My residence under his hospitable roof increased my esteem for his character, which my long experience of six-and-twenty years has never diminished. Mrs. Reid treated me with maternal kindness; and in their amiable family-circle my bruised heart recovered its peace, and my spirits their healthy tone. The kindly disposition of my host in all his domestic relations, his cheerful activity, pure morality, and unaffected piety, presented an admirable example to a young man left without guidance in a distant colony. But I did not at that time think about becoming his son-in-law, though I had been several months domesticated in his family, till the alacrity displayed by his eldest daughter in hastening to the assistance of a wounded neighbour, through the unknown intricacies of a Canadian forest, led me to consider her character in a new and endearing point of view. A Mr. G. and his family had just commenced a settlement, about four miles east of Mr. Reid’s clearing, when, early one morning, his eldest son, a lad of twelve or thirteen, with a face full of trouble ran to tell us “that his father had nearly cut his foot off with an axe while chopping logs to build his house, that his mother could not stop the bleeding, and that they were afraid he would bleed to death.” Mr. Reid’s eldest daughter immediately volunteered to return with the boy, to render what assistance she could. Without any thought of fatigue, or danger, or trial to her feelings, she set out instantly with the proper bandages. Mr. Reid, his sons, and myself were all chopping in the woods when the lad came, so that Mary followed the spontaneous impulse of her own heart; but as soon as we heard what had happened, her father sent over the river for our nearest neighbour, a stout canny Scotchman, to assist us in carrying the wounded man through the woods to his (Mr. Reid’s) house. John Morison readily obeyed the summons; and had we required any additional help we should have had no difficulty, in a case like this, of finding plenty of volunteers. The only road leading to Mr. G.’s was from the town, a mere bush-road, and full three miles farther than if we could go straight back through the woods. As the number of his lot was the same as the one[1] we resided on, we knew that a direct east course would bring us within call of his clearing. It was, therefore, agreed that Mr. Reid’s eldest son should endeavour, with a pocket compass, to run a line in the direction which we wanted to go, and that I should blaze[2] out the line with the axe, while the rest chopped out the under-brush and levelled the path sufficiently wide to allow the passage of a litter. [1] Each concession is divided into two hundred acre lots, numbering from the boundary line from number one upwards. According to the new survey, the lots run nearly east and west; therefore, number one in the first concession will have a corresponding number west across every concession in the township.