Just as the increasing gloom of the forest began to warn us of the approach of evening, and I was getting weary and hungry, our driver, in some confusion, avowed his belief that, somehow or other, he had missed the track, though how he could not tell, seeing there was but one road. We were nearly two miles from the last settlement, and he said we ought to be within sight of the lake if we were on the right road. The only plan, we agreed, was for him to go forward and leave the team, and endeavour to ascertain if he were near the water; and, if otherwise, to return to the house we had passed, and inquire the way. After running full half a mile a-head, he returned with a dejected countenance, saying we must be wrong, for he saw no appearance of water; and the road we were on appeared to end in a cedar swamp, as the further he went the thicker the hemlocks and cedars became; so, as we had no desire to commence our settlement by a night’s lodging in a swamp,—where, to use the expression of our driver, the cedars grew as thick as hairs on a cat’s back, we agreed to retrace our steps. After some difficulty the lumbering machine was turned, and slowly we began our backward march. We had not gone more than a mile, when a boy came along, who told us we might just go back again, as there was no other road to the lake; and added, with a knowing nod of his head, “Master, I guess if you had known the bush as well as I, you would never have been _fule_ enough to turn when you were going just right. Why, any body knows that _them_ cedars and hemlocks grow thickest near the water; so you may just go back for your pains.” It was dark, save that the stars came forth with more than usual brilliancy, when we suddenly emerged from the gloomy forest to the shores of a beautiful little lake, that gleamed the more brightly from the contrast of the dark masses of foliage that hung over it, and the towering pine-woods that girt its banks. Here, seated on a huge block of limestone, which was covered with a soft cushion of moss, beneath the shade of the cedars that skirt the lake, surrounded with trunks, boxes, and packages of various descriptions, which the driver had hastily thrown from the waggon, sat your child, in anxious expectation of some answering voice to my husband’s long and repeated holloa. But when the echo of his voice had died away, we heard only the gurgling of the waters at the head of the rapids, and the distant and hoarse murmur of a waterfall some half mile below them. We could see no sign of any habitation, no gleam of light from the shore to cheer us. In vain we strained our ears for the plash of the oar, or welcome sound of the human voice, or bark of some household dog, that might assure us we were not doomed to pass the night in the lone wood.