“How many hopes have sprung in radiance hence;
Their trace yet lights the dust where thou art sleeping.
A solemn joy comes o’er me, and a sense
Of triumph blent with nature’s gush of weeping.”
I left my little son in the care of his Irish nurse, and quitted my friend’s house, with a heavy heart, for my new settlement at Otonabee.
CHAPTER IX.
RETURN TO OTONABEE.—BENEVOLENCE OF MY NEIGHBOUR.—SERIOUS ACCIDENT TO A SETTLER.—HIS SINGULAR MISFORTUNES.—PARTICULARS OF HIS LIFE.
I returned in sadness to my lonely and desolate home, feeling like a shipwrecked mariner, cast upon a desert shore. In fact, I had to begin life again, without the stimulus of domestic love to quicken my exertions. I had left my land unsown, and therefore the prospect of a crop of wheat for the next year’s harvest was, I felt assured, entirely gone. Upon reaching my clearing, I was surprised to find my fallow not only sown but showing the green blade, for some friendly hands had been at work for me in my absence, that pecuniary losses might not be added to my heavy domestic bereavement.
On inquiry, I found I was indebted to the considerate kindness of my excellent neighbour Mr. Reid and his sons, for this act of Christian benevolence. I hurried to his house to thank him for the important service he had rendered one, to whom he was almost a stranger. He considered, however, that he had done nothing more than a neighbourly duty, and insisted that I should take up my abode with him, instead of returning to my unfinished and melancholy home.
My residence under his hospitable roof increased my esteem for his character, which my long experience of six-and-twenty years has never diminished. Mrs. Reid treated me with maternal kindness; and in their amiable family-circle my bruised heart recovered its peace, and my spirits their healthy tone. The kindly disposition of my host in all his domestic relations, his cheerful activity, pure morality, and unaffected piety, presented an admirable example to a young man left without guidance in a distant colony. But I did not at that time think about becoming his son-in-law, though I had been several months domesticated in his family, till the alacrity displayed by his eldest daughter in hastening to the assistance of a wounded neighbour, through the unknown intricacies of a Canadian forest, led me to consider her character in a new and endearing point of view.
A Mr. G. and his family had just commenced a settlement, about four miles east of Mr. Reid’s clearing, when, early one morning, his eldest son, a lad of twelve or thirteen, with a face full of trouble ran to tell us “that his father had nearly cut his foot off with an axe while chopping logs to build his house, that his mother could not stop the bleeding, and that they were afraid he would bleed to death.”
Mr. Reid’s eldest daughter immediately volunteered to return with the boy, to render what assistance she could. Without any thought of fatigue, or danger, or trial to her feelings, she set out instantly with the proper bandages. Mr. Reid, his sons, and myself were all chopping in the woods when the lad came, so that Mary followed the spontaneous impulse of her own heart; but as soon as we heard what had happened, her father sent over the river for our nearest neighbour, a stout canny Scotchman, to assist us in carrying the wounded man through the woods to his (Mr. Reid’s) house.
John Morison readily obeyed the summons; and had we required any additional help we should have had no difficulty, in a case like this, of finding plenty of volunteers. The only road leading to Mr. G.’s was from the town, a mere bush-road, and full three miles farther than if we could go straight back through the woods.