When at last they drove up to the hotel door in the frosty night, and stamped their feet, chilled by the sleigh-ride from the station, the cataract’s near roar and dim outline under the stars did not prevent them from warmly greeting Mr. Murray who sallied out to welcome them and to announce that their supper was waiting.  The three women had long since gone to bed, but Mr. Murray staid up to have a chat with the boys.  He was in high spirits.  He owned that he had enjoyed his trip and was in no hurry to go home.  While his nephew and Wharton attacked their supper, he sipped his Scotch whisky, and with the aid of a cigar, enlivened the feast.

“We got over here before three o’clock,” said he, “and of course I took them out to drive at once.  Esther sat in front with me and we let the horses go.  Your aunt thinks I am unsafe with horses and I took some pains to prove that she was right.  The girls liked it.  They wouldn’t have minded being tipped into a snow-bank, but I thought it would be rough on your aunt, so I brought them home safe, gave them a first-rate dinner and sent them off to bed hours ago, sleepy as gods.  To-morrow you must take them in hand.  I have made to-day what the newspapers call my most brilliant forensic effort, and I’ll not risk my reputation again.”

“Keep out of our way then!” said Strong.  “Wharton and I mean to spill those two girls over the cliff unless Canadian horses know geology.”

Esther slept soundly that night while the roar of the waters lulled her slumbers.  The sun woke her the next morning to a sense of new life.  Her room looked down on the cataract, and she had already taken a fancy to this tremendous, rushing, roaring companion, which thundered and smoked under her window, as though she had tamed a tornado to play in her court-yard.  To brush her hair while such a confidant looked on and asked questions, was more than Pallas Athene herself could do, though she looked out forever from the windows of her Acropolis over the Blue AEgean.  The sea is capricious, fickle, angry, fawning, violent, savage and wanton; it caresses and raves in a breath, and has its moods of silence, but Esther’s huge playmate rambled on with its story, in the same steady voice, never shrill or angry, never silent or degraded by a sign of human failings, and yet so frank and sympathetic that she had no choice but to like it.  “Even if it had nothing to tell me, its manners are divine,” said Esther to herself as she leaned against the window sash and looked out.  “And its dress!” she ran on.  “What a complexion, to stand dazzling white and diamonds in the full sunlight!” Yet it was not the manners or the dress of her new friend that most won Esther’s heart.  Her excitement and the strain of the last month had left her subject to her nerves and imagination.  She was startled by a snow-flake, was reckless and timid by turns, and her fancy ran riot in dreams of love and pain.  She fell in love with the cataract and