and get some refreshment, at a shanty kept by an old Highland woman, well
known as "_Nancy Stuart of the Mountain._" Here two or three of us got
off, and a comfortable meal was soon provided, consisting of tea, milk,
oat-cake, butter, and cranberry and raspberry jam. This meal we shared
with some handsome, gloomy-looking, bonneted Highlanders, and some large
ugly dogs. The room was picturesque enough, with blackened rafters, deer
and cow horns hung round it, and a cheerful log fire. After tea I spoke to
Nancy in her native tongue, which so delighted her, that I could not
induce her to accept anything for my meal. On finding that I knew her
birthplace in the Highlands, she became quite talkative, and on wishing
her good bye with the words "_Oiche mhaith dhuibh; Beannachd luibh!"
[Footnote: Good night; blessings be with you.] she gave my hand a true
Highland grasp with both of hers; a grasp bringing back visions of home
and friends, and "the bonnie North countrie."

A wild drive we had from this place to Pictou. The road lay through
forests which might have been sown at the beginning of time. Huge hemlocks
threw high their giant arms, and from between their dark stems gleamed the
bark of the silver birch. Elm, beech, and maple flourished; I missed alone
the oak of England.

The solemn silence of these pathless roads was broken only by the note of
the distant bull-frog; meteors fell in streams of fire, the crescent moon
occasionally gleamed behind clouds from which the lightning flashed almost
continually, and the absence of any familiar faces made me realize at
length that I was a stranger in a strange land.

After the subject of the colony had been exhausted, I amused the coachman
with anecdotes of the supernatural--stories of ghosts, wraiths,
apparitions, and second sight; but he professed himself a disbeliever, and