"Why, you see, I was looking at some fish that was going by the ship in shoals, as they call it. It was very pretty, and I never saw anything like it, and I stood watching over the ship's side all day long. It poured rain, and I was wet through and through, and felt very cold, and I went into my berth and pulled the blanket round me, and fell asleep. After that I had the fever very bad. I didn't know when we landed at Quebec, and after that I didn't know where we were for five weeks, nor nothing." I assured him that this was only a natural and necessary consequence of his own conduct, and took the opportunity to explain to him some of those simple laws by which he held both health and existence, to all which he listened with an intelligent look, and thanked me cordially, adding,-- "Then I wonder I didn't die! and it was a great mercy I didn't." "I hope you will live to think so, and be thankful to Heaven. And so you were detained at Quebec?" "Yes; my father had some money to receive of his pension, but what with my illness and the expense of living, it soon went; and then he sold his silver watch, and that brought us on to York--that's Toronto now. And then there was a schooner provided by Government to take us on board, and we had rations provided, and that brought us on to Port Stanley, far below Port Talbot; and then they put us ashore, and we had to find our way, and pay our way, to Delaware, where our lot of land was: that cost eight dollars; and then we had nothing left--nothing at all. There were nine hundred emigrants encamped about Delaware, no better off then ourselves." "What did you do then? Had you not to build a house?" "No; the Government built each family a house, that is to say, a log-hut, eighteen feet long, with a hole for the chimney; no glass in the windows, and empty of course; not a bit of furniture, not even a table or a chair." "And how did you live?" "Why, the first year, my father and us, we cleared a couple of acres, and sowed wheat enough for next year." "But meantime you must have existed--and without food or money--?" "O, why we worked meantime on the roads, and got half a dollar a day and rations." "It must have been rather a hard life?" "_Hard!_ yes, I believe it was; why, many of them couldn't stand it, no ways. Some died; and then there were the poor children and the women--it was very bad for them. Some wouldn't sit down on their land at all; they lost all heart to see everywhere trees, and trees, and nothing besides. And then they didn't know nothing of farming--how should they? being soldiers by trade. There was one Jim Grey, of father's regiment--he didn't know how to handle his axe, but he could handle his gun well; so he went and shot deer, and sold them to the others; but one day we missed him, and he never came back; and we thought the bears had got him, or may be he cleared off to Michigan--there's no knowing." "And your father?"