get above water; that tyrant monster, their heavy debt, still chaining
them downwards, devouring with insatiate greed their whole means, for
interest or bond, until it be discharged; a hard matter for them to
accomplish--so hard that few do it, and the ruined lumberer sinks, to the
grave with its burthen yet upon him. Stephen had kept aloof from this,
and now surveyed,

"----With pride beyond a monarch's spoil,
His honest arm's own subjugated toil."

A neighbour of his had come out from England at the same time he had
done and commenced farming an adjoining lot, but he soon wearied of the
slow returns of his land and commenced lumbering. For a time he went on
dashingly, the merchants in town supplying him freely with provisions
and everything necessary to carry on his timber-making--whilst Stephen
worked hard and lived poor, he enjoyed long intervals of ease and fared
luxuriantly. But a change came: one spring the water was too low to get
his timber down, the next the freshet burst at once and swept away the
labour of two seasons, and ere he got another raft to market, the price
had fallen so low that it was nearly valueless. He returned dispirited
to his home and tried to conceal himself from his creditors, the
merchants whom the sale of his timber was to have repaid for the
supplies they had advanced; but his neglected fields showed now but a
crop of bushes and wild laurel, or an ill-piled clearing, with a scanty
crop of buck-wheat; while Stephen Morris looked from his window on fair
broad fields from whence the stumps had all disappeared, where the long
grass waved rich with clover-flowers between, and many a tract that
promised to shine with autumn wreaths of golden grain; leaflets and
buds were close and thick on the orchard he had planted, and where erst
the wild-bush stood now bloomed the lovely rose. On a green hill before