yankees at bay," said a soldier,
gruffly, who was cutting up Canada thistles, and who had suspended his
labour for a moment, to regard the strangers.

"A fair hit, friend," said Mr. Morris; "but all our fighting is over
now, and forgotten I hope. This work you are doing here, cutting off
these thistles, is far better than cutting off heads."

"It is far aisier, sir," replied the man, with a slight curling of the
lip, which betrayed a professional contempt for Mr. Morris's preference
of the plough-share over the sword; then turning towards the gate he
called to a little boy who was just entering it--"Come, come Dick, what
do you gaze at, boy? bring me the basket."

The boy, without heeding the command, dropped the basket; and uttering
a cry between joy and surprise, scampered off in the direction of a
cottage, or rather hovel, which stood just without the palisade.

"That is Richard Barton!--that is certainly Richard Barton!" exclaimed
the children in one breath.

"Surely is it Richard Barton," said the soldier.

"Is his mother, here? Has he found his father?" asked Edward impatiently;
while all the party drew nearer the soldier, anxious to learn the fate of
their humble friend.

"Ay, his mother is in by there, poor cratur; but his father has been
gone since the summer after the war, when the 40th was sent from
Canada--where, God knows--there's none but he that made them can keep
track of a British regiment: one year they are here with the setting
sun, and then off to where he rises--shifting and changing like the
waves of the sea, beating from one world to another; and I should know
it by rason that I myself was fighting, and baiting gentaly under
Wellington on the sunny side of the Pyrennees in one month, and the
next comes an order and whips us off for Canada in the twinkling of an
eye, among the indians and the yankees, who know nothing about fighting,"
he concluded, glancing his eye at Mr. Morris, "according to the civil
rules of war."

"Poor, Mrs. Barton!" said Mrs. Sackville. "I am grieved at her
disappointment, though I expected it."

"Oh, do let us go in and see her," said Julia.

"We will wait a moment, my dear," replied her mother; "her little boy
must have told her that we were here, and I think she will come out to
us."

"She'll not be right free to come before you," said the soldier, "if, as
I now partly suspect, you are the gentlemen and ladies that were so
hospitable like to her." The man no