Her first association with the rural inhabitants of Canada was not of the most pleasing character, but yet they possessed characteristics she could not help admiring; for, while there was an entire absence of that delicate sensibility which would have kept them from so rudely endeavoring to satisfy their curiosity, there was exhibited, in the short time she was in their company, so much shrewdness, common sense, and, added to this, such an inherent hatred of shams, of vice and villany, and such a love for the true, the pure, and the good, that she formed an opinion in regard to them a narrower person, under the circumstances, would be incapable of doing. That night she slept but little, and the little she did was broken, fitful, and disturbed by hideous dreams, in which her husband and children, Aunt Debie, and herself, were all mixed up in horrible confusion; and when awake she found the couplet of the poet Campbell running through her mind-- "The sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before" the association of ideas in her mind quite involuntarily, as far as her will-power was concerned, linking this creation of the poet with Aunt Debie's ominous utterances. She finally quietly left the side of her sleeping husband, and knelt before the Lord in prayer; and then, returning to bed, soon fell into a peaceful slumber. CHAPTER XIV. A HAPPY HOME. Richard Ashton had now settled down to business as vigorously and keenly as in the days of the past, and he seemed not to have lost any of his faculties by what he had passed through. And yet, physically, a great change had come over him in the last few years. He had aged very fast, his thick, wavy hair had lost its glossy blackness, and was now shaded with grey and white. The hand was not so steady as in the days of the past; the step had not so firm a tread. Ruth saw this with loving apprehension, and while thanking God that He had influenced her husband so that he was as of old in his love and kindness to her and their children, and that they had again a happy home, she prayed he might be kept from temptation; for she was afraid, if he fell again, he would not be long with them, as he was only now a wreck of his former self. And Ruth herself, though time had dealt more kindly with her than with her husband, knew that the care and anxiety of the last ten years had, to a serious extent, undermined her constitution and made her prematurely old. She was now much more easily fatigued than of yore, and there were those certain indications of time's ravages, "busy wrinkles," forming around her eyes, though her fair complexion was favorable to her. She was sitting at the window one beautiful summer evening, listening to the carolling of a bird which was perched upon the bough of a tree that shaded the house, and little Mamie was playing at her feet, when Allie, who was in the parlor practising on the piano, struck up with her full-toned soprano voice: