hard labour as
any officer in his regiment, still less of agricultural pursuits; and
perhaps could barely have told the difference between one sort of grain
and another, having entered the army a mere boy, quite raw and
inexperienced, from his native hills.

He had a wife, and five rude, brawny, coarse children--the three eldest
girls from seven to fourteen years of age. "They were not of the right
sort," he said; "but they were strong enough for boys, and would make
fine mothers for dragoons to serve in case of war."

But as Canada is not at all a warlike country, these qualifications in
his bouncing, red haired lassies, were no recommendation. The two spoilt
boys were still in short coats, and could afford little help to their
veteran father for many years to come.

Donald had formed the most extravagant notions of Canada. In his eyes it
was a perfect El Dorado, where gold was as plentiful as blackberries
upon the bushes. He did not seem ever to have given the idea of having
to work for his living a thought--and laughed at a notion so
disagreeable and repugnant to his old habits, as absurd.

"Whar was the use of ganging to a new country," he said, "if a bodie had
to work as hard there as in the auld?"

After paying his passage-money, and furnishing provisions for the
voyage, he had only the sum of nineteen pounds remaining, which he
considered an inexhaustible fund of wealth, from which he was to obtain,
not only a comfortable living in the land of promise, but an independent
fortune. He was entitled to a grant of land, which he said, "Would make
him a laird, and place him on an equal footing with the lairds in the
backwoods of Canada."

Flora often wondered in after years, what became of poor Macdonald and
all his high-flown dreams of future greatness.

The wife of the old soldier was a tall, raw-boned, red-fisted virago,
who fought with both fists and tongue. She seemed to live in a perfect
element of strife. A quarrel could not exist in the ship without her
being either the original cause, or the active promoter of it, after it
was once set on foot. She would bully the captain, out-swear the
sailors, and out-scold all the rest of the femalities in the vessel.

The daughter of a soldier, born amidst the horrors of war, and brought
up as a camp-follower, her ignorance of all the gentler humanities of
life was only exceeded by her violence. While assisting in pillaging the
dead, after the battle of Waterloo,