of Scotland, Mr Brodie would take no refusal and I had to go with him across the river to his house, where we had dinner, and soon after set out to walk home. People now-a-days think it a hardship to walk a mile to church, but I knew many then who went four or five, let the weather be what it might. It was dark before we got home, and that night there was a frost that killed everything. The weather kept fine, however, until December, and we had no severe cold until the week before New Year. I cannot think of anything out of the common that first winter. Our neighbors wrought at chopping cordwood to raft to Montreal in the spring, but Braxton could not, for he had no oxen to draw the wood to the river-bank, so we went on enlarging our clearance. I forgot to say, that one of our North Georgetown acquaintances gave my oldest boy a pig in a present, and we managed to keep the little creature alive with the house-slop and boiling the potatoes that had not ripened well. We all suffered from the cold, which was past anything we had any conception of before coming to Canada. Our shanty was so open that it did little more than break the wind, and water spilled on the floor at once froze. We had plenty of wood, but it was green, and the logs were fizzing and boiling out the sap the day long, and it took Braxton quite a while to learn that some kinds of wood burn better than others. At first he was just as likely to bring in a basswood or elm log as one of maple or hemlock. Most of the heat went up the big chimney, so that while our faces would be burning, our backs were cold. It was worst in the mornings, for I would rise to find everything solid, even the bread having to be thawed, and the blankets so stiff from our breaths and the snow that had sifted in that I had to hang them near the fire to dry. We kept our health, however, and after the middle of February the weather moderated. In March a deer, while crossing our clearance, broke through the crust, and while floundering in the snow was killed by two of my boys. After that they were on the watch, and ran down and killed two more with their axes. I salted and dried the hams, and but for them we would have fared poorly. Having no kettle, we made only a little maple sugar that spring by boiling the sap in the kailpot. There was no sugar then like what is made now, it was black and had a smoky flavor.