“Don’t you feel well to-night, Father?”

“Yes, I feel better than I have done for many a week past,” he replied promptly; adding, in a tone too low for any but her to hear, “and happier too.”

“I believe you will feel better now, and get strong quickly,” said Mrs. Burton hopefully.  “The winter had thoroughly gripped your system, and that was why you could not get better before.”

All night long the roar of the water seemed to grow louder and louder, while the ice crashed, and the wild wind howled through the leafless trees.  But the morning broke fine, and the sun came out to warm up a wet world.  Such a very wet world it was, with the river swollen to twice its ordinary width!  But as Miles had predicted, there was bare ground visible, and to eyes which had looked on snow-covered earth for six long months the sight was welcome indeed.

When breakfast was over, Katherine and Miles ran the boat down to the water’s edge, and floated it, getting in and paddling up and down to see that there was no leakage, and to enjoy the novel sensation after the long abstention from boating.  But there was work to be done, and they could not afford to spend even a part of the day in rowing for their own amusement.  Stores had to be taken down to Seal Cove, and there was some bargaining to be done for some tusks of narwhal ivory which ’Duke Radford had been commissioned to obtain if possible.  Narwhal ivory was getting scarcer every year, and the storekeeper at Roaring Water Portage was prepared to pay a very good price indeed for all that he could obtain.

The journey down to Seal Cove was performed with ease and swiftness, the only trouble necessary being the steering, which called for the utmost care in that racing current.

“It will be stiff work coming back,” commented Miles, thinking how hard they would have to pull to make any sort of headway.

“Yes, I think we had better come home round by the off-creek; the water won’t run so fast down there,” replied Katherine:  and Miles, being of the same opinion, assented with a nod.

At Seal Cove a curious state of things existed.  The barrier of ice at the mouth of the river had not yet given way, and the racing current, penned in by the barrier, was mounting higher and higher, and threatened to flood the whole neighbourhood.

Katherine and Miles delivered as many of their stores as they could.  But it was not possible to go bargaining for narwhal ivory, as the flood made their destination inaccessible, so they turned back instead, and started to row up a little backwater called the off-creek, which in summer was too tiny to admit of the passage of even a small boat, but was swollen now to the size of a river.  This waterway led straight past the unwholesome habitation of Oily Dave, which faced the main river, while the creek ran at the back door, or where the back door would have been had the tumbledown house possessed one.  The water was all round the house now, and must have been creeping in under the edge of the door, only from the back of the house they could not see this.