‘I have not enjoyed a ride like this for many a day,’ she said with unusual heartiness. ‘This is a very comfortable saddle of yours, though I miss the third pommel. How do you manage, Mary Anne, to ride so squarely and easily upon that uncomfortable saddle?’ ‘I’ve ridden many a mile without a saddle at all—that is, with nothing but an old gunny-bag to sit on,’ said Tottie, ‘and jumped over logs too. Of course I was a kid then.’ ‘A what?’ said Miss Neuchamp anxiously. ‘Oh, a little child,’ explained Tottie. ‘I often used to go out at daylight to fetch in the cows and the working bullocks when we lived down the country. Bitter cold it was, too, in the winter; such hard frosts.’ ‘Frosts?’ asked Miss Augusta. ‘Do you ever have frosts? Why, I supposed they were unknown here.’ ‘You don’t suppose the whole country is like this, miss?’ said Tottie. ‘Why, near the mountains there’s snow and ice, and it rains every winter, and the floods are enough to drownd you.’ ‘Are there floods too? It does not look as if they could ever come.’ ‘Do you see that hut, miss? That’s our place. I heard Piambook, the black boy, tell father it would be swep’ away some day. Father laughed at him.‘ Here they arrived at the abode of Freeman _père_, at which Miss Neuchamp gazed with much curiosity. In the language of architecture, the construction had been but little decorated. A plain and roughly-built abode, composed of round saplings nailed vertically to the wall-plate, and plastered insufficiently with mud. The roof was thatched with reeds, put on in a very ineffectual and chance-medley manner. The hut or cottage contained two large and three small rooms. There was no garden whatever, or any attempt at the cultivation of the baked and hopelessly-looking clay soil. Close to the side of the house was a stockyard, comprising the ‘gallows’ of the colonists, a rough, rude contrivance, consisting of two uprights and a crosspiece, for elevating slaughtered cattle. Upon this structure was at present hanging the carcass of a fine six-months-old calf. No other enclosure was visible, the only attempt at the preservation of neatness being the sweeping of the earth immediately around the front and back doors. Tottie immediately clattered up to the hut door, the black mare putting her head so far in that she obstructed the egress of a middle-aged woman, who made haste to come forth and receive the guests. ‘Mother,’ said the girl, ‘here’s Miss Neuchamp come to see you; bring a chair for her to get off by.’