to hew at a house-frame which he has in preparation, and Sybèl and I
having settled our affair of warp and woof, it is now time for me to
proceed. She with her large Swiss-looking sun-hat, placed lightly on
her brow, accompanies me to the "bars," and there, having parted with
her, we will now resume our walk. The next lot presents one of those
scenes of desolation and decay which will sometimes appear even in this
land of improvement. What had once been a large clearing is now grown
wild with bushes, the stumps have all sprouted afresh, and the fences
fallen to the ground. The house presents that least-respectable of all
ruins, a deserted _log-building._ There is no solidity of material nor
remains of architectural beauty to make us respect its fate. 'Tis decay
in its plainest and most uninteresting aspect. A few flowers have been
planted near the house, and even now, where the weeds grow dark and
rank, a fair young rose is waving her lovely head. The person who had
gone thus far on in the toils of settling was from England, but the love
of his native land burned all too bright within his heart. In vain he
toiled on those rude fields, and though his own, they seemed not his
home. The spirit voices of the land of his childhood called him back--he
obeyed their spell, and just at the time his labours would have been
repaid, he left, and, with all the money he could procure, paid his
passage to England, where he soon after died in the workhouse of his
parish. Yet even there the thought, perhaps, might soothe him, that
though he filled a pauper's grave, it was in the soil where his fathers
slept. The forsaken lot is still unclaimed, for people prefer the
woodlands to those neglected clearings, from which to procure a crop
infinitely more trouble and expense would be required than in taking it
at once from the forest. Our way is not now so lonely as it was in the
morning. Parties of the male population are frequently passing. One of
the settlers has to-day a "barn-raising frolic," and thither they are
bound. They present a fair specimen of their class in the forest