“Wounded! Poor critter, I must get the bed ready,” and Mrs Smith darted indoors. Stiff and sore from the exertion and cold, the poor soldier was like to fall when they helped him off the mare, and, gently, father and son carried him to the bed. “Poor man, ain’t he tuckered out!” exclaimed Mrs Smith, as she approached him when his head had been laid on the pillow. Shading the candle she glanced at him, started, looked again, and crying out, “Blessed if it ben’t my own brother Bill from Varmont!” she fell on his neck in a paroxysm of hysterical sobs. And so it turned out to be. He had been among those last drafted to reinforce Hampton, and had been unconscious that his sister lived so near the camp at Four Corners. Abner was the hero of the night when the soldier told how he had been the means of saving him. “No,” said the lad modestly, “it was mother’s sending me against my will to the Blands that saved you.” “That’s so, Abner, and you never forget it, that blood is thicker than water, and in doing a kind deed to those you considered an enemy we were serving ourselves.” WHAT A SETTLER TOLD ME. After the stifling heat and blinding glare of a Canadian summer day, it is most refreshing to walk forth as the sun, shorn of its strength, sinks, a glowing ball of fire, behind the forest that edges the landscape. Vegetation, wilted by the day’s glaring heat, revives with the dewy coolness of the hour, and from the neighboring bush comes the song of the greybird. As the glow fades from the sky, nowhere else in the world of tenderer blue or more translucent depth, the stars drop into sight, and should Venus be in the ascendant, she burns with a white flame unknown at any other season. Generally, with the setting of the sun, a light breeze springs up from the west or northwest, refreshing to the farmers who toiled throughout the sultry day, and swaying the heads of timothy until the meadows seem to be swept by billows. The eye of the saunterer takes in the scene, passing over the great flat fields of grain and grass, until ended by the recurring belt of bush; the snug farm-houses set amid shade-trees and orchards; the pond-like reaches of the Chateaugay, sleeping peacefully in the hollows of its rounded banks, unruffled save as the wing of one of the swallows, that skim its glassy surface, frets it for a moment, or from the leap of an inhabitant of its clear waters; and, in the finished beauty of the picture, he finds it hard to realize that he is looking upon the results of the labor of scarce half a century, that underneath a few of the roofs before him still live men and women who saw the country when a wilderness of forest and swamp, and who are survivors of the generation who wrought the wondrous change--men and women who underwent privations the most painful and labors the most exhausting in making the country what it is. To give those who have inherited the fruits of their sacrifices some idea of what the first settlers