have refused the mother, but I could not find it in my heart to say nay to her sweet boy.

There was something original about Betty B—–­, and I must give a slight sketch of her.

She lived in a lone shanty in the woods, which had been erected by lumberers some years before, and which was destitute of a single acre of clearing; yet Betty had plenty of potatoes, without the trouble of planting, or the expense of buying; she never kept a cow, yet she sold butter and milk; but she had a fashion, and it proved a convenient one to her, of making pets of the cattle of her neighbours.  If our cows strayed from their pastures, they were always found near Betty’s shanty, for she regularly supplied them with salt, which formed a sort of bond of union between them; and, in return for these little attentions, they suffered themselves to be milked before they returned to their respective owners.  Her mode of obtaining eggs and fowls was on the same economical plan, and we all looked upon Betty as a sort of freebooter, living upon the property of others.  She had had three husbands, and he with whom she now lived was not her husband, although the father of the splendid child whose beauty so won upon my woman’s heart.  Her first husband was still living (a thing by no means uncommon among persons of her class in Canada), and though they had quarrelled and parted years ago, he occasionally visited his wife to see her eldest daughter, Betty the younger, who was his child.  She was now a fine girl of sixteen, as beautiful as her little brother.  Betty’s second husband had been killed in one of our fields by a tree falling upon him while ploughing under it.  He was buried upon the spot, part of the blackened stump forming his monument.  In truth, Betty’s character was none of the best, and many of the respectable farmers’ wives regarded her with a jealous eye.