We slept that night under our cover of cedar bushes and slept sound. In the morning Braxton and my oldest boy started down the track, for it was no road, that followed the bank of the Chateaugay, to see if the settlers below would help to raise a shanty, and while they were gone I did my best to get things into order. For all I had come through, there was lightness in my heart, for there is a freedom and hopefulness in living in the woods that nothing else seems to give one, and I made child’s play of discomforts that would have disheartened me had I been told of them before leaving Scotland. It was nigh noon when Braxton came back. He had been made welcome everywhere, all were glad to have a new neighbor, and the promise given that word would be sent to all within reach to come to a bee next day. After dinner he took the axe and tried his hand at chopping. He began on a tree about half a foot thick and was nicking it all round, we looking on and admiring. “Ye’ll kill somebody with that tree,” said a voice behind us, and turning, to our astonishment we saw a tall woman, in a poke-bonnet, looking on. Explaining that it was necessary to know how a tree would fall, she pointed how any direction could be secured by the way it was chopped, and, seizing the axe, she showed how, and, under her strokes, the first tree fell amid the shouts of the children. She was the wife of our nearest neighbor, and, on hearing of our arrival, had come over to see us, “Being real glad,” as she said, “to have a woman so near.” She stayed an hour, and after finding out all about us, showed me how to do a great many things needful in bush-life. Among the rest, how to make a smudge to protect us from the mosquitoes, which was a real comfort.