ad now become loaded with dew and
vapour. In short, the shadows of night fell upon the rock, adding the
mantle of darkness to the other dreary accompaniments of the place.

As the light began to fail, Esther collected her younger children at
her side, and placing herself on a projecting point of her insulated
fortress, she sat patiently awaiting the return of the hunters. Ellen
Wade was at no great distance, seeming to keep a little aloof from the
anxious circle, as if willing to mark the distinction which existed in
their characters.

"Your uncle is, and always will be, a dull calculator, Nell," observed
the mother, after a long pause in a conversation that had turned on the
labours of the day; "a lazy hand at figures and foreknowledge is that
said Ishmael Bush! Here he sat lolloping about the rock from light till
noon, doing nothing but scheme--scheme--scheme--with seven as noble boys
at his elbows as woman ever gave to man; and what's the upshot? why,
night is setting in, and his needful work not yet ended."

"It is not prudent, certainly, aunt," Ellen replied, with a vacancy in
her air, that proved how little she knew what she was saying; "and it is
setting a very bad example to his sons."

"Hoity, toity, girl! who has reared you up as a judge over your elders,
ay, and your betters, too! I should like to see the man on the whole
frontier, who sets a more honest example to his children than this
same Ishmael Bush! Show me, if you can, Miss Fault-finder, but not
fault-mender, a set of boys who will, on occasion, sooner chop a piece
of logging and dress it for the crop, than my own children; though I
say it myself, who, perhaps, should be silent; or a cradler that knows
better how to lead a gang of hands through a field of wheat, leaving a
cleaner stubble in his track, than my own good man! Then, as a father,
he is as generous as a lord; for his sons have only to name the
spot where they would like to pitch, and he gives 'em a deed of the
plantation, and no charge for papers is ever made!"

As the wife of the squatter concluded, she raised a hollow, taunting
laugh, that was echoed from the mouths of several juvenile imitators,
whom she was training to a life as shiftless and lawless as her own;
but which, notwithstanding its uncertainty, was not without its secret
charms.

"Holloa! old Eester;" shouted the well-known voice of her husband, from
the plain beneath; "ar' you keeping your junkets, while we are finding