Canada, in those days a newly discovered Eldorado, to which all those
turned who were willing to work and to hustle while tempting fickle
fortune.

On the evening preceding the day Mrs. McDonald and Donald were to
depart, after we had finished our suppers, we presented her with a purse
of fifty dollars, that we had made up among ourselves, as a token of the
high esteem in which we held the unfortunate woman, and too, to assist
and cheer her on the journey into an unknown land. Then we filed back to
our bunk house, and while we sat about its single room, the gloom that
seemed to hold us, spoiled all desire to open a conversation, as the
widow's departure meant the loss of one who had been almost a mother to
us rough and homeless laborers. Just as we made ready to retire someone
knocked on the bunk house door, and thinking that perhaps some wandering
tramp had the nerve to bother us at this late hour in the night, we
roughly ordered the intruder to be gone. Instead of going, the knocks
continued, and angry at the persistence of the person, we pulled the
door open, and to our complete surprise found that it was Mrs. McDonald
who had knocked for admission. Realizing the great honor she was
conferring upon us, we politely bade her to enter and asked her to be
seated. She was attired in the dress in which she intended to make the
journey on the following day, and its sombre black of deepest mourning,
aided by the yellow light of our lamp, transformed the pallor of her
haggard face into an almost ghastly white. We patiently waited for her
to open the conversation, of course expecting that she had come to thank
us once more for having presented her with the purse. It was some time
before she could find her voice and then in the saddest tone that weaver
heard, she begged of us strong men, as the last favor she would ever ask
of us, to make for her two more white crosses, the same as stood above
the other graves, and to deliver them to her in the early morning, and