gan to address remarks to the
kettle instead of to his friend. "I say, Charley, this won't do. I'm
off to bed!" and suiting the action to the word, he took off his coat
and placed it on his pillow. He then removed his moccasins, which were
wet, and put on a dry pair; and this being all that is ever done in the
way of preparation before going to bed in the woods, he lay down and
pulled the green blankets over him.

Before doing so, however, Harry leaned his head on his hands and prayed.
This was the one link left of the chain of habit with which he had left
home. Until the period of his departure for the wild scenes of the
North-west, Harry had lived in a quiet, happy home in the West Highlands
of Scotland, where he had been surrounded by the benign influences of a
family the members of which were united by the sweet bonds of Christian
love--bonds which were strengthened by the additional tie of amiability
of disposition. From childhood he had been accustomed to the routine of
a pious and well-regulated household, where the Bible was perused and
spoken of with an interest that indicated a genuine hungering and
thirsting after righteousness, and where the name of JESUS sounded often
and sweetly on the ear. Under such training Harry, though naturally of
a wild, volatile disposition, was deeply and irresistibly impressed with
a reverence for sacred things, which, now that he was thousands of miles
away from his peaceful home, clung to him with the force of old habit
and association, despite the jeers of comrades and the evil influences
and ungodliness by which he was surrounded. It is true that he was not
altogether unhurt by the withering indifference to God that he beheld on
all sides. Deep impression is not renewal of heart. But early training
in the path of Christian love saved him many a deadly fall. It guarded
him from many of the grosser sins into which other boys, who had merely
broken away from the _restraints_ of home, too easily fell. It twined
round him--as the ivy encircles the oak--with a soft, tender, but
powerful grasp, that held him back when he was tempted to dash aside all
restraint; and held him up when, in the weakness of his human nature, he
was about to fall. It exerted its benign sway over him in the silence
of night, when his thoughts reverted to home, and during his waking
hours, when he wandered from scene to scene in the wide wilderness; and
in after years, when sin prevailed, and inte