Never had there been such excitement in Seal Cove and at Roaring Water Portage as when, following close on the safe return of the Mary, the tidings leaked out that Jervis Ferrars was going to marry Katherine Radford.  With a very few exceptions everyone was disappointed, for common consent had given him to Mary Selincourt, and Dame Rumour does not care to make mistakes.  Some there were who insisted that Mary Selincourt took the news badly, and looked pale for days afterwards; but these were the very wise ones, who always knew everything without any telling, whom nothing surprised, and who were never taken unawares.

Mr. Selincourt had himself rowed across the river directly the tidings reached him; for he was anxious to offer his congratulations, and to inform Katherine that he had expected it ever since he had been at Roaring Water Portage.  Katherine’s eyes grew suspiciously dim when he had gone:  she was thinking of the day when he had taken her into his confidence about Mary’s love affair with Archie Raymond, and she guessed that he had told her on purpose to prevent her putting any belief in the rumours flying about concerning Jervis and Mary.

The person who was most surprised was Mrs. Burton.  So keenly remorseful was she, too, because of all the advice she had given her sister about standing aside, that Katherine had to turn comforter, and assure the poor little woman that the well-meant counsel had done no serious harm.  But she shivered at the remembrance of how she had suffered; for the pain is always most wearing that has to be crushed down out of sight of other people’s eyes.

It was the last week in September when the Selincourts sailed from Seal Cove.  Mary wanted to go south by river and trail, as they had come; but the weather was so stormy that it seemed better to get to Montreal with dry feet, if they could manage to do so.  They were coming back next summer to settle permanently; but before then a bigger house would have to be built, and many changes were to take place on both sides of the river from Seal Cove to Roaring Water Portage.

Jervis had begged Katherine to marry him before the winter began, so that he might take the heaviest of her burdens on his own shoulders.  He was to live in Mr. Selincourt’s house during the winter, and it seemed to him an ideal arrangement, if only Katherine had been willing to live there too.  But she could not selfishly take her own happiness while the others needed her so much, and she steadily refused to even think of marriage until the spring came again.  By that time Miles would be old enough to assume the government of affairs, and her father would not miss her presence from the house so much when the bright, long days came round again.

Finding that he could not alter her resolution, and secretly admiring her all the more because of it, Jervis set himself to pass the months of waiting as best he could.  This winter it was he who taught the night school, thus relieving Katherine of what had been a heavy and sometimes very embarrassing burden.  There were more scholars this year; for the river was crowded with boats, so many fishermen who had formerly wintered at Marble Island preferring to come south in order to begin work earlier in the spring.