"If you'd like a drink, there's one of the finest springs in the whole country down there," said the landlord, taking a tin cup from the wagon and handing it to Mark. Rosalie was already going down the path. They reached the spring, and found the water cold and clear as crystal. They drank, and congratulated themselves upon this great blessing, and then went up to the cabin, and, as their host was in a hurry to be off, they entered the carryall to return to the village.

แ Well, are you going to take it?" asked the driver, looking around as he took the reins and started.

"Why, of course. I had already taken it."

"I knowed that; but I thought when she saw how lonesome it was, she'd object. 'Tain't many womenI can tell you that-who'd agree to live out there, by themselves, in that lonesome place, and you gone all day long."

"I am sure my wife prefers it to an inferior cabin nearer the village."

"Yes, indeed, I do," said Rosalie.

"Well, every one to their taste," observed the landlord, cracking his whip, and making his horses fly. They reached home in good time for dinner.

The afternoon was employed by Mark Sutherland in collecting together necessary provisions, to be taken with their furniture to the cabin; and by Rosalieseated by the window of her part of the upper chamber -in hemming napkins, preparatory to her housekeeping, and in looking out upon the prairie basking in the afternoon sun, and upon her distant home, Wolf's Grove.

In the evening the hunters returned from an unsuc

cessful expedition; and fatigued and mortified, and inclined to be silent upon the subject of their defeated enterprise, they gathered around the supper table. But the curiosity of the hostess, and the perseverance of the host, at last elicited from them the fact that they had not even hit upon the track of the wolves. The next day was fixed upon by Mark Sutherland and his wife for their removal to Wolf's Grove.

CHAPTER XXI.

GOING TO HOUSEKEEPING.

ALL the forenoon of the next day, Mr. Garner, the landlord, was absent with his team; so that our young people were obliged to defer their removal until the afternoon; and they spent the intervening hours in reviewing their possessions and supplying those few last articles that always are forgotten in a first preparation.

At two o'clock, the capacious wagon of the hotel stood before the door, laden with furniture, trunks, provisions, and so forth. A tolerable seat was arranged for Rosalie among the baggage; but Mark, on foot, accompanied the landlord, who walked at the head of his horses. It was a slow progress; the horses, already fatigued with their morning's work, never got out of a walk; so that it was nearly four o'clock when they entered Wolf's Grove and drew up before the log cabin. While his horses were resting, Mr. Garner

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assisted Mark to unlade the wagon, and take in the furniture and arrange the heaviest part of it. Then, having watered his horses, he shook hands with his late guests, wished them good luck, jumped upon his seat in front of the wagon, and drove off.

It

And Mark and Rosalie found themselves standing, looking at each other, alone, in the forest cabin. was a moment in which flashed back upon each the memory of their whole past lives, and the intense realization of their present position. A doubt, whether to weep or smile, quivered over Rosalie's features for an instant. Mark saw the tremor of her lips and eyelids, and drew her to his heart; and she dropped her head upon his shoulder and smiled through her tears. He whispered, cheerily—

"Never mind, dear; you will be one of the honoured pioneer women of the West. And when this wilderness is a great Commonwealth, and Shelton is a great city, and I am an old patriarch, we will have much joy in telling of the log cabin in the wilderness, where we first went to housekeeping. And now, let us see if we cannot get this place into a little order."

The room, as I said, was large and square, with a window east and west, facing each other, and a stone fire-place north, facing a broad door south. The walls. were unplastered, but well planed and cemented, and grey with time and use. The floor was of rough but sound pine plank. A broad shelf over the fire-place served for a mantel-piece. In the corner between the east window and the fire-place stood the step-ladder leading to the loft. In the opposite corner, between the west window and the fire-place, were three triangular shelves, that did duty as cupboard or beaufet.

Finally, the sashes of the windows were good, but the glass was all broken out of them. This was the state of the room when Mark and Rosalie looked around it. Mark went up the step-ladder to examine the loft, but found it so low that even a woman could not stand upright in it. It was therefore given up, except as a place to stow trunks, boxes, &c.

Then they began to arrange their furniture. It was very easily done, they had so little-a bedstead with its appointments, a table, a half-dozen chairs, and almost everything else in half-dozens. The form of the room favoured the convenient arrangement of these things. The bedstead had already been put up in the corner between the west window and the door, and the table placed in the corresponding corner between the door and the east window. They set the chairs in their places, and then Mark began to unpack the china, while Rosalie arranged it on the shelves of the corner cupboard. There were several thingsremnants of past refinement-out of keeping with their present condition; among them, the French china-that looked upon their rough pine shelves as the elegant Mark Sutherland and the fair and delicate Rosalie looked in their rude log cabin--and the superb white Marseilles counterpanes, whose deep fringes touched the rough plank floor; and the tester and valance of fine and beautiful net-work; and lastly, the tamboured curtains that lay upon the chairs, ready to be put up when Mark should have mended the windows. These were certainly out of place here, but it could not be helped; they were Rosalie's little personal effects, endeared to her by long possession, and by their having been the property, and some of them

-the tamboured curtains and the net valance, for instance the handiwork of her mother. By sunset, all was arranged, except two matters-the broken windows, with which now the young master of the house began to employ himself, taking out the sashes and laying them upon the table, and laying pane after pane in their places; and the barrel of flour which stood in the middle of the floor, with a quarter of beef laid across the top of it-both waiting to be put away out of sight, in a proper place; that is, supposing a proper place could be found on premises where there was neither storehouse, pantry, nor shed, nor even a second room.

Mark busied himself with the window sashes, trying pane after pane in the empty forms. But at length, turning around, he smiled and said

"It's no use, Rose; I'm not a glazier, and so carefully as I thought I measured the sashes and the glass, they will not exactly fit; and I have no diamond here to trim them, and so I suppose they must be left until to-morrow."

And he replaced the empty sashes in the window frames. Then, seeing the neglected barrel of flour, he wheeled it up against the wall, near the door, and said it must remain there for the present; and Rosalie took a coarse, clean table-cloth and spread it over the beef, that still lay upon the top.

"And now, dear," he said, looking around, "I believe we are as well fixed as we can be for the present. Nothing remains but to get supper; and, as I was out here in the West two years before you ever saw it, I shouldn't wonder if I hadn't to give you some instruction."