other, asking questions, and giving cakes and
dried fruit from their travelling stores to the children.

They were particularly struck with one buxom young girl with laughing
eyes and ruddy cheeks, who seemed to be a favorite with the whole
company, and not to belong to any one; for she went from tent to tent
kneading an oat-meal cake for one woman--dressing a lame arm for
another, and performing sundry miscellaneous offices that always fall
to the lot of those most useful people who have nothing in particular
to do. Julia offered her a piece of cake, by way of introduction, and
then asked her name:--"My name is Biddy Burns, an' please you, miss."

"And who did you come with, Biddy?"

"I left home with my cousin; but it pleased the Lord to take her to
himself before we came to Quebec, and she has left such a pretty
complement of children to her husband to take care of, that I must
e'en shift for myself."

"Do you like our country, Biddy?" asked Edward.

"Och, my master, I could not miss liking it, ye are all so free and
hospitable."

"But Biddy," said Julia, "how could you leave your father and mother,
and all your friends?"

"Sure it is, miss, if it thrives well with me they will all come after."

"Sure enough," said Mrs. Sackville, "these poor Irish do all come
_after_, sooner or later. Are you a catholic, Biddy?"

"I come from the north of Ireland, my leddy."

"You are a protestant, then?"

"Yes, my leddy; thank God and my mother, that taught me the rasonable
truth."

"Can you read, my good girl?"

"Indeed can I, my leddy. Thanks to the Sunday school, I could read in
the bible if I had one, without a blunder."

"Well, Biddy," said Mrs. Sackville, who thought it a good opportunity to
give a God-speed to the girl's pilgrimage--"here is a bible in my
basket--take it, and may it be the guide of your life."

Biddy poured forth her thanks in many a God-reward-ye, and then after
hesitating for a moment, she said, "I wish my leddy would condescend to
walk up here a bit, to a poor woman who needs a kind christian word,
poor crater." Mrs. Sackville and the children followed Biddy to a tree
which stood a little above the encampment of the Irish, where a woman
was sitting on a log with a sick child in her arms, and a boy of five
or six beside her.

She was a middle-aged woman, with a face originally plain, and deeply
seamed with the small-pox; but withal, there was an expression of honesty
and goodness, and