After two years David took a wife and settled in Paradise Valley. He prospered in a small way considered handsome thereabouts. In a few years he had cleared the rich acres of his farm to the sugar bush that was the north vestibule of the big forest; he had seen the clearing widen until he could discern the bare summits of the distant hills, and, far as he could see, were the neat white houses of the settlers. Children had come, three of them--the eldest a son who had left home and died in a far country long before we came to Paradise Valley--the youngest a baby. I could not have enjoyed my new home more if I had been born in it. I had much need of a mother's tenderness, no doubt, for I remember with what a sense of peace and comfort I lay on the lap of Elizabeth Brower, that first evening, and heard her singing as she rocked. The little daughter stood at her knees, looking down at me and patting my bare toes or reaching over to feel my face. 'God sent him to us--didn't he, mother?' said she. 'Maybe,' Mrs Brower answered, 'we'll be good to him, anyway.' Then that old query came into my mind. I asked them if it was heaven where we were. 'No,' they answered. ''Tain't anywhere near here, is it?' I went on. Then she told me about the gate of death, and began sowing in me the seed of God's truth--as I know now the seed of many harvests. I slept with Uncle Eb in the garret, that night, and for long after we came to the Brower's. He continued to get better, and was shortly able to give his hand to the work of the farm. There was room for all of us in that ample wilderness of his imagination, and the cry of the swift woke its echoes every evening for a time. Bears and panthers prowled in the deep thickets, but the swifts took a firmer grip on us, being bolder and more terrible. Uncle Eb became a great favourite in the family, and David Brower came to know soon that he was 'a good man to work' and could be trusted 'to look after things'. We had not been there long when I heard Elizabeth speak of Nehemiah--her lost son--and his name was often on the lips of others. He was a boy of sixteen when he went away, and I learned no more of him until long afterwards.