r of
apples.

'Sure, as ye can't have yer own plum puddin' in this outlandish
counthry, ye can have a thing the same shape, anyhow. Mrs. Jackey showed
me how to make it iligant, of the string of dried bits I had thrun in
the box since we kem here first. Throth an' I'm cur'ous to see did they
ever swell out agin, afther the parchin' they got.'

But for a slightly peculiar taste in the sweet, the dumpling was
unimpeachable.

'I suppose Mrs. Jackey uses maple sugar in her confectionery,' said
Robert; 'a _soupcon_ of trees runs through it.'

Late in the evening, as the pitch-pine logs were flaring abundance of
light through the cabin--light upon Robert at his shingles, and upon
Arthur at his work-bench, and upon Andy shaving and packing the slips
of white pine as fast as his master split them, with a stinging night
outside, some twenty-five degrees below zero, and the snow crusted at
top hard enough to bear anything--all three raised their heads to listen
to some approaching sound through the dead silence of the frozen air. It
was a very distant vagrant tinkling, as of sheep-bells on a common in
old Europe; they looked at one another, and Andy crossed himself
reverently.

'Like chapel bells over the say from poor Ireland,' he muttered, and
crept to the door, which Robert had opened. 'Sure there isn't fairies
all the ways out here? an' 'tis mighty like it'--

'Hush--h--!' Andy crossed himself again as the tinkling became more
plainly audible. A sweetly plaintive jangling it seemed--a tangled
careless music. Nearer, and still nearer it came.

'What a fool I am!' exclaimed Robert; 'it must be sleigh-bells.
Travellers, I suppose.'

And before many minutes were past, the sleigh had rounded its way among
the stumps, over the smooth snow, to the shanty door, filled with
brilliant wood-light.

CHAPTER XXIII.

'STILL-HUNTING.'

From the buffalo robes of the sleigh emerged a gentleman so wrapped
in lynx-furs and bearskin, that, until his face stood revealed by
the firelight, nothing but his voice was recognisable by the Wynns.

'Argent! is it possible?'

'Most possible: didn't you remember that my regiment was quartered out
here? But I'm sure it is a very unexpected pleasure to meet you in
the bush, old fellow;' and they shook hands warmly again. 'For though
I heard from my mother that you had gone to settle in Canada, she
didn't mention the locality, and I've been inquiring about you in all
directions with