August 15--While chinking the stable, Gordon helping, I heard a crash and a cry from where Allan was chopping. We ran to the spot, and my heart jumped into my mouth, when I saw him lying as if he were dead under a big branch. I was for dragging him out, when Gordon showed me the movement would bring down the butt of the branch on his body. He ran for help. Ailie came first and then Brodie, and while the three of us held up the limb of the tree, Ailie pulled him out. She was calmer than any of us. Carrying him to the house, we had the satisfaction of finding there was no bone broken. A blue mark above the right eye showed where he had been struck. As he was breathing easily we had hopes he would come to, but it was long before he did, and it was the most anxious hour Ailie and I had ever known. When he opened his eyes, and looking wonderingly round asked, 'What is a' the steer aboot?' we never before thanked God with such fervor. Gordon had run for Mrs Simmins, and while we were keeping wet cloths on Allan's head, she hurried in. Looking at the mark, which was now swollen, and feeling all round it, Mrs Simmins declared there was no fracture of the skull and that the blow had only stunned him. 'Well for him that he is a thick-headed Scotchman or he would have been killed,' she remarked. Taking a fleam from her pocket, she lanced the lump and let it bleed freely. 'If bruised blood is left to get into the system, there will be a fever, in which many a man has died.' Allan fell asleep and when he woke it was to ask for a drink. Aug. 16--Allan woke this morning all right, except feeling giddy. He will never again have as narrow an escape with his life. The tree he was felling, a big maple, in falling toppled over a dead tree beside it, which was so rotten that it fell in a shower of pieces. Aug. 18.--Went to see the swamp and glad to find it was drier. The water has got vent and is seeping into the creek. Could walk on parts that would not carry before. Looked it over to plan how to drain it. Gordon, who was with me, said, Cut a ditch up the centre. I showed him that would not do when the swamp came to be plowed. The right way was to cut a ditch across the head and have it empty into another along the south side to the creek. Looked at me in wonder as he asked if I ever expected to plow it. Said I would grow grain on it before other three years. On returning he and I did a bit of underbrushing, piling as much of the brush as we could round the felled timber to help to burn it. Aug. 19--Kept underbrushing all day. Aug. 20--So hot gave the ax a rest. In the afternoon a thunderstorm. The downpour tested the roof of the stable, which leaked in only one place, where a scoop had split.