Yet under his shuffling manner there was a certain note of confidence.

He was appealing to that Homeric hospitality which prevails throughout the farms of the Northwest.
And in five minutes, the horses were in the barn, the man sitting by the kitchen fire, while Elizabeth was ministering to the woman and child.
The new-comers made a forlorn trio.

They came from a district some fifty miles further south, and were travelling north in order to take shelter for a time with relations.

The mother was a girl of twenty, worn with hardship and privation.

The father, an English labourer, had taken up free land, but in spite of much help from a paternal Government, had not been able to fulfil his statutory obligation, and had now forfeited his farm.