loves to weave about the heads of departed pioneers, who, for the most
part, lived out their lives in plain, grim style, without any thought
of posing as "conquering heroes" in the eyes of succeeding generations.

From the portico of one of these dwellings, under a wind-swayed sign
which advertised it to be a place of rest and refreshment, stepped a
man of more than middle age, whose nervous gait and anxious face
betokened a mind ill at ease. He had the look and air of a highly
respectable old servitor,--one who had followed the family to whom he
was bound by ties of life-long service to a country of which he
strongly disapproved, not because it offered a poor field for his own
advancement, but because, to his mind, its crude society and narrow
opportunities ill became the distinction of the Old World family to
whose fortunes he was devoted. Time had softened these prejudices, but
had failed to melt them; and if they had a pardonable fashion of
congealing under the stress of the Canadian winter, they generally
showed signs of a thaw at the approach of spring. At the present
moment he had no thought, no eyes, for anything save a mist-enshrouded
speck far off across the waters of Lake Ontario. All the impatience
and longing of the week just past found vent through his eyes, as he
watched that pale, uncertain, scarcely visible mote on the horizon. As
he reached the shore the fog lifted a little, and a great sunbeam,
leaping from a cloud, illumined for a moment the smooth expanse of
water; but the new day was as yet chary of its gifts. It was very
still. The woods and waves alike were tranced in absolute calm. The
unlighted heavens brooded upon the silent limpid waters and the
breathless woods, while between them, with restless step, and heart as
gloomy as the morning, with secret, sore misgiving, paced the old
servant, his attention still riveted upon that distant speck. The
sight of land and home to the gaze of a long absent wanderer, wearied