at retail. This fact we ascertained incidentally, as we learned the
nationality of our comrades by their brogue, and their religion by
their lively ejaculations during the night. We stowed ourselves into
the rigid box, bade a sorrowing good-night to the landlady and her
daughters, who stood at the inn door, and went jingling down the
street towards the open country.

The moon rises at eight o'clock in Nova Scotia. It came above the
horizon exactly as we began our journey, a harvest-moon, round and
red. When I first saw it, it lay on the edge of the horizon as if
too heavy to lift itself, as big as a cart-wheel, and its disk cut by
a fence-rail. With what a flood of splendor it deluged farmhouses
and farms, and the broad sweep of level country! There could not be
a more magnificent night in which to ride towards that geographical
mystery of our boyhood, the Gut of Canso.

A few miles out of town the stage stopped in the road before a
post-station. An old woman opened the door of the farmhouse to receive
the bag which the driver carried to her. A couple of sprightly little
girls rushed out to "interview" the passengers, climbing up to ask
their names and, with much giggling, to get a peep at their faces. And
upon the handsomeness or ugliness of the faces they saw in the
moonlight they pronounced with perfect candor. We are not obliged to
say what their verdict was. Girls here, no doubt, as elsewhere, lose
this trustful candor as they grow older.

Just as we were starting, the old woman screamed out from the door,
in a shrill voice, addressing the driver, "Did you see ary a sick man
'bout 'Tigonish?"