The Canadian summer has set in, coming upon the land, not gradually and imperceptibly as in many other climates, where a mild and genial spring-time intervenes between the seasons of extreme cold and heat, but suddenly, and, as it were, almost at a bound. But two or three short weeks ago the face of the country was still all white with the snows of many a long month, and the great St. Lawrence was bridged over from shore to shore with one broad expanse of solid ice of almost incredible thickness. Anon the vast mass broke up, with explosions loud as the roar of artillery, into countless rugged fields and hummocks, which, after floating up and down awhile on the bosom of the mighty tide, drifted away at last out seaward, to return no more. It is a trite trick of the mimic stage to make old Father Winter suddenly cast aside his hoary garments and stand forth at once in bright array bedecked with fruits and flowers; here in very deed, and on the grandest scale, Nature seems with one touch to sweep away the wintry snow, and with another to clothe the landscape with profuse and luxuriant vegetation. How strange to see the humming-bird dart like a streak of golden light among the fragrant shrubs; stranger still to see the butterfly, attracted by the lines of some stray wild flower, flutter away again, repelled by the chilling neighbourhood of the last remnant of a snow-drift lying in a sheltered corner, where no sunbeam ever finds its way. It is a pleasant evening, and on a little wooded knoll, on the summit of a cliff that overhangs the St. Lawrence two or three miles above Quebec, there is a little group of persons, all of whom we have seen before. One of them is Boulanger, and in the man now seated beside him, notwithstanding his mean attire and his careworn look, the honest woodman had been at no loss to recognise his visitor of the previous autumn, Isidore de Beaujardin. The latter had been welcomed with a warmth and sincerity that touched him deeply, and although he had not originally thought of saying anything about his troubles to persons in so humble a condition, some mistaken suppositions on their part as to the cause of his reappearing amongst them in so unexpected a plight had led him to tell them that he had been obliged to fly from France. Even his own family had taken part against him he said, adding that he had not a friend in the world to whom he could turn for help or comfort. As he spoke this in the bitterness of his heart, poor Bibi, who stood by, was melted to tears, and the sturdy woodsman looked half disposed to follow her example; whilst Amoahmeh, who sat a little way apart, yet near enough to catch every word that fell from their visitor's lips, turned away, and bent her head over the work on which she was engaged.