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, she had found the sum of a hundred gold Napoleons concealed in a belt upon the person of a dead French officer. This made her a woman of fortune, and led to her marriage with her present husband, for she had had several, who doubtless were glad to be released by death from the unnatural tyranny of such a mate. Macdonald was an easy, good-natured man, who for the sake of peace, let the wilful woman have her own way, and thrash him and the bairns as often as the wicked spirit by which she was possessed, prompted her to exhibit these peculiar marks of her conjugal and maternal love.

Had Macdonald been asked, why he submitted to such base treatment from his wife, he might have answered with the tall Canadian backwoodsman, when questioned on the same subject,—

"It pleases her, and it don't hurt I."

Mrs. Macdonald was in a delicate situation, and from the very day the ship sailed, she gave out that she was on the eve of an increase to her interesting family: to the great indignation of the captain, who had a mortal antipathy to babies, and who declared in his rough way, "That it was an imposition; Mrs. Macdonald had no right to swindle him into taking out more passengers than he had bargained for."

The stalwart dame was enchanted that she had found out a way to annoy the captain, to whose orders she was forced to submit, and whom in consequence she regarded as a bitter enemy. In fact she did all in her power to encourage his fears respecting her. Whenever he paced the deck in sullen dignity, she began to sigh and groan, and declare in a voice loud enough for him to overhear, "That she did na think that she could haud out anither day ava'."

There was another pensioner on board who was the sworn friend and countryman of Macdonald. Hugh Mackenzie was a dragoon, and a fine tall, soldierly-looking man. His wife was a little, chatty, gossiping woman, from Berwickshire; a good creature in her way, but sadly addicted to the use of strong waters, drowning the little sense she had in the fumes of whiskey and brandy. She and her husband spent all their time in eating and drinking, when they were not taking snuff and smoking. They were cooking, or preparing for it, from morning till night; and generally headed the forlorn hope which three times a day besieged the caboose, and defied the valiant Hannibal to his very teeth.

Mrs. Mackenzie was the very reverse of her gude friend, Mrs. Macdonald; for she stood in perpetual fear of her tall husband, who thrashed her soundly when she got drunk. Moreover, she was very jealous of all the young women in the ship, whom she termed, "Lazy, bold, gude for nought hizzies, who wud na led a' bodies ain man alane."

She would sit for hours on the deck smoking a short black pipe, and crooning old border ballads, in a voice anything but musical.

During Flora's long morning promenade upon deck, she more than once caught a pair of yellow, queer-looking eyes peering at her from beneath the shade of one of the boats which were slung to the main-mast, and by-and-by a singularly disagreeable-looking head raised itself from a couch of cloaks, and continued its investigation in a very intrusive manner. The head belonged to a little man in a snuff-coloured suit, whose small, pert, pugnacious face, eyes, hair and complexion, were only a variety of the same shades as the dress in which he had cased his outer man. Flora quietly pointed him out to her husband, and asked in a whisper, "What he thought of the little brown man?"

"His appearance is not at all prepossessing," said Lyndsay. "I will ask the Captain, who is coming this way, who and what he is?"

The question seemed to embarrass old Boreas not a little. He threw a frowning glance towards the spot occupied by the stranger, shrugged his shoulders, whistled a tune, and thrusting his hands into his breeches' pockets, took several turns on the deck before he made any reply. Until, seeing the snuff-coloured individual about to crawl out of his hiding-place, he called out in a gruff voice—

"Keep where you are, Sir—the longer you remain out of sight the better. By exposing yourself to observation, you may cause trouble to more persons than one!"

The person thus unceremoniously addressed, smiled malignantly, and retreating beneath the shade of the boat, snarled out some reply, only audible to the captain; whose advice did not however seem lost upon him, for after the Lyndsays had taken another turn or two, and he had glared at them with his little fiery eyes, sufficiently to gratify his insolent curiosity, he again emerged from under the boat, and succeeded in tumbling into it. Drawing a part of a spare sail over his diminutive person, he vanished as completely from sight, as if the ocean had suddenly swallowed him up.

"I was a d——d fool!" muttered the captain, returning to Lyndsay's side, "to let that fellow, with his ugly, sneering phiz, come on board! But as he is here, I must make the best of a bad bargain. You will not peach, so I'll just give you a bit of his history, and explain the necessity of his keeping close until we are out of the sight of land. Hang him! his ugly phiz is enough to sink the ship. Had I seen him before he came on board, he might have rotted in gaol before I took charge of his carcase. And then, 'tis such a conceited ass, he will take no advice, and cares as little for his own safety as he does for mine."

"Is he a runaway felon?" asked Flora.

"You have not made a bad guess, Mistress Lyndsay. He was a distiller, who carried on a good business in