e logs he had
been felling.

"We do very well at present in the hut," answered his wife, smiling. "I
have a liking for it--no rent and no taxes to pay; it is ours--the first
dwelling we ever had of our own."

"Ay, wife; and now we have forty acres of land too of our own: little
value, to be sure, as they are; but in a few months, when we have put
work into them, they'll yield us a good living," observed Michael,
glancing his eye down his allotment, which reached to the lake. "We
shall have four acres cleared, and our house up, before the snow sets
in; and if the boys and I can chop three more in the winter, we shall
have seven to start with in the spring."

"You'll do that, master, if you work as you've begun," said Pat Honan,
one of the men Hale had engaged to work for him. "Arrah now, if I had
the wife and childer myself, maybe I'd be settling on a farm of my own;
but, somehow or other, when I go to bed at night, it isn't often that
I'm richer than when I got up in the morning."

"You won't have the whiskey here, Pat; so maybe you'll have a better
chance. Just try what you can do," said Michael, in a kind tone.

"Ah, now, that's just what I've thried many a day; and all went right
till temptation came in my way, and then, somehow or other, the throat
was always so dhry that I couldn't, for the life of me, help moistening
it a bit."

Pat's companion, another Irishman, Peter Disney, looked very sulky at
these remarks, and Michael suspected that he had often proved poor Pat's
tempter.

Near Michael's tent there was another, owned by an old friend of his,
John Kemp. They had come out together from the same place in England,
and for the same reason. They had large families, and found work hard
to get at fair wages. Michael Hale was a day labourer, as his father
was before him. He lived in a wild part of Old England, where schools
were scarce. He had very little learning himself; but he was blessed
with a good wife, who could read her Bible, and she had not much time to
read anything else. Michael fell ill, and so did two of his children
(that was in the old country); and when he got better, he found that his
old master was dead. For a long time he went about looking for work.
One day he called at the house of a gentleman, one Mr Forster, five
miles from where he lived.

"I cannot give you work, but I can give you advice, and maybe help,"
said Mr Forster. "If you cannot get work at home, take your fami