est chance of finding
him. "What good will it do the woman to get to Quebec?" he asked; "her
husband's regiment has left Canada."

"She tells me," replied Mrs. Sackville, "that she has many friends in
Quebec from whom she might expect assistance. She has worked for the
governor's lady, and she builds much on her benevolence, and thinks she
will get her a free passage to her husband in a government ship; and
besides," added Mrs. Sackville, "even if her hopes fail utterly, we
shall confer an essential benefit on our children by complying with
their wishes; for if they give this poor woman all their little store of
wealth, it will cost them the sacrifice of sundry personal gratifications
that they have reckoned much on, and thus give them a practical lesson
of self-denial and disinterestedness, better than all our precepts, and
it will associate with the more selfish and transient pleasures of their
journey, the pure and enduring sentiment of benevolence."

"Well, my dear wife," said Mr. Sackville, "do as you please--you have
arrayed before me irresistible motives."

Thus sanctioned, Mrs. Sackville returned to the cottage, whispered to
the children their father's acquiescence, and then saying aloud, "I
leave you to make all the arrangements with Mrs. Barton," she left them.

We shall not attempt to describe the poor woman's gratitude, which
overflowed in words and tears, nor the children's noisy joy when they
heard they were to go down the lake with their friends. Suffice it to
say, that in the course of two hours, and just as the steam-boat
appeared in sight, heavily plying down from Lewistown, Mrs. Barton was
on the wharf with her children, as clean and nice as soap and water and
fresh and well-patched clothes could make them, and looking so grateful
and joyful, that Mr. Morris, who, like the good vicar of Wakefield,
'loved happy human faces,' forgot all his objections to the procedure,
and shaking the good woman's hand heartily, said, he "was glad they were
to be fellow-passengers."

Our friends, with many others, were now impatiently waiting a conveyance
to the steam-boat, which had stopped near the opposite shore. The wharf
exhibited the usual signs of a small garrisoned town. Half drunken
soldiers were idling about, and sentinels were posting to and fro,
stationed there to prevent the desertion of the soldiers to the opposite
side, a crime which the vicinity and hospitable habits of the State
render very common.