Between sleeping and waking, I heard the pane gently pushed in.  The thought instantly struck me that it was Tom, and that, for lack of something better, he might steal my precious candle.

I sprang up from the bed, just in time to see him dart through the broken window, dragging the long white candle after him.  I flew to the door, and pursued him half over the field, but all to no purpose.  I can see him now, as I saw him then, scampering away for dear life, with his prize trailing behind him, gleaming like a silver tail in the bright light of the moon.

Ah! never did I feel more acutely the truth of the proverb, “Those that go a-borrowing go a-sorrowing,” than I did that night.  My poor boy awoke ill and feverish, and I had no light to assist him, or even to look into his sweet face, to see how far I dared hope that the light of day would find him better.

OH CANADA!  THY GLOOMY WOODS

A song

  Oh Canada! thy gloomy woods
    Will never cheer the heart;
  The murmur of thy mighty floods
    But cause fresh tears to start
  From those whose fondest wishes rest
    Beyond the distant main;
  Who, ’mid the forests of the West,
    Sigh for their homes again.

  I, too, have felt the chilling blight
    Their shadows cast on me,
  My thought by day—­my dream by night—­
    Was of my own country. 
  But independent souls will brave
    All hardships to be free;
  No more I weep to cross the wave,
    My native land to see.

  But ever as a thought most bless’d,
    Her distant shores will rise,
  In all their spring-tide beauty dress’d. 
    To cheer my mental eyes. 
  And treasured in my inmost heart,
    The friends I left behind;
  But reason’s voice, that bade us part,
    Now bids me be resign’d.

  I see my children round me play,
    My husband’s smiles approve;
  I dash regretful tears away,
    And lift my thoughts above: 
  In humble gratitude to bless
    The Almighty hand that spread
  Our table in the wilderness,
    And gave my infants bread.

CHAPTER VI

OLD SATAN AND TOM WILSON’S NOSE

  “A nose, kind sir!  Sure mother Nature,
  With all her freaks, ne’er formed this feature. 
  If such were mine, I’d try and trade it,
  And swear the gods had never made it.”

After reducing the log cabin into some sort of order, we contrived, with the aid of a few boards, to make a bed-closet for poor Tom Wilson, who continued to shake every day with the pitiless ague.  There was no way of admitting light and air into this domicile, which opened into the general apartment, but through a square hole cut in one of the planks, just wide enough to admit a man’s head through the aperture.  Here we made Tom a comfortable bed on the floor, and did the best we could to nurse him through his sickness.  His long, thin face, emaciated with disease, and surrounded by huge black whiskers, and a beard of a week’s growth, looked perfectly unearthly.  He had only to stare at the baby to frighten her almost out of her wits.