I can never forget that summer from the fright I had about Ailie. She was as sweet a wee dot as there was in the world, so loving and confiding that she made friends with everybody at sight. I was never tired of watching her pretty ways and listening to her merry prattle. We were busy one afternoon leaching ashes, when suddenly my oldest boy asked, “Where’s Ailie?” I started, and remembered that it was over an hour since I had seen her. “She’ll have gone back to the house to take a sleep,” I said, and I told one of her sisters to go and see. We went on again, carrying water, when, after a while, the lassie came back with the word that she could find Ailie nowhere. We threw down our tubs and dishes, and I shouted her name as loud as I could, thinking she was nearby in the woods. No answer came. “She’ll have fallen asleep under some bush, and doesna hear us,” I said, and, with my children, we went here and there searching for her, calling her name, and all without finding Ailie. Braxton was an immovable man, who seldom spoke or gave sign of what he was thinking about, but when we were together again and all had the same report, his mouth quivered. Turning down the wooden scoop with which he had been shovelling ashes, he said, “We’ll dae nae mae wark till we find the bairn.” This time we went more systematically about our search, but again it was without avail. It was a hot afternoon, and the sunshine was so bright it lighted up the darkest nooks of the forest, but in none we explored was Ailie. When we met one another in our search and learned not a trace had been found, a pang of agony went through our hearts. Braxton followed the creek and looked well along the bank of the Chateaugay. It was not until it had become too dark to see that our shouts and cries of “Ailie” ceased to sound through the bush. When we had returned to the house, I stirred up the fire and made supper. When we sat down, not one of us could eat. Braxton bit a piece of bread, but could not swallow it, and with a groan he left the table. We talked over what should be done next, and agreed to warn our neighbors to come and help at daylight, which Braxton and the boys went to do. None of us liked to speak of what may have befallen the child, though we all had our fears, that she had strayed down to the Chateaugay and been drowned or gone into the woods and a wild beast had devoured her. Although they had not troubled us, we knew there were bears and wolves in the swamps to the north of us and there had been even talk of a catamount having been seen. While there was hope I was not going to lose heart, and when I besought the Lord to restore my last born to my arms I thanked Him that the night was so dry and warm that she could come by no ill from the weather. I did not sleep a wink that night, sitting at the door and straining my hearing in the hope that I might catch the cry of my Ailie. Beside the croaking of the frogs and the bit chirrup of some mother-bird that wakened in its nest and tucked her young closer under her wings, I heard nothing. When the stars were beginning to fade I set about getting breakfast ready and wakened the children. I had no need to call Braxton. Poor man, though he said not a word, I knew he had not closed an eye. I insisted on their making a hearty breakfast so as to be strong for the work before them, and in the pockets of each I put a slice of bread and a bit of maple sugar for Ailie, should they find her, for I knew she would be perishing from hunger. Soon after sunrise the neighbors began to drop in until there was a party of over twenty. All had their dogs and some of them had brought axes and guns. It was arranged we should start out in every direction, yet keeping so near as to be always within hearing. By spreading out this way in a circle we would be sure to examine every part of the bush, while two men were to search the river bank in a canoe. We started, some calling aloud, others blowing horns or ringing ox-bells until the woods echoed again, and all without avail, for no Ailie was to be found. What could have become of the bairn? It was as if the earth had opened and swallowed her up. After beating the bush for miles around we gathered together at noon, as had been arranged. Not a trace had been found. We talked it over and over and were at our wits’ end. One lad, new come out and with his head full about Indians, suggested that one of them might have stolen her, and, indeed, it looked feasible, did we not know that the few Indians we had were civil and harmless. Had a wild beast taken her, we would have found some fragments of her bit dress. I was dumb with disappointment and sorrow, and had begun to think I would never see her alive. It was agreed among the men it would be useless to spread out farther, that we were now deeper in the woods than it was possible for her to have wandered, and that we should use the afternoon in going back over the ground we had passed, making a better examination of it. We went back slowly, stopping to look at every log and going through every hollow, and, though there was once a shout that her trail had been struck, it proved a mistake, and our second scouring of the woods was as fruitless as the first. The sun was fast westering when we drew nigh our shanty. About four acres back of it there was a waterhole, a low wet spot which all of us had gone round, nobody deeming it possible for the child to have put foot upon it. As I looked at the black oozy muck, half floating in water, the thought struck me, the toddler could walk where a grown up person would sink, and without saying a word to the lad who was with me, I drew off my shoes and stockings, and, kilting my petticoat, stepped in. How I wrestled through I do not know, but once in I had to scramble as I best could until I reached a dry spot in the centre that was like an island, and on which there was a thicket of bushes. Daubed with muck and wringing wet, I paused when I got my footing. I heard a rustle. I was panting for breath, so exhausted that I was about to sit down for a little, but that sound revived hope in me. I peered through the bushes and saw a deer gazing at me. The creature stared, without moving, which was strange for so timid an animal. I slipped through an opening in the bushes and there, on a grassy plot, lay my Ailie asleep, crusted with muck, and with her arms clasped round the neck of a baby deer; her wee bit face black with dirt and streaked where the tears had been running down. I snatched her to my bosom and sinking down I hugged and cried over her like one demented. Oh, had you heard her joyful cry of “Mammie, mammie!” and seen her lift her bit pinched mou to mine, you would have cried with us. The deer did not stir but stood looking on, startled and wondering, while the fawn lay quietly beside me. This was a mystery, which I soon solved, for I found the fawn could not move from having a broken leg, and the faithful mother deer would not leave her young one. The shout that Ailie had been found soon brought plenty of help, and the first man that came made to kill the deer, but I prevented him and could not, ever after, bear him near me. There are savages among us who cannot see any of God’s creatures, however harmless, in a state of nature, without trying to take their lives. Sportsmen, indeed! Useless louts, who would do the country a service were they to use their powder and shot in killing one another. The fallen tree, by which the deer got across the swale to its well-hidden nest, was found, and I returned by it, carrying Ailie, while Braxton took the fawn in his arms, the deer following. There was much rejoicing at our humble shanty before our neighbors left, and many attempts to account for Ailie’s wandering to where she did. She was weak from want of food and I feared she might be the worse of her exposure, but next day, beyond that she was pale, she was well as ever. From what we could gather from her, we made out tolerably plain how her disappearance had come about. While playing near the house, she saw the deer come out of the woods, jump the fence of our clearance, and begin to browse on the oats. Ailie seeing the fawn ran to catch the bonnie creature, when the mother took the alarm, and bounded back into the woods. In attempting to follow, the fawn struck one of its hind feet against the top rail of the fence, and broke the bone. Ailie caught the wee beastie, and held it in her arms, when the doe returned, bunted her away, and managed to induce its young one to hirple after it on three legs to its lair in the wee swamp. Ailie, wanting to get the fawn, followed, which she could do, for they must have gone slowly. When tired of fondling the creature, she would have returned home, but could not find the way out, and cried and slept, and slept and cried, croodling down beside the wounded fawn, as it nestled under its mother, which, from its concern for its injured offspring, never tried to drive Ailie away. Well, Braxton set the broken bone and the leg got strong again, but before it did the fawn had become so attached to Ailie that it would not leave her, and the mother, which had watched over her offspring in the most touching way, had become so accustomed to us and so tame that it did not offer to leave, running in the woods where it had a mind, and making its home in a shed my boys put up for her. She was torn to death, two years after, by a hound that a Yankee neer-do-weel brought in, but the fawn lived with us until she died of a natural death.
We had a fair harvest that fall, and, when it was got in, we had the satisfaction of knowing that we would have enough to eat until another was ready. There being no oatmeal-mill then in the country, Braxton traded half of the oats for wheat with a neighbor who wanted them for a lumber-camp. There was a grist mill convenient at the Portage, which was burned the following summer, after which we had to send all the way to Huntingdon, where there was a poor sort of a mill. Having no horse, the bag was carried by Braxton on his shoulder. The want of a yoke of oxen was so much against our getting on, that we determined to run some risk in getting one, and saved in every way possible with that in view. The week before New Year we hired a horse and traineau from a neighbor, paying him in work, and Braxton went to Montreal with two barrels of potash. On his way down he had the offer at the Basin of a heifer that was coming in, and instead of buying the cloth intended, he saved the money, and took her on his way home. She was a real beauty, and, out of all the cows we had after, there was not one to me like her, she was so kindly and proved such a grand milker. We were all so proud of her that, for a week after she came, we never tired looking at her, and the children were comforted for the want of the clothing they needed by having her for a pet. You may not think it, but the sorest want of our settlement was clothes. When those brought from the Old Country were done, there was no money to spare to buy others, and families who had plenty to eat were nigh half-naked, you may say, and on very cold days could not venture out. I did the best I could, patching and darning, yet we all suffered much from cold that winter on account of want of sufficient clothing. Braxton, poor man, had only a thickness of cloth between him and the weather, yet he never complained and went to his work in the bush on the coldest days. The exposure, together with hard work, told on him afterwards and shortened his life. When the lumber-camps were breaking up, we had a chance of a yoke of oxen within our ability to pay for, and they were brought home to the barn that had been raised before the snow came. We had not straw enough for three head, but managed to keep them alive by cutting down trees for them to eat the tender ends of the branches. Many a pailful of browse I snapped off for my bossie that spring. It was well for us the grass came early.
I do not know that I have much more to tell that would interest you. The oxen gave us a great start in clearing the land, and that season we did more than all we had done before. We paid the seignior regularly, and once we were a little ahead, it was wonderful how well we got on. Then you must bear in mind, that, as my boys grew up, we were strong in help, and our place improved quickly compared with the generality of those beside us. That fall we got another cow and two sheep, so that we never afterwards wanted for milk or yarn. It was a hard struggle, with many ups and downs, much slavish work and pinching and paring, but in course of time we had all we could reasonably wish and were content.
I was long concerned about the schooling of my children, of whom only two had got any before leaving Scotland. We could not help ourselves until the fourth year of our coming, when a man, lame of a leg, came round and told us he was a schoolmaster. The neighbors consulted and one of them gave a log stable he was not using, which was fitted up as a schoolhouse, and the man set to work. He could teach his scholars little, and tried to cover up his deficiencies by threshing them unmercifully. He was got rid of and another hired, who was more qualified but was given to drink. They were a miserable lot of teachers in those days, being either lazy or drunken fellows who took to keeping school without considering whether they were qualified. In course of time we had a church at Ormstown, Mr Colquhoun, a proud Highlander, being the first minister. When we came, there was only one (old Jones) living where Ormstown stands, now it is a large village, with buildings the like of which nobody could have expected to see. There has been a wonderful improvement all over, and, when I first saw it, to have foretold the country would become what it now is, nobody would have believed. That the people have improved correspondingly I do not think. The money, scraped together by the hard work of their fathers, I have seen squandered by lads who despised the plow, and the upsetting ways of many families are pitiful to see. Folk in the old times lived far more simply and happily.
You want to know what became of Braxton. He died 14 years after we came here. It was in the winter and I thought he had caught cold while skidding logs in the bush. Any way, inflammation set in, and he died within a week of his first complaining. We mourned sorely for him. A more patient or truer soul never breathed, and to the example he set my boys, who have all done well, I set down much of the credit. We counted up his share of the property, and, adding £20 to it, sent it to his sister in England, who was his only relative. I may say all my old acquaintances are gone, for there are few now on the river who were there when I came, and I wait patiently to follow them, living happily, as you see, with Ailie and her children until the Lord is pleased to call me.