“I suppose so; I certainly don’t know any other,” he said, smiling a little, which had a grotesque effect, for the mud with which his face was so liberally smeared had dried stiff in the sunshine, and the smiling made it crack like a painted mask which has been doubled up.

“But I thought you had gone to Akimiski?” Katherine said, her astonishment still so great that she would hardly have believed even now that the stranger was telling the truth, had it not been for the trembling which was upon her now that she found herself face to face with the man whom her father had so seriously wronged away back in the past.

“I should have been much wiser if I had gone,” said Mr. Selincourt.  “But at the last moment I decided to stay and survey the land on both sides of the river.  I am sending back some of the boatmen with mails to-morrow, and it seemed essential that I should be able to write definitely to my agent in Montreal about land which I might wish to purchase.  Then I got Stee Jenkin to put me across the river, and I wandered along the shore, then back along the river bank until I reached these beautiful green meadows, as I thought them.  But when I started to walk across I began to sink, so slowly at first that I hardly realized what was wrong.”

“That is because the mud is firmer near the bank,” said Katherine.  “Right out in the centre it will not bear a duck.”

“I should have been under long before, only when I saw what was coming I sat down, so sank more slowly.  But it was horrible, horrible!” he exclaimed, with a violent shudder.

“Don’t think about it more than you can help, and we shall not be long in getting you home,” she said; then bent to her oars and tried to forget how sorely her blistered hands were hurting her.

CHAPTER XVI

“We Must be Friends!”

When her father decided not to go to Akimiski, Mary spent a long morning in roaming about Seal Cove, visiting the various little houses dotted near the fish shed, and making herself thoroughly acquainted with the neighbourhood.  But when her father got into Stee Jenkin’s boat, and was rowed across the river to survey the land on the farther side, Mary had herself rowed up the river, with the intention of spending the afternoon in arranging the little brown house to suit her own fancy.  The afternoon proved so warm that she decided on leaving the arranging to the next day, and sat down to write letters instead.  Even this proved a task beyond her powers, for she was more exhausted than she realized by the long journey over river and trail, and the hot day was making the fatigue felt.

One letter, short and scrappy, got itself written, and then weariness had its way.  Mary went into her little bedroom, and, lying down, went fast asleep.  It was three hours later when she awoke, and, feeling fearfully ashamed of her laziness, she went out to the little kitchen to light a fire for getting a cup of tea ready for her father.