“Why, Father, it is pleasant to see you out-of-doors again, and I am sure the air will do you good!” Katherine exclaimed in pleased surprise, as she came down the portage path, laden with a great reed basket filled with ptarmigan eggs.

“Katherine, I have had such a nice morning!” he said with childish eagerness.  “Mr. Selincourt has been to see me, and I like him so very much.”

Katherine nearly dropped her basket of eggs, being so much astonished; then, pulling herself together with an effort, she managed to say in a natural tone, although her face was rather white:  “I am glad you liked him.  Did he stay long?”

“Yes, ever so long, and he is coming again soon.  He thinks of settling here, and building a house.  I am so glad, for I think I never met a man whom I liked better,” he replied.

“Then it is lucky that I pulled him out of the mud,” put in Phil, who was very much disposed to swagger about his share in rescuing Mr. Selincourt.  “But if he’d been a disagreeable animal, I might have been sorry that I had not left him there.”

Katherine stood in a dumb amazement at the miracle which had been wrought.  All these months she had been dreading the coming of Mr. Selincourt, because of its effect upon her father, and behold, it was the one thing which had brought him happiness!

“Did you pull him out of the mud?  What mud?” asked ’Duke Radford in an interested tone, whereupon Phil promptly dropped the bundle he was carrying and launched into a detailed account of the rescue of Mr. Selincourt from the muskeg.

But Katherine went on to the store with her head in a whirl; almost she was disposed to believe that dark story from her father’s past to be only a dream, or some conjured-up vision of a diseased fancy—­almost, but not quite.  Only too well she knew that it was the dread of Mr. Selincourt’s coming which had induced her father’s stroke, and now—­well, it was just the irony of fate, that what had been so terrible in perspective should bring such pleasure in reality.

Jervis Ferrars came in quite early that evening, and suggested that Katherine should go with him to Ochre Lake, as he had some business at the Indian encampment, and wanted a companion.

“But I have been to Ochre Lake once to-day; Phil and I went this morning.  I brought home a hundred eggs in one basket, and had to carry them over both portages myself,” she said, laughing.

“Never mind; another journey in the same direction won’t hurt you, because I will do the work,” he answered.  “I want to borrow your boat, don’t you see? and of course it lessens a little my burden of indebtedness if you are there too.”

“I shall also be useful in getting the boat over the portage,” laughed Katherine, then ran away to get ready.  There was really nothing to keep her at the store this evening, and so few pleasures came her way that it would have been foolish to refuse.