waist of Grace,
when the loud laugh of the old man and his "helps," who had now risen,
roused him. He got up and looked round him, but, with the Spartan
firmness of his name-sake, said nothing, but went right off and married
his cousin Prudence Prague, who could do all the sparking talk herself.

Many another lover since then had Grace--many a mathematical
schoolmaster, to whom Euclid was no longer a mystery, became, for her
sake, puzzled in the problem of love, and earnestly besought her to
solve the question he gave, with the simple statement of yes. But still
her heart was adamant, and still she was unwon, and sighed more deeply
for her island home. She disliked the country, and its customs more. Her
religion was Roman catholic, and she cherished all the tenets of her
faith with the deepest devotion. I remember calling on her one Sunday
morning and finding her alone in her solitary dwelling; her relations,
themselves catholics, having gone, and half the settlement with them, to
meeting, but she preferred her solitude rather than join in their
unconsecrated worship. This want of their own peculiar means of grace is
much felt by religiously inclined persons in the forest settlements, and
this made her wish more earnestly for the closing of the year to come,
when, with the produce of her school labours, she would be enabled to
leave.

Such was, up to this period, what I knew of Grace's character and
history. I was extremely fond of her society and conversation, as she,
coming from that land of which 'tis said, her every word, her wildest
thought, is poetry, had, in her imaginings, a twilight tinge of blue,
which made her remarks truly delightful. She had become a little more
softened in her prejudice, especially as she expected soon to leave the
country, so that one day during her stay with us, in this same bright
summer weather, I induced her to accompany me to a great baptist
meeting, to be held in a river settlement some four or five miles off.
On reaching the creek, the rest of our party, who had acquired the true
American antipathy to pedestrianism, proceeded in canoes and punts to
the place, but we preferred a walk to the dazzling glare of the sunshine
on the water, so took not the highway, but a path through the forest,
called the blazed track, from a chip or slice being made on the trees to
indicate its line, and which you must keep sight of, or else go astray
in the leafy labyrinth.

When I first trod the wo