The spring was late and wet, which was a great disappointment, for Braxton could not burn the log-heaps he had ready and make potash, on the money for which he counted to buy provisions to put us over until harvest. To make matters worse, provisions got to be very scarce and dear, so that flour and oatmeal sold at $5 the quintal, and sometimes was not to be had. One day, when quite out, I went down to Rutherford’s, who kept a bit of a store, and he had neither meal nor flour, but went into the kitchen and brought out a bowlful of the meal they had for themselves. I went over the potatoes we had cut for seed, and sliced off enough around the eyes to make a dinner for us. In June, provisions became more plentiful, for the boats had begun to bring supplies from Upper Canada to Montreal. It was the middle of that month before Braxton had a barrel of potash ready, and the money it brought did not pay what we were due the storekeepers. We were kept very bare that summer, but had a prospect before us in the three acres of crops which we had got in and which were doing finely. I can never forget that summer from the fright I had about Ailie. She was as sweet a wee dot as there was in the world, so loving and confiding that she made friends with everybody at sight. I was never tired of watching her pretty ways and listening to her merry prattle. We were busy one afternoon leaching ashes, when suddenly my oldest boy asked, “Where’s Ailie?” I started, and remembered that it was over an hour since I had seen her. “She’ll have gone back to the house to take a sleep,” I said, and I told one of her sisters to go and see. We went on again, carrying water, when, after a while, the lassie came back with the word that she could find Ailie nowhere. We threw down our tubs and dishes, and I shouted her name as loud as I could, thinking she was nearby in the woods. No answer came. “She’ll have fallen asleep under some bush, and doesna hear us,” I said, and, with my children, we went here and there searching for her, calling her name, and all without finding Ailie. Braxton was an immovable man, who seldom spoke or gave sign of what he was thinking about, but when we were together again and all had the same report, his mouth quivered. Turning down the wooden scoop with which he had been shovelling ashes, he said, “We’ll dae nae mae wark till we find the bairn.” This time we went more systematically about our search, but again it was without avail. It was a hot afternoon, and the sunshine was so bright it lighted up the darkest nooks of the forest, but in none we explored was Ailie. When we met one another in our search and learned not a trace had been found, a pang of agony went through our hearts. Braxton followed the creek and looked well along the bank of the Chateaugay. It was not until it had become too dark to see that our shouts and cries of “Ailie” ceased to sound through the bush. When we had returned to the house, I stirred up the fire and made supper.