My Winny

Stranger to Canada, I think yousaid? First visit to Ontario? VVell, you're heartilr welcome to Indian Creek. Take a chair on the piazza till diauer's ready - we dino early in those new-world parts. Fino farm? Well, yes; Indian Creek is a nice place, if I do own it. All, as far as yon can see - grass-land, corn fields, woods and ereeks - all belong to it. Stock, too - they cali it the beststocked farm in Ontario, I believe, and 1 dan y they're right. All mino; and yet I carne to Canada twelve years ago, without even the traditional half-crown in my trousers' pocket. You look surprised. Would you like to hear the story? There's a gootl half-hour to dinncr-timo yet, and it's a story I never tire of telling, somehow. 1 begon lift! as the son of a village oarpenter in tho Southoi England. You know that olass pretty well, I dare say, and what a ruif was iixed between me and the vicar of the parish. And yet - and yet - fnim the time she was seven yean old and I eleven, and she feil down in the dusty road outside the oarpenter's shop, and cried, and I pioked her up, and smoothed the little ommpled pinafore, and iissed the dust out of her golden curls. I loved but one girl in the world, and that was the vicar's daughter, VVinny Branscome. Mftdness, you'll say. Well, perhaps bo, and yet a man is but a man, and a wonian a woiuan; and love comes, whatever one may do. There's no clans distinction recognized bychildhood.and we were playmatea and friends till she went to boarding-school. If Miss Winny had had a nol her, no doubt things would have been verv different; but we wero aliko in never having known a iroman's care, and the old vicar was blind to everything but his theological treatises. But when she came back from her London boarding-school, a beautiful young lady, all smiles and laces and little lovelv ways - then I knew. I had tried my best to study and work, and niake niyself more like the men she would meet; but what can a lad in an Knglish village do? I just had enough education to make every other lad in the place hate me; and beside the men of her world I suppose I cut rather an Mtontehing ligare. Yet th love of her was so beyond all else iu me, that mad, hopeless as I feit it, I had no powei over myself; and tho first time I caught her alone in the woods - she avoided me, I saw, and I had to watch for a chance - I told her the whole story, and waited for her answer. She grew scarlet - a rush of color that dyed hor fair, 8 weet face - then deathly white. "Dick," she said, and she was tretnbling from head to foot, "you know it can uever, nevor be; you know you are wrong even to dream of such a thing. Somo girls would think it an insult - I know you better; but if my father heard of this, he would say you had abused his kindness to you; he would noverforgive you. Forget your madness." And Bhe ran from me. I let her go. I had seen the blush l,nd tho tremor, and I guessed that if I nad boen Mr. Loftus, the young Squire, itwtead of Dick Hawtry, the carpenter's son, her answer might have been different. A great resolve sprang up in my soul, and I took a solemn vow in those June woods. That very night I gold the old shop (my fathor was dead. and I had taken to tho busiiioss), and with tho money I bought an outfit, and gtarted straight for Canada. It was pretty tough work at fiist, bul I worked Fikeagalley-slave - starved, aud piuched and savod, and never spent a penny on myself exoept for the books I st up half the night to read and study. Welf, in this country the man who works and doesn't drink is sure to get on; and I had a mighty purpose in my head. By aud by I Dought some land dirt-cheap, and söld it for three times what I gave for t - then I began to make money fast. I should cali my luck wonderful if I believed in luck, and didn't prefer to think I was helped bv a Power far ftbler than my own. At last. ten yoars to the verv day after I set foot on Canadian soil, ï bought Indian Creek Farm, and began to boild this house. All the neighbors thought my good fortune liad turned my brain, for I fitted it up and furnishrd'it fora lady. down to a little rocking-ohair ta my itody-table, and a work-lmsket with a tiny gold thimble íh it. And when all thal was linishi-d, I took the lirst ihip fr Liverpool. Ten years builda ¦ -.iy ovbt he. It V .r-n' t makfl much changa in a Derooshire TÜlag. The verv gatea were still half off thèir hinges, aa 1 lef! thera, vnly the people were a little oldet aud atrillo more stupiil, and there was a new viear. Old Mr. Bransoome had beendeadilx months; died verv poor, thev told me; there was nothing tefl for tíbu Winny. My naart gave one great leap wlien 1 hoard that. And Winiiy? O. she had gono gQvameasing with somo peoplo who wert) ju.it oll l" Canada, and hought that we shotild dio together. i A.nd then I would catch the murruur of ,ho prayers she was uttering for tu both, nd know that life was thero still, and ïope lived, too. Well, well! Why should I dweil on uich horrors, exeept to thank the: Vlercy that brought us through thom all? Day dawncd at lást; aud theri was the shore near by, andsoon rockcts were firod, and ropos sccurcd, and ono by one tho half-dead living were drawn ïrom their awful suspension between sky and sea, and landcd safo on shore. They had to take Winny and mu toLether, just as we were, and eren then they had hard work to undo the clasp of my stiftened arms about her. I knevr nothing thon, nor for long after; and it is wonderful that Winny was the first to recover, and that it was sho who nursed me baek to lifo and roason. And how did 1 ask her to inarry me? Upon my word, now you ask, I can't remember that I ever Jid. That Mamed utterly unneccessary, somehow. Qaste distinctions look small eneugh when you have been staring death in the face for a few honra; and words were not much needed after we had been top'! her in the rigging that night. Somehow I was glaait was so; glad my girl had taken me in my cap and jersey, for a common sailor, and yet loved tho old Dick through it all; glad she uever dreamed I was owner of Indian Creek farm, and the richest man in that end of Ontario, and had wealth aud a position higher than Mr. Loftus, the young Squire at home. The people she was with had all gone down on that awful night; she had no one in the world bot me. We were m arrie d at Montreal - the Captain of tho Antartic gave her away - and then I brought hor home to Indian Creek. To see her face when she saw the roeking-chair, and tho work basket and the thimble! Heaven bless her! There she comes, with her baby on her shoulder. Come intodianer, friend, and you shall see the sweetest wife in the new eountrv or the old: the ffirl I