I could not help laughing outright at this supposition, but replied very quietly, “Those who practice such iniquities never take any pains to conceal them.  The concealment would infer a feeling of shame; and when people are conscious of the guilt, they are in the road to improvement.”  The man walked whistling away, and the wicked child returned unpunished to his home.

The next minute the old woman came in.  “I guess you can give me a piece of silk for a hood,” said she, “the weather is growing considerable cold.”

“Surely it cannot well be colder than it is at present,” said I, giving her the rocking-chair by the fire.

“Wait a while; you know nothing of a Canadian winter.  This is only November; after the Christmas thaw, you’ll know something about the cold.  It is seven-and-thirty years ago since I and my man left the U-ni-ted States.  It was called the year of the great winter.  I tell you, woman, that the snow lay so deep on the earth, that it blocked up all the roads, and we could drive a sleigh whither we pleased, right over the snake fences.  All the cleared land was one wide white level plain; it was a year of scarcity, and we were half starved; but the severe cold was far worse nor the want of provisions.  A long and bitter journey we had of it; but I was young then, and pretty well used to trouble and fatigue; my man stuck to the British government.  More fool he!  I was an American born, and my heart was with the true cause.  But his father was English, and, says he, ’I’ll live and die under their flag.’  So he dragged me from my comfortable fireside to seek a home in the far Canadian wilderness.  Trouble!  I guess you think you have your troubles; but what are they to mine?” She paused, took a pinch of snuff, offered me the box, sighed painfully, pushed the red handkerchief from her high, narrow, wrinkled brow, and continued:  “Joe was a baby then, and I had another helpless critter in my lap—­an adopted child.  My sister had died from it, and I was nursing it at the same breast with my boy.  Well, we had to perform a journey of four hundred miles in an ox-cart, which carried, besides me and the children, all our household stuff.  Our way lay chiefly through the forest, and we made but slow progress.  Oh! what a bitter cold night it was when we reached the swampy woods where the city of Rochester now stands.  The oxen were covered with icicles, and their breath sent up clouds of steam.  ‘Nathan,’ says I to my man, ’you must stop and kindle a fire; I am dead with cold, and I fear the babes will be frozen.’  We began looking about for a good spot to camp in, when I spied a light through the trees.  It was a lone shanty, occupied by two French lumberers.  The men were kind; they rubbed our frozen limbs with snow, and shared with us their supper and buffalo skins.  On that very spot where we camped that night, where we heard nothing but the wind soughing amongst the trees, and the rushing of the river, now stands the great city of Rochester.  I went there two years ago, to the funeral of a brother.  It seemed to me like a dream.  Where we foddered our beasts by the shanty fire now stands the largest hotel in the city; and my husband left this fine growing country to starve here.”