the ground. It
was with difficulty that the few neighbours who gathered in time to help
could save the closed coffins from the flames; and it seemed a small
matter, at the time, that nearly all their household stuff was lost.

The mother's cup _did_ seem full now. I do not think that the coming of
any trouble, however great, could at this time have added to her grief.
She had striven to be submissive under the repeated strokes that had
fallen upon her, but the horrors of that night were too much for her,
weakened as she was by sorrow. For a time she was quite distracted,
heeding little the kind efforts of her neighbours to alleviate her
distress and the distress of her children. All that kind hearts and
willing hands could do was done for them. The log house which their
grandfather had built still stood. It was repaired, and filled with
gifts from every family in the neighbourhood, and the widow and her
children found refuge there.

"Oh, what a sad beginning for a story!" I think some of my young
readers may say, in tones of disappointment. It is indeed a sad
beginning, but every sorrowful word is true. Every day there are just
such sorrowful events happening in the world, though it is not often
that trouble falls so heavily at once on any household. I might have
left all this out of my story; but then no one could have understood so
well the nature of the work that fell to Shenac, or have known the
difficulties she had to overcome in trying to do it well.

CHAPTER TWO.

It was May-day. Oftentimes in the northern country this month is
ushered in by drizzling rain, or even by the falling snow; but this year
brought a May-day worthy of the name--clear, mild, and balmy. There was
not a cloud in all the sky, nor wind enough to stir the catkins hanging
close over the waters of the creek. The last days of April had been
warm and bright, and there was a tender green on the low-lying fields,
and on the poplars that fringed the wood; and the boughs of the
maple-trees in the sugar-bush looked purple and brown over the great
grey trunks.

There is never a May-day when some flowers cannot be found beneath these
trees, and in the warm hollows along the margin of the creek; but this
year there were more than a few. Besides the pale little "spring
flower," which hardly waits for the snow to go away before it shows
itself, there were daffodils and anemones and wake-robins, and from the
lapful which little Flora