Mrs. Willoughby assured her husband, as she stood leaning on his arm,
the morning after her arrival, that never before had she gazed on so
eloquent, and yet so pleasing a picture of solitude as that which lay
spread before her eyes.

"There is something encouraging and soothing in this bland south wind,
too," she added, "which seems to promise that we shall meet with a
beneficent nature, in the spot to which we are going. The south airs of
spring, to me are always filled with promise."

"And justly, love; for they are the harbingers of a renewed vegetation.
If the wind increase, as I think it may, we shall see this chilling
sheet of ice succeeded by the more cheerful view of water. It is in
this way, that all these lakes open their bosoms in April."

Captain Willoughby did not know it, while speaking, but, at that
moment, quite two miles of the lower, or southern end of the lake, was
clear, and the opening giving a sweep to the breeze, the latter was
already driving the sheets of ice before it, towards the head, at a
rate of quite a mile in the hour. Just then, an Irishman, named Michael
O'Hearn, who had recently arrived in America, and whom the captain had
hired as a servant of all work, came rushing up to his master, and
opened his teeming thoughts, with an earnestness of manner, and a
confusion of rhetoric, that were equally characteristic of the man and
of a portion of his nation.

"Is it journeying south, or to the other end of this bit of wather, or
ice, that yer honour is thinking of?" he cried "Well, and there'll be
room for us all, and to spare; for divil a bir-r-d will be left in that
quarter by night, or forenent twelve o'clock either, calculating by the