That night he slept in his old bed below the parlour window, and for three months afterwards he stuck to us like a beaver.

He seemed to have grown more kindly, or we had got more used to his eccentricities, and let him have his own way; certainly he behaved himself much better.

He neither scolded the children nor interfered with the maid, nor quarrelled with me.  He had greatly discontinued his bad habit of swearing, and he talked of himself and his future prospects with more hope and self-respect.  His father had promised to send him a fresh supply of money, and he proposed to buy of Moodie the clergy reserve, and that they should farm the two places on shares.  This offer was received with great joy, as an unlooked-for means of paying our debts, and extricating ourselves from present and overwhelming difficulties, and we looked upon the little stumpy man in the light of a benefactor.

So matters continued until Christmas Eve, when our visitor proposed walking into Peterborough, in order to give the children a treat of raisins to make a Christmas pudding.

“We will be quite merry to-morrow,” he said.  “I hope we shall eat many Christmas dinners together, and continue good friends.”

He started, after breakfast, with the promise of coming back at night; but night came, the Christmas passed away, months and years fled away, but we never saw the little stumpy man again!

He went away that day with a stranger in a waggon from Peterborough, and never afterwards was seen in that part of Canada.  We afterwards learned that he went to Texas, and it is thought that he was killed at St. Antonio; but this is mere conjecture.  Whether dead or living, I feel convinced that—­

“We ne’er shall look upon his like again.”

OH, THE DAYS WHEN I WAS YOUNG!

  Oh, the days when I was young,
    A playful little boy,
  When my piping treble rung
    To the notes of early joy. 
  Oh, the sunny days of spring,
    When I sat beside the shore,
  And heard the small birds sing;—­
    Shall I never hear them more?

  And the daisies scatter’d round,
    Half hid amid the grass,
  Lay like gems upon the ground,
    Too gay for me to pass. 
  How sweet the milkmaid sung,
    As she sat beside her cow,
  How clear her wild notes rung;—­
    There’s no music like it now.

  As I watch’d the ship’s white sail
    ’Mid the sunbeams on the sea,
  Spreading canvas to the gale—­
    How I long’d with her to be. 
  I thought not of the storm,
    Nor the wild cries on her deck,
  When writhed her graceful form
    ’Mid the hurricane and wreck.

  And I launch’d my little ship,
    With her sails and hold beneath;
  Deep laden on each trip,
    With berries from the heath. 
  Ah, little did I know,
    When I long’d to be a man,
  Of the gloomy cares and woe,
    That meet in life’s brief span.