In August the long suspense was ended. The Government had decided. The settlers were free. Mr. Allan's report was adopted, and made the basis of Executive action. An Order-in-Council was passed that McNab should immediately give up to the Government all undelivered patents he had drawn up for any of the settlers, and his patent for the timber--that the settlers were to receive their lands at the valuation put on them by Mr. Allan, which they were to pay to the Crown Lands Department in four annual instalments--that all labor they had performed for McNab, and all rents they had paid to him were to be deducted from these payments, and all these to be withheld from the money payable to the Chief, as fixed by the Order-in-Council of September, 1839. Thus McNab's L4,000 was reduced to L2,500, of which he had already received L1,000. Many of the settlers had paid by these means for their lands in full. McNab's receipts for rent were accepted as payment. They now flocked in with their first instalments. Mr. Duncan McLachlin and Mr. Donald Mohr McNaughton were the first two who commenced the joyful expenditure. They were no longer feudal serfs. The lands were their own in perpetuity. No landlord could now lord it over them with arbitrary haughtiness. No Highland Chieftain, his heirs, or successors, could claim their allegiance, or call them "my tenants." They felt they were free--that in four years no one could put a trespasser's foot on their soil. An universal jubilee pervaded the whole township. The leaders of the movement, Mr. Allan Stewart, Donald McIntyre, Mr. McNab, and others, were feted to their heart's content. Fresh energies were infused into their labors. The clearances began to increase, and new inroads were made in the forest. Fresh settlers came; New Glasgow and Lochwinnoch were occupied, and all the arable lands taken up. The people had, single-handed and unaided, achieved the victory.--Looked down upon by the neighboring townships as rebels, as ungrateful malcontents and as a discontented rabble, from them they received neither advice nor assistance. All the magnates of Perth beheld them with a holy horror, and did all that lay within the scope of their feeble efforts to oppose them--all but Mr. Hincks and Mr. Malcolm Cameron.--They stood true, but the battle was fought and the victory achieved before these gentlemen came into the field. The spirit of their ancestors--that same British pluck that obtained the Magna Charta, swept away the throne of the Charles's, obtained the Bill of Rights, enthroned William III. and established popular and constitutional government in the old country--animated the settlers in McNab to struggle even against hope, to battle for their rights--and amid poverty, persecution, and imprisonment, win one of the greatest moral victories ever recorded in the historic annals of Canada, or of any other country. They were essentially alone in all these struggles--their triumph was the more