From the speechless, tearless trance of grief into which Mrs. Dalton was thrown by the shock of her awful loss, she was roused only by the recollection of the still critical condition of her child and the necessity that she should administer to its wants. Its recovery from illness a few days after, enabled the desolate widow to cast about her in grief and doubt, and decide what course she should pursue. As her own marriage portion as well as the entire fortune of her late husband was embarked in the purchase of the forest tract, she concluded to continue her journey twenty miles farther to the point of her original destination, and there establish herself in the new house which had been provided for her in the almost unbroken wilderness. A thaw which a few days after removed a large body of the snow, enabled her with her companions, the McMurrays, to reach her destination, a large and commodious cabin built of cedar-logs in a spacious clearing by the former owner of the tract. Her first impressions of her new home were scarcely more prepossessing than those experienced upon reaching the dreary cabin on the banks of the Black river. A small lake hard by was hemmed in by a somber belt of pine-woods. The clearing was dotted by charred and blackened stumps, and covered with piles of brushwood. The snowy shroud in which lifeless nature was wrapped and the utter stillness and solitude of the scene, completed the funereal picture which Mrs. D. viewed with eyes darkened by grief and disappointment. The cares and labors of pioneer-life are the best antidotes to the corrosion of sorrow and regret, and Mrs. Dalton soon found such a relief in the myriad toils and distractions which filled those wintry days. A thousand duties were to be discharged: a thousand wants to be provided for: night brought weariness and blessed oblivion: morning again supplied its daily tasks and labor grew to be happiness. Midwinter was upon them with its bitter cold and drifting snows; but with abundant stores of food and fuel, Mrs. D. was thanking God nightly for his many mercies, little dreaming that a new calamity impended over her household. One bitter day in January the two women were left alone in the cabin, McMurray having gone a mile away to fell trees for sawing into boards. Mrs. McM. had stuffed both the stoves full of light wood; the wind blowing steadily from the northwest, produced a powerful draught, and in a few moments the roaring and crackling of the fire and the suffocating smell of burning soot attracted Mrs. Dalton's attention. To her dismay, both the stoves were red hot from the front plates to the topmost pipes which passed through the plank-ceiling and projected three feet above the roof. Through these pipes the flames were roaring as if through the chimney of a blast furnace.