The career of the dead man may be told in a few words. He had been the son of a small farmer in the south of Scotland, a strapping, lively fellow, who won the good graces of the daughter of a draper in the neighboring village. Her parents opposed her keeping company with him, not merely because his circumstances were indifferent but because his habits were not of the steadiest, he being fond of convivial gatherings, at which, more than once, he had got overcome by drink. Their opposition seemed only to strengthen their daughter’s affection for the free-hearted, good tempered young fellow, and the upshot was, that one morning she was not to be found, and before evening they learned she had been married. The imprudent match resulted as the parents had anticipated; the young man was unequal to the task of supporting a wife and his habits did not mend. Moving to a mining village, he got work as a laborer, and out of his scanty earnings a large percentage went into the till of the whisky shop every Saturday night, so that his wife, to eke out a living, had to exert herself to do something also. Quietly and uncomplainingly she took in sewing, washed, or spun, as opportunity offered, to earn an honest shilling, and did what lay in her power to keep things decent. Children came but none lived to maturity save Jeanie. The village was unhealthy, its fumes and murky smoke were not favorable to childhood, typhus was a regular winter visitor, and, more than all, the narrow means at her disposal afforded not the necessaries of life in the abundance children need, so, to her heart-sorrow, one after another was taken away. Time passed, and her father died, leaving her a small legacy, and with this she determined they should emigrate. She fondly thought were her husband removed from his boon companions, were all his old associations broken, and he transplanted into a new sphere, he might reform. Often had she striven with him, often had hope kindled in her bosom that he was going to keep the good resolutions he so often formed; always doomed to bitter disappointment. To emigrate was the last chance, it seemed to her, and for Canada they accordingly sailed. Deplorable to relate, on the day of their arrival at Quebec her husband got drunk with several of his fellow-passengers who went to take, as they termed it, a parting glass, and before he got over his spree the greater part of their little stock of money was gone. Instead, therefore, of being in a position to go to Upper Canada and take up land, as intended, he had to engage at Quebec with a lumberman who was getting out masts and square timber on the Chateaugay, and thus it came that, two years before the opening of our narrative, he had made a home, a poor one as we have seen, in what is now the township of Elgin. Altho their privations were great, Mrs Morison did not regret the change from the dirty, squalid, mining village in Scotland to the lonely woods of Canada.