The sun,—the bright sun of May in the western world,—was going down on the village of Briery Creek, and there was scarcely a soul left within its bounds to observe how the shadows lengthened on the prairie, except Dr. Sneyd; and Dr. Sneyd was too busy to do justice to the spectacle. It was very long since letters and newspapers had been received from England; the rains had interfered with the post; and nothing had been heard at the settlement for a month of what the minister was planning in London, and what the populace was doing in Paris. Dr. Sneyd had learned, in this time, much that was taking place among the worlds overhead; and he now began to be very impatient for tidings respecting the Old World, on which he had been compelled to turn his back, at the moment when its political circumstances began to be the most interesting to him. There had been glimpses of starlight in the intervals of the shifting spring storms, and he had betaken himself, not in vain, to his observatory; but no messenger, with precious leathern bag, had appeared on the partial cessation of the rains to open, beyond the clouds of the political hemisphere, views of the silent rise or sure progress of bright moral truths behind the veil of prejudice and passion which was for a season obscuring their lustre. Day after day had anxious eyes been fixed on the ford of the creek; night after night had the doctor risen, and looked abroad in starlight and in gloom, when the dogs were restless in the court, or a fancied horse-tread was heard in the grassy road before the house.