disappeared.

When the meal was ended, Robert, as always, returned thanks to God for
His mercies, in a few reverent words. The boy stared.

'I guess I hain't never heerd the like of that 'afore,' he remarked.
'Sure, God ain't nowhar hereabouts?'

Robert was surprised to find how totally ignorant he was of the very
rudiments of the Christian faith. The name of God had reached his ear
chiefly in oaths; heaven and hell were words with little meaning to his
darkened mind.

'I thought a Methodist minister preached in your father's big room once
or twice a year,' observed Robert, after some conversation.

'So he do; but I guess we boys makes tracks for the woods; an' besides,
there ain't no room for us nowhar,' said Ged.

Here I may just be permitted to indicate the wide and promising field
for missionary labour that lies open in Canada West. No fetters of a
foreign tongue need cramp the ardent thought of the evangelist, but in
his native English he may tell the story of salvation through a land
large as half a dozen European kingdoms, where thousands of his brethren
according to the flesh are perishing for want of knowledge. A few stray
Methodists alone have pushed into the moral wilderness of the backwoods;
and what are they among so many? Look at the masses of lumberers: it is
computed that on the Ottawa and its tributaries alone they number thirty
thousand men; spending their Sabbaths, as a late observer has told us,
in mending their clothes and tools, smoking and sleeping, and utterly
without religion. Why should not the gospel be preached to these our
brothers, and souls won for Christ from among them?

And in outlying germs of settlements like the 'Corner,' which are the
centre of districts of sparse population, such ignorance as this of
young Bunting's, though rare elsewhere in Canada or the States, is far
from uncommon among the rising generation.

Zack arrived with the ox-sled at the time appointed, and Ged perched on
it.

'Just look at the pile of vessels the fellow has brought to carry away
his share of the molasses and sugar,' said Arthur, as the clumsy vehicle
came lumbering up. ''Twas a great stroke of business to give us all the
trouble, and take all the advantage to himself--our trees, our fires,
nothing but the use of his oxen as a set-off.'

The advantage was less than Arthur supposed; for maples are not
impoverished by drainage of sap, and firewood is so abundant as to
be a nuisance. But for Z