A new light came into Fergus Kennedy’s eyes as he beheld his wife and children, but he seemed bewildered at seeing baby Fergus, and poor Mrs. Kennedy could hardly restrain her tears. In these long months letters had passed but seldom, and Agnes had written cautiously of her father’s condition. She was always hoping that he would be quite like his old self, or, at the least, very much better by the time her mother came. He seemed quietly content, and followed his wife everywhere, but there was no enthusiasm; and to the weary traveller, arrived in a new country, happy though she was at the reunion, there came a little heart-sinking as the night approached. After the younger children were sleeping sweetly and Fergus had gone out with Jimmy to see that all was safe at the barn, the mother sought her first-born, for whom her heart had been yearning all these long months. Agnes had not gone to bed, but she had seen that her little sisters were comfortable, and then she had crouched down by her small window, and sat there looking out into the starry heavens. Outside the forest girdled the house, while beyond one could catch, here and there, the gleam of the river through the trees. All was silent except for the cry of some wild bird in the deep woods, or the barking of a fox in the underbrush. Mrs. Kennedy drew up a little stool, and Agnes, her arms around her mother’s waist, sat on the floor by her side. “It is good, so good to have you, mother,” said the girl. Her mother stroked the soft auburn hair and drew her daughter closer, but she said nothing. “What are you thinking of, mother? Does it seem very strange to you here?” Agnes asked. “I am thinking of how lonely my little lamb must have been for many a day in that first settlement where wolves attacked her and where Indians threatened, and how, if I had realized it all, I think my heart would have misgiven me when it came time to have her go.” “It was lonely,” Agnes confessed, “but since we came here it has been less so, and the Indians are not so troublesome now that the settlement grows and thrives, and only those who stray too far need fear. You are not afraid of them, mother?” “No; yet, when I saw your father and felt what it was they had done to him, a horror arose within me.” “Yes, I miss father,” returned Agnes, “father as he was, but he might have had a wound as bad in war, and he does grow a little better--he really does; he was much worse at first. Oh, mother, I am glad for his sake that I came with him, for they might never have found him that dreadful day.” “Yes, yes, I know, and I am thankful, so thankful that I have both my brave daughter and my husband spared to me, though your father does seem so strange. And there was my own poor father, too, a victim to the savages.”