Chapter Ten.

Fate of the Buffalo-Hunters.

In vain did the pursuers search after the lost Tony. Finding it impossible to rediscover the trail, they made for the nearest post of the fur-traders, from whom they heard of an Indian who had passed that way in the direction of the Rocky Mountains, but the traders had taken no special notice of the boy, and could tell nothing about him. They willingly, however, supplied the pursuers with provisions on credit, for they knew Victor’s father well by repute, and allowed them to join a party who were about to ascend the Saskatchewan river.

On being further questioned, one of the traders did remember that the hair of the boy seemed to him unusually brown and curly for that of a redskin, but his reminiscences were somewhat vague. Still, on the strength of them, Victor and Ian resolved to continue the chase, and Rollin agreed to follow. Thus the summer and autumn passed away.

Meanwhile a terrible disaster had befallen the buffalo-hunters of the Red River.

We have said that after disposing of the proceeds of the spring hunt in the settlement, and thus securing additional supplies, it is the custom of the hunters to return to the plains for the fall or autumn hunt, which is usually expected to furnish the means of subsistence during the long and severe winter. But this hunt is not always a success, and when it is a partial failure the gay, improvident, harum-scarum half-breeds have a sad time of it. Occasionally there is a total failure of the hunt, and then starvation stares them in the face. Such was the case at the time of which we write, and the improvident habits of those people in times of superabundance began to tell.

Many a time in spring had the slaughter of animals been so great that thousands of their carcasses were left where they fell, nothing but the tongues having been carried away by the hunters. It was calculated that nearly two-thirds of the entire spring hunt had been thus left to the wolves. Nevertheless, the result of that hunt was so great that the quantity of fresh provisions—fat, pemmican, and dried meat—brought into Red River, amounted to considerably over one million pounds weight, or about two hundred pounds weight for each individual, old and young, in the settlement. A large proportion of this was purchased by the Hudson’s Bay Company, at the rate of twopence per pound, for the supply of their numerous outposts, and the half-breed hunters pocketed among them a sum of nearly 1200 pounds. This, however, was their only market, the sales to settlers being comparatively insignificant. In the same year the agriculturists did not make nearly so large a sum—but then the agriculturists were steady, and their gains were saved, while the jovial half-breed hunters were volatile, and their gains underwent the process of evaporation. Indeed, it took the most of their gains to pay their debts. Thus, with renewed supplies on credit, they took the field for the fall campaign in little more than a month after their return from the previous hunt.

It is not our purpose to follow the band step by step. It is sufficient to say that the season was a bad one; that the hunters broke up into small bands when winter set in, and some of these followed the fortunes of the Indians, who of course followed the buffalo as their only means of subsistence.

In one of these scattered groups were Herr Winklemann and Baptiste Warder—the latter no longer a captain, his commission having lapsed with the breaking up of the spring hunt. The plains were covered with the first snows. The party were encamped on a small eminence whence a wide range of country could be seen.

“There is a small herd on the horizon,” said Baptiste, descending from the highest part of the hillock towards the fire where the German was seated eating a scrap of dried meat.

“Zat is vell. I vill go after dem.”

He raised his bulky frame with a sigh, for he was somewhat weak and dispirited—the band with which he hunted having been at the starving-point for some days. Winklemann clothed himself in a wolf-skin, to which the ears and part of the head adhered. A small sledge, which may be described as a long thin plank with one end curled up, was brought to him by a hungry-looking squaw. Four dogs were attached to it with miniature harness made to fit them. When all was ready the hunter flung himself flat on his face at full length on the sledge, cracked his whip, and away went the dogs at full speed. Herr Winklemann was armed only with bow and arrows, such weapons being most suitable for the work in hand.

Directing his course to a small clump of trees near to which the buffalo were scraping away the yet shallow snow to reach their food, he soon gained the shelter of the bushes, fastened up the dogs, and advanced through the clump to the other side.

It was a fine sight to a hungry man. About a dozen animals were browsing there not far out of gunshot. Winklemann at once went down on all-fours, and arranged the large wolf-skin so that the legs hung down over his own legs and arms, while the head was pulled over his eyes like a hood. Thus disguised, he crept into the midst of the unsuspicious band.

The buffalo is not afraid of wolves. He treats them with contempt. It is only when he is wounded, or enfeebled by sickness or old age, that his sneaking enemy comes and sits down before him, licking his chops in the hope of a meal.

A fat young cow cast a questioning glance at Winklemann as he approached her. He stopped. She turned aside and resumed her feeding. Then she leaped suddenly into the air and fell quivering on the snow, with an arrow up to the feathers in her side. The hunter did not rise. The animals near to the cow looked at her a moment, as if in surprise at her eccentric behaviour, and then went on feeding. Again the hunter bent his bow, and another animal lay dying on the plain. The guardian bull observed this, lifted his shaggy head, and moved that subtle index of temper, his tail. An ill-directed arrow immediately quivered in his flank. With a roar of rage he bounded into the air, tossed up his heels, and seeing no enemy on whom to wreak his vengeance—for the wolf was crouching humbly on the snow—he dashed wildly away, followed by the rest of the astonished herd.

The whole camp had turned out by that time to resume their journey, and advanced joyfully to meet the returning hunter. As they passed one of the numerous clumps of wood with which the plains were studded, another herd of buffalo started suddenly into view. Among other objects of interest in the band of hunters, there happened to be a small child, which was strapped with some luggage on a little sled and drawn by two dogs. These dogs were lively. They went after the buffalo full swing, to the consternation of the parents of the child. It was their only child. If it had only been a fragment of their only child, the two dogs could not have whisked it off more swiftly. Pursuit was useless, yet the whole band ran yelling after it. Soon the dogs reached the heels of the herd, and all were mixed pell-mell together,—the dogs barking, the sled swinging to and fro, and the buffalo kicking. At length a bull gored one of the dogs; his head got entangled in the harness, and he went off at a gallop, carrying the dog on his horns, the other suspended by the traces, and the sled and child whirling behind him. The enraged creature ran thus for full half a mile before ridding himself of the encumbrance, and many shots were fired at him without effect. Both dogs were killed, but, strange to say, the child was unhurt.

The supply of meat procured at this time, although very acceptable, did not last long, and the group with which Winklemann was connected was soon again reduced to sore straits. It was much the same with the scattered parties elsewhere, though they succeeded by hard work in securing enough of meat to keep themselves alive.

In these winter wanderings after the buffalo, the half-breeds and their families had travelled from 150 to 200 miles from the colony, but in the midst of their privations they kept up heart, always hoping that the sudden discovery of larger herds would ere long convert the present scarcity into the more usual superabundance. But it was otherwise ordained. On the 20th of December there was a fearful snowstorm, such as had not been witnessed for years. It lasted several days, drove the buffalo hopelessly beyond the reach of the hunters, and killed most of their horses. What greatly aggravated the evil was the suddenness of the disaster. According to the account of one who was in Red River at the time, and an eye-witness, the animals disappeared almost instantaneously, and no one was prepared for the inevitable famine that followed. The hunters were at the same time so scattered that they could render each other no assistance. Indeed, the various groups did not know whereabouts the others were. Some were never found. Here and there whole families, despairing of life, weakened by want, and perishing with cold, huddled themselves together for warmth. At first the heat of their bodies melted the snow and soaked their garments. These soon froze and completed the work of destruction. They died where they lay. Some groups were afterwards discovered thus frozen together in a mass of solid ice.

While the very young and the feeble succumbed at once, the more robust made a brave struggle for life, and, as always happens in cases of extreme suffering, the good or evil qualities of men and women came out prominently to view. The selfish, caring only for themselves, forsook their suffering comrades, seized what they could or dared, and thus prolonged awhile their wretched lives. The unselfish and noble-hearted cared for others, sacrificed themselves, and in many cases were the means of saving life.

Among these last were Baptiste Warder and Winklemann.

“I vill valk to de settlement,” said the latter, one morning towards the middle of January, as he rose from his lair and began to prepare breakfast.

“I’ll go with you,” said Warder. “It’s madness to stop here. Death will be at our elbow anyhow, but he’ll be sure to strike us all if we remain where we are. The meat we were lucky enough to get yesterday will keep our party on short allowance for some time, and the men will surely find something or other to eke it out while we push on and bring relief.”

“Goot,” returned the German; “ve vill start after breakfast. My lecks are yet pretty strong.”

Accordingly, putting on their snow-shoes, the two friends set out on a journey such as few men would venture to undertake, and fewer could accomplish, in the circumstances.

On the way they had terrible demonstration of the extent of suffering that prevailed among their friends.

They had not walked twenty miles when they came on tracks which led them to a group—a father, mother, and two sons—who were sitting on the snow frozen to death. In solemn silence the hunters stood for a few minutes and looked at the sad sight, then turned and passed on. The case was too urgent to permit of delay. Many lives hung on their speedy conveyance of news to the settlement. They bent forward, and with long swinging strides sped over the dreary plains until darkness—not exhaustion—compelled them to halt. They carried with them a small amount of pemmican, about half rations, trusting to meet with something to shoot on the way. Before daylight the moon rose. They rose with it and pushed on. Suddenly they were arrested by an appalling yell. Next moment a man rushed from a clump of trees brandishing a gun. He stopped when within fifty yards, uttered another demoniacal yell, and took aim at Warder.

Quick as thought the ex-captain brought his own piece to his shoulder. He would have been too late if the gun of his opponent had not missed fire.

“Stop! ’tis Pierre Vincent!” cried Winklemann, just in time to arrest Warder’s hand.

Vincent was a well-known comrade, but his face was so disfigured by dirt and blood that they barely recognised him. He flung away his gun when it snapped, and ran wildly towards them.

“Come! come! I have food, food! ha! ha! much food yonder in the bush! My wife and child eat it! they are eating eating now! ha! ha!”

With another fierce yell the poor maniac—for such he had become—turned off at a tangent, and ran far away over the plains.

They made no attempt to follow him; it would have been useless. In the bush they found his wife and child stone-dead. Frequently during that terrible walk they came on single tracks, which invariably showed that the traveller had fallen several times, and at length taken to creeping. Then they looked ahead, for they knew that the corpse of a man or woman was not far in advance of them.

One such track led them to a woman with an infant on her back. She was still pretty strong, and trudged bravely over the snow on her snow-shoes, while the little one on her back appeared to be quite content with its lot, although pinched-looking in the face.

The men could not afford to help her on. It would have delayed themselves. The words “life and death” seemed to be ringing constantly in their ears. But they spoke kindly to the poor woman, and gave her nearly all their remaining stock of provisions, reserving just enough for two days.

“I’ve travelled before now on short allowance,” said Warder, with a pitiful smile. “We’re sure to come across something before long. If not, we can travel empty for a bit.”

“Goot; it vill make us lighter,” said Winklemann, with a grave nod.

They parted from the woman, and soon left her out of sight behind. She never reached the settlement. She and the child were afterwards found dead within a quarter of a mile of Pembina. From the report of the party she had left, this poor creature must have travelled upwards of a hundred miles in three days and nights before sinking in that terrible struggle for life.

Warder and his companion did not require to diverge in order to follow these tracks. They all ran one way, straight for Red River—for home! But there were many, very many, who never saw that home again.

One exception they overtook on their fourth day. She was a middle-aged woman, but her visage was so wrinkled by wigwam smoke, and she had such a stoop, that she seemed very old indeed.

“Why, I know that figure,” exclaimed Warder, on sighting her; “it’s old Liz, Michel Rollin’s Scotch mother!”

So it turned out. She was an eccentric creature, full of life, fire, and fun, excessively short and plain, but remarkably strong. She had been forsaken by her nephew, she said. Michel, dear Michel, would not have left her in the lurch if he had been there. But she would be at home to receive Michel on his return. That she would! And she was right. She reached the settlement alive, though terribly exhausted.

Warder and Winklemann did not “come across” anything except one raven, but they shot that and devoured it, bones and all. Then they travelled a day without food and without halt. Next day they might reach the settlement if strength did not fail, but when they lay down that night Warder said he felt like going to die, and Winklemann said that his “lecks” were now useless, and his “lunks” were entirely gone!

Chapter Eleven.

To the Rescue.

Elsie and Cora Ravenshaw were seated at a table in Willow Creek, with their mother and Miss Trim, repairing garments, one night in that same inclement January of which we have been writing.

Mr Ravenshaw was enjoying his pipe by the stove, and Louis Lambert was making himself agreeable. The old man was a little careworn. No news had yet been received of Tony or of Victor. In regard to the latter he felt easy; Victor could take care of himself, and was in good company, but his heart sank when he thought of his beloved Tony. What would he not have given to have had him smashing his pipe or operating on his scalp at that moment.

“It is an awful winter,” observed Elsie, as a gust of wind seemed to nearly blow in the windows.

“I pity the hunters in the plains,” said Cora. “They say a rumour has come that they are starving.”

“I heard of that, but hope it is not true,” observed Lambert.

“Oh! they always talk of starving,” said old Ravenshaw. “No fear of ’em.”

At that moment there was a sound of shuffling in the porch, the door was thrown open, and a gaunt, haggard man, with torn, snow-sprinkled garments, pale face, and bloodshot eyes, stood pictured on the background of the dark porch.

“Baptiste Warder!” exclaimed Lambert, starting up.

“Ay, what’s left o’ me; and here’s the remains o’ Winklemann,” said Warder, pointing to the cadaverous face of the starving German, who followed him.

Need we say that the hunters received a kindly welcome by the Ravenshaw family, as they sank exhausted into chairs. The story of starvation, suffering, and death was soon told—at least in outline.

“You are hungry. When did you eat last?” asked Mr Ravenshaw, interrupting them.

“Two days ago,” replied Warder, with a weary smile.

“It seems like two veeks,” observed the German, with a sigh.

“Hallo! Elsie, Cora, victuals!” cried the sympathetic old man, turning quickly round.

But Elsie, whose perceptions were quick, had already placed bread and beer on the table.

“Here, have a drink of beer first,” said the host, pouring out a foaming glass.

Warder shook his head. Winklemann remarked that, “beer vas goot, ver goot, but they had been used to vatter of late.”

“Ah!” he added, after devouring half a slice of bread while waiting for Cora to prepare another; “blessed brod an’ booter! Nobody can know vat it is till he have starve for two veek—a—I mean two days; all de same ting in my feel—”

The entrance of a huge bite put a sudden and full stop to the sentence.

“Why did you not stop at some of the houses higher up the river to feed?” asked Lambert.

Warder explained that they meant to have done so, but they had missed their way. They had grown stupid, he thought, from weakness. When they lost the way they made straight for the river, guided by the pole-star, and the first house they came in sight of was that of Willow Creek.

“How can the pole-star guide one?” asked Cora, in some surprise.

“Don’t you know?” said Lambert, going round to where Cora sat, and sitting down beside her. “I will explain.”

“If I did know I wouldn’t ask,” replied Cora coquettishly; “besides, I did not put the question to you.”

“Nay, but you don’t object to my answering it, do you?”

“Not if you are quite sure you can do so correctly.”

“I think I can, but the doubts which you and your sister so often throw on my understanding make me almost doubt myself,” retorted Lambert, with a laughing glance at Elsie. “You must know, then, that there is a constellation named the Great Bear. It bears about as much resemblance to a bear as it does to a rattlesnake, but that’s what astronomers have called it. Part of it is much more in the shape of a plough, and one of the stars in that plough is the pole-star. You can easily distinguish it when once you know how, because two of the other stars are nearly in line with it, and so are called ‘pointers.’ When you stand looking at the pole-star you are facing the north, and of course, when you know where the north is, you can tell all the other points of the compass.”

It must not be supposed that the rest of the party listened to this astronomical lecture. The gallant Louis had sought to interest Elsie as well as Cora, but Elsie was too much engrossed with the way-worn hunters and their sad tale to think of anything else. When they had eaten enough to check the fierce cravings of hunger they related more particulars.

“And now,” said Warder, sitting erect and stretching his long arms in the air as if the more to enjoy the delightful sensation of returning strength, “we have pushed on at the risk of our lives to save time. This news must be carried at once to the Governor. The Company can help us best in a fix like this.”

“Of course, of course; I shall send word to him at once,” said his host.

“All right, Baptiste,” said Lambert, coming forward, “I expected you’d want a messenger. Here I am. Black Dick’s in the stable. He’ll be in the cariole in ten minutes. What shall I say to the Governor?”

“I’ll go with you,” answered Warder.

“So vill I,” said Winklemann.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” retorted Ravenshaw. “You both need rest. A sound sleep will fit you to do your work more actively in the morning. I myself will go to the fort.”

“Only one can go, at least in my cariole,” remarked Lambert, “for it only holds two, and no one can drive Black Dick but myself.”

Baptiste Warder was immoveable; it ended in his going off in the cariole with Lambert to inform the governor of the colony, who was also chief of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Red River, and to rouse the settlement. They had to pass the cottage of Angus Macdonald on the way.

“Oh! wow!” cried that excitable old settler when he heard the news. “Can it pe possible? So many tead an’ tying. Oh! wow!—Here, Martha! Martha! where iss that wuman? It iss always out of the way she iss when she’s wantit. Ay, Peegwish, you will do equally well. Go to the staple, man, an’ tell the poy to put the mare in the cariole. Make him pe quick; it’s slow he iss at the best, whatever.”

Lambert did not wait to hear the remarks of Angus, but drove off at once. Angus put on his leather coat, fut cap, and mittens, and otherwise prepared himself for a drive over the snow-clad plains to Fort Garry, where the Governor dwelt, intending to hear what was going to be done, and offer his services.

With similarly benevolent end in view, old Ravenshaw harnessed his horse and made for the same goal, regardless alike of rheumatism, age, and inclement weather. At a certain point, not far from the creek, the old trader’s private track and that which led to the house of Angus Macdonald united, and thereafter joined the main road, which road, by the way, was itself a mere track beaten in the snow, with barely room for two carioles to pass. Now, it so happened that the neighbours came up to the point of junction at the same moment. Both were driving hard, being eager and sympathetic about the sufferings of the plain-hunters. To have continued at the same pace would have been to insure a meeting and a crash. One must give way to the other! Since the affair of the knoll these two men had studiously cut each other. They met every Sabbath day in the same church, and felt this to be incongruous as well as wrong. The son of the one was stolen by savages. The son of the other was doing his utmost to rescue the child. Each regretted having quarrelled with the other, but pride was a powerful influence in both. What was to be done? Time for thought was short, for two fiery steeds were approaching each other at the rate of ten miles an hour. Who was to give in?

“I’ll see both carioles smashed to atoms first!” thought Ravenshaw, grinding his teeth.

“She’ll tie first,” thought Angus, pursing his lips.

The instinct of self-preservation caused both to come to a dead and violent halt when within six yards of the meeting-point. A happy thought burst upon Angus at that instant.

“Efter you, sir,” he said, with a palpable sneer, at the same time backing his horse slightly.

It was an expression of mock humility, and would become an evidence of superior courtesy if Ravenshaw should go insolently on. If, on the other hand, he should take it well, a friendly reference to the roads or the weather would convert the sneer into a mere nasal tone.

“Ah, thanks, thanks,” cried Mr Ravenshaw heartily, as he drove past; “bad news that about the plain-hunters. I suppose you’ve heard it.”

“Ay, it iss pad news—ferry pad news inteed, Mister Ruvnshaw. It will pe goin’ to the fort ye are?”

“Yes; the poor people will need all the help we can give them.”

“They wull that; oo ay.”

Discourse being difficult in the circumstances, they drove the remainder of the way in silence, but each knew that the breach between them was healed, and felt relieved. Angus did not, however, imagine that he was any nearer to his desires regarding the knoll. Full well did he understand and appreciate the unalterable nature of Sam Ravenshaw’s resolutions, but he was pleased again to be at peace, for, to say truth, he was not fond of war, though ready to fight on the smallest provocation.

Baptiste Warder was right in expecting that the Company would lend their powerful aid to the rescue.

The moment the Governor heard of the disaster, he took immediate and active steps for sending relief to the plains. Clothing and provisions were packed up as fast as possible, and party after party was sent out with these. But in the nature of things the relief was slow. We have said that some of the hunters and their families had followed the Indians and buffalo to a distance of between 150 and 200 miles. The snow was now so deep that the only means of transport was by dog-sledges. Dogs, being light and short-limbed, can travel where horses cannot, but even dogs require a track, and the only way of making one on the trackless prairie, or in the forest, is by means of a man on snow-shoes, who walks ahead of the dogs and thus “beats the track.” The men employed, however, were splendid and persevering walkers, and their hearts were in the work.

Both Samuel Ravenshaw and Angus Macdonald gave liberally to the cause; and each obtaining a team of dogs, accompanied one of the relief parties in a dog-cariole. If the reader were to harness four dogs to a slipper-bath, he would have a fair idea of a dog-cariole and team. Louis Lambert beat the track for old Ravenshaw. He was a recognised suitor at Willow Creek by that time. The old gentleman was well accustomed to the dog-cariole, but to Angus it was new—at least in experience.

“It iss like as if she was goin’ to pathe,” he remarked, with a grim smile, on stepping into the machine and sitting down, or rather reclining luxuriously among the buffalo robes.

The dogs attempted to run away with him, and succeeded for a hundred yards or so. Then they got off the track, and discovered that Angus was heavy. Then they stopped, put out their tongues, and looked humbly back for the driver to beat the track for them.

A stout young half-breed was the driver. He came up and led the way until they reached the open plains, where a recent gale had swept away the soft snow, and left a long stretch that was hard enough for the dogs to walk on without sinking. The team was fresh and lively.

“She’d petter hold on to the tail,” suggested Angus.

The driver assented. He had already left the front, and allowed the cariole to pass him, in order to lay hold of the tail-line and check the pace, but the dogs were too sharp for him. They bolted again, ran more than a mile, overturned the cariole, and threw its occupant on the snow, after which they were brought up suddenly by a bush.

On the way the travellers passed several others of the wealthy settlers who were going personally to the rescue. Sympathy for the plain-hunters was universal. Every one lent a willing hand. The result was that the lives of hundreds were saved, though many were lost. Their sufferings were so great that some died on their road to the colony, after being relieved at Pembina. Those found alive had devoured their horses, dogs, raw hides, leather, and their very moccasins. Mr Ravenshaw and his neighbour passed many corpses on the way, two of which were scarcely cold. They also passed at various places above forty sufferers in seven or eight parties, who were crawling along with great difficulty. To these they distributed the provisions they had brought with them. At last the hunters were all rescued and conveyed to the settlement—one man, with his wife and three children, having been dug out of the snow, where they had been buried for five days and nights. The woman and children recovered, but the man died.

Soon after this sad event the winter began to exhibit unwonted signs of severity. It had begun earlier, and continued later than usual. The snow averaged three feet deep in the plains and four feet in the woods, and the cold was intense, being frequently down to forty-five degrees below zero of Fahrenheit’s scale, while the ice measured between five and six feet in thickness on the rivers.

But the great, significant, and prevailing feature of that winter was snow. Never within the memory of man had there been such heavy, continuous, persistent snow. It blocked up the windows so that men had constantly to clear a passage for daylight. It drifted up the doors so that they were continually cutting passages for themselves to the world outside. It covered the ground to such an extent that fences began to be obliterated, and landmarks to disappear, and it weighted the roofs down until some of the weaker among them bid fair to sink under the load.

“A severe winter” was old Mr Ravenshaw’s usual morning remark as he went to the windows, pipe in hand, before breakfast. To which his better half invariably replied, “Never saw anything like it before;” and Miss Trim remarked, “It is awful.”

“It snows hard—whatever,” was Angus Macdonald’s usual observation about the same hour. To which his humble and fast friend Peegwish—who assisted in his kitchen—was wont to answer, “Ho!” and glare solemnly, as though to intimate that his thoughts were too deep for utterance.

Thus the winter passed away, and when spring arrived it had to wage an unusually fierce conflict before it gained the final victory over ice and snow.

Chapter Twelve.

Victory!

But before that winter closed, ay, before it began, a great victory was gained, which merits special mention here. Let us retrace our steps a little.

One morning, while Ian Macdonald was superintending the preparation of breakfast in some far-away part of the western wilderness, and Michel Rollin was cutting firewood, Victor Ravenshaw came rushing into camp with the eager announcement that he had seen the footprints of an enormous grizzly bear!

At any time such news would have stirred the blood of Ian, but at that time, when the autumn was nearly over, and hope had almost died in the breast of our scholastic backwoodsman, the news burst upon him with the thrilling force of an electric shock.

“Now, Ian, take your gun and go in and win,” said Victor with enthusiasm, for the youth had been infected with Rollin’s spirit of gallantry.

“You see,” Rollin had said to Victor during a confidential tÊte-À-tÊte, “ven a lady is in de case ye must bow de head. Ian do love your sister. Ver goot. Your sister do vish for a bar-claw collar. Ver goot. Vell, de chance turn up at last—von grizzly bar do appear. Who do shot ’im? Vy, Ian, certaintly. Mais, it is pity he am so ’bominibly bad shot!”

Victor, being an unselfish fellow, at once agreed to this; hence his earnest advice that Ian should take his gun and go in and win. But Ian shook his head.

“My dear boy,” he said, with a sigh, “it’s of no use my attempting to shoot a bear, or anything else. I don’t know what can be wrong with my vision, I can see as clear and as far as the best of you, and I’m not bad, you’ll allow, at following up a trail over hard ground; but when it comes to squinting along the barrel of a gun I’m worse than useless. It’s my belief that if I took aim at a haystack at thirty yards I’d miss it. No, Vic, I must give up the idea of shooting altogether.”

“What! have you forgotten the saying, ‘Faint heart never won fair lady?’” exclaimed Victor, in surprise.

“Nay, lad, my memory is not so short as that, neither is my heart as faint as you seem to think it. I do intend to go in and win, but I shall do it after a fashion of my own, Vic.”

Rollin, who came up at the moment and flung a bundle of sticks on the fire, demanded to know what “vas the vashion” referred to.

“That I won’t tell you at present, boys,” said Ian; “but, if you have any regard for me, you’ll make me a solemn promise not in any way to interfere with me or my plans unless you see me in actual and imminent danger of losing my life.”

“Jus’ so,” said Rollin, with a nod, “ye vill not step in to de reskoo till you is at de very last gasp.”

Having obtained the requisite promise, Ian set off with his comrades to examine the bear’s track. There could be but one opinion as to the size of the grizzly which had made it. As Victor had said, it was enormous, and showed that the animal had wandered about hither and thither, as if it had been of an undecided temperament. Moreover the track was quite fresh.

Of course there was much eager conversation about it among the friends; carried on in subdued tones and whispers, as if they feared that the bear might be listening in a neighbouring bush. After discussing the subject in every point of view, and examining the tracks in every light, they returned to the camp, at Victor’s suggestion, to talk it over more fully, and make preparations for the hunt. Ian, however, cut short their deliberations by reminding his comrades of their promise, and claiming the strict fulfilment of it.

“If this thing is to be undertaken by me,” he said, “I must have it all my own way and do the thing entirely by myself.”

“Nobody objects to your having it all your own way,” retorted Victor, somewhat testily, “but why should you be so secret about it? Why not give a fellow some sort of idea what your plan is, so that, if we can’t have the pleasure of helping you, we may at least enjoy the comfort of thinking about it?”

“No, Vic, no. I won’t give you a hint, because my plan is entirely new, and you would laugh at it; at least it is new to me, for I never heard of its having been attempted with grizzlies before, though I have heard of it in connection with other bears. Besides, I may fail, in which case the less that is known about my failure the better. Only this much will I say, the idea has been suggested to me by the formation of the land hereabouts. You know there is a gap or pass in the rocks just ahead of us, through which the bear seems to have passed more than once in the course of his rambles. Well, that gap is the spot where I will make my attempt. If you follow me to that gap I will at once return to camp and let you manage the matter yourselves.”

“Well, well, do as you please,” said Victor, with a laugh, “and the sooner you set about it the better. Rollin and I will ride away some miles in the opposite direction and see if we can’t get hold of a wild goose for supper.”

“Ha! perhaps de grizzly vill get hold of anoder and a vilder goose for supper,” said Rollin, with a shake of his head.

When his companions had departed, Ian Macdonald cleaned his gun carefully and loaded with ball; then placing his axe in his belt beside his scalping-knife, he proceeded with long and rapid strides towards the gap or pass above referred to. The bear’s track led through this pass, which was a narrow cut, not more than thirty feet wide, in a steep rocky ridge with which the country at that place was intersected for a considerable distance. The ridge itself, and the pass by which it was divided, were thickly covered with trees and dense undergrowth.

The floor of the pass was level, although rugged, and the rocks on either side rose in a sheer precipice, so that whoever should attempt to penetrate without wings to the region beyond must needs go by that narrow cut.

Arrived at the middle of the pass, where it was narrowest, Ian leant his gun against the precipice on one side, took off his coat, tucked up his sleeves, grasped his axe, and attacked a mighty tree. Like Ulysses of old, he swung the axe with trenchant power and skill. Huge chips flew circling round. Ere long a goodly tree creaked, groaned, and finally fell with a crash upon the ground. It was tough work. Ian heaved a sigh of satisfaction and wiped his streaming brow as he surveyed the fallen monarch. There was another king of the same size near to the opposite precipice, which he felled in the same way. Both monarchs mingled and severely injured their royal heads in the middle of the pass, which thus became entirely blocked up, for our woodsman had so managed that the trees fell right across it.

Next, Ian attacked the united heads, and with great labour hewed a passage through them, near to a spot where a large boulder lay. Selecting another forest king, Ian cut it so that one end of it fell on the boulder. The result of all this hewing and guiding of the falling monarchs was that the only available track through the pass was a hole about four feet in diameter, with a tree of great weight suspended above it by the boulder.

To chop off the branches and convert this latter tree into a log did not take long. Neither did it take much time or exertion to fashion a sort of support, or trigger, in the shape of a figure 4, immediately under the log, so as to obstruct the hole before mentioned. But to lower the log gently from the boulder on to this trigger without setting it off was a matter of extreme difficulty, requiring great care and much time, for the weight of the log was great, and if it should once slip to the ground, ten Ian Macdonalds could not have raised it up again. It was accomplished at last, however, and several additional heavy logs were leaned upon the main one to increase its weight.

“If he returns this way at all, he will come in the evening,” muttered Ian to himself, as he sat down on a stump and surveyed his handiwork with a smile of satisfaction. “But perhaps he may not come back till morning, in which case I shall have to watch here all night, and those impatient geese in the camp will be sure to disturb us on the plea that they feared I had been killed—bah! and perhaps he won’t come at all!”

This last idea was not muttered; it was only thought, but the thought banished the smile of satisfaction from Ian’s face. In a meditative mood he took up his gun, refreshed the priming and slightly chipped the flint, so as to sharpen its edge and make sure of its striking fire.

By that time it was long past noon, and the hunter was meditating the propriety of going to a neighbouring height to view the surrounding country, when a slight noise attracted his attention. He started, cocked his gun, glared round in all directions, and held his breath.

The noise was not repeated. Gradually the frown of his brows melted, the glare of his eyes abated, the tension of his muscles was relaxed, and his highly-wrought feelings escaped in a long-drawn sigh.

“Pshaw ’twas nothing. No bear in its senses would roam about at such an hour, considering the row I have been kicking up with hacking and crashing. Come, I’ll go to the top of that crag, and have a look round.”

He put on his coat and belt, stuck his axe and knife into the latter, shouldered his gun, and went nimbly up the rocky ascent on his left.

Coming out on a clear spot at the crag which had attracted him, he could see the whole pass beneath him, except the spot where his trap had been laid. That portion was vexatiously hidden by an intervening clump of bushes. Next moment he was petrified, so to speak, by the sight of a grizzly bear sauntering slowly down the pass as if in the enjoyment of an afternoon stroll.

No power on earth—except, perhaps, a glance from Elsie—could have unpetrified Ian Macdonald at that moment. He stood in the half-crouching attitude of one about to spring over the cliff—absolutely motionless—with eyes, mouth, and nostrils wide open, as if to afford free egress to his spirit.

Not until the bear had passed slowly out of sight behind the intervening bushes was he disenchanted. Then, indeed, he leaped up like a startled deer, turned sharp round, and bounded back the way he had come, with as much caution and as little noise as was compatible with such vigorous action.

Before he had retraced his steps ten yards, however, he heard a crash! Well did he know what had caused it. His heart got into his threat somehow. Swallowing it with much difficulty, he ran on, but a roar such as was never uttered by human lungs almost stopped his circulation. A few seconds brought Ian within view of his trap, and what a sight presented itself!

A grizzly bear, which seemed to him the hugest, as it certainly was at that moment the fiercest, that ever roamed the Rocky Mountains, was struggling furiously under the weight of the ponderous tree, with its superincumbent load of logs. The monster had been caught by the small of the back—if such a back can be said to have possessed a small of any kind—and its rage, mingled as it must have been with surprise, was awful to witness.

The whole framework of the ponderous trap trembled and shook under the influence of the animal’s writhings. Heavy though it was, the bear shook it so powerfully at each spasm of rage, that it was plainly too weak to hold him long. In the event of his breaking out, death to the trapper was inevitable.

Ian did not hesitate an instant. His chief fear at the moment was that his comrades at the camp might have heard the roaring—distant though they were from the spot—and might arrive in time to spoil, by sharing, his victory.

Victory? Another struggle such as that, and victory would have rested with the bear! Ian resolved to make sure work. He would put missing out of the question. The tremendous claws that had already worked a small pit in the earth reminded him of the collar and of Elsie. Leaping forward, he thrust the point of his gun into the ear of the infuriated animal and pulled the trigger. He was almost stunned by the report and roar, together with an unwonted shock that sent him reeling backward.

We know not how a good twist-barrelled gun would behave if its muzzle were thus stopped, but the common Indian gun used on this occasion was not meant to be thus treated. It was blown to pieces, and Ian stood gazing in speechless surprise at the fragment of wood remaining in his hand. How far it had injured the bear he could not tell, but the shot had not apparently abated its power one jot, for it still heaved upwards in a paroxysm of rage, and with such force as nearly to overthrow the complex erection that held it down. Evidently there was no time to lose.

Ian drew his axe, grasped it with both hands, raised himself on tiptoe, and brought it down with all his might on the bear’s neck.

The grizzly bear is noted for tenacity of life. Ian had not hit the neck-bone. Instead of succumbing to the tremendous blow, it gave the handle of the axe a vicious twist with its paw, which jerked the hunter violently to the ground. Before he could recover himself, the claws which he coveted so much were deep in his right thigh. His presence of mind did not forsake him even then. Drawing his scalping-knife, he wrenched himself round, and twice buried the keen weapon to the haft in the bear’s side.

Just then an unwonted swimming sensation came over Ian; his great strength seemed suddenly to dissipate, and the bear, the claw collar, even Elsie, faded utterly from his mind.

The stars were shining brightly in the calm sky, and twinkling with pleasant tranquillity down upon his upturned countenance when consciousness returned to Ian Macdonald.

“Ah, Vic!” he murmured, with a long sad sigh; “I’ve had such a splendid dream!”

“Come, that’s right, old boy. Here, have another mouthful,” said Victor, holding a tin can to his friend’s lips. “It’s only tea, hot and strong—the best thing in the world to refresh a wounded man; and after such a fight—”

“What!” exclaimed Ian, starting and sitting bolt upright, while he gazed in the faces of his two comrades. “Is it true? Have I killed the—the—grizzly?”

“Killed him!” exclaimed Victor, rising; “I should think you have.”

“Killed ’im!” echoed Rollin. “You’s killed ’im two or tree time over; vy, you’s axed ’im, stabbed ’im, shotted ’im, busted ’im, squashed ’im—ho!—”

“Am I much damaged?” inquired Ian, interrupting, for he felt weak.

“Oh! no—noting whatsocomever. Only few leetil holes in you’s legs. Be bedder in a veek.”

“Look here,” said Victor, kneeling beside the wounded man and presenting to him a piece of wood on which were neatly arranged a row of formidable claws. “I knew you would like to see them.”

“How good of you, Vic! It was thoughtful of you, and kind. Put them down before me—a little nearer—there,—so.”

Ian gazed in speechless admiration. It was not that he was vain of the achievement; he was too sensible and unselfish for that; but it was such a pleasure to think of being able, after all, and in spite of his bad shooting, to present Elsie with a set of claws that were greatly superior to those given to her mother by Louis Lambert—the finest, in short, that he had ever seen.

Chapter Fourteen.

The Flood begins to do its Work.

“It is very sad that the hut of poor Peegwish has been carried away,” observed Miss Martha Macdonald, while presiding at the breakfast-table.

“Yes, it iss fery sad,” responded Angus Macdonald, in a somewhat unamiable tone; “but it iss more sad that he will pe living in our kitchen now, for that wuman Wildcat must pe there too, and it iss not coot for Wildcat to live in the kitchen. She will pe too fond of the kitchen altogether, an’ she will pe a greater thief than our own cawtie, for she is more omniferous an’ not so easy to scare.”

“But cook is as good as a weasel at watching cats,” returned Martha, with a smile; “and it is reason we have to be thankful we have no heavier trouble, Angus, for many of the people up the river are driven out of their houses.”

“What you say iss true, Martha. Just pefore breakfast I met that Cherman crater, Winklemann, ridin’ to the mission-house for help. The ice would pe scrapin’ the end of his gardin, he was tellin’ me, an’ if the ruver would pe risin’ another fut it would come into the house. He says the people are goin’ off to the mountain like flocks of sheep, carryin’ their coots and trivin’ their cattle pefore them. It is fery pad times, whatever.”

In the parlour of Willow Creek House the breakfast party enlarged on the same theme.

“Things look serious,” observed Samuel Ravenshaw, as he commenced his third egg. “If the water rises at this rate much longer, not only the houses that stand low on the river banks, but the whole settlement will be in danger. It is said that four houses and a barn were swept away last night by the force of the ice somewhere above the mission premises, and that about sixty people slept in the church.”

“It is well that our house stands high,” said Mrs Ravenshaw. “Don’t you think, Sam, that we might have the barn prepared, in case some of our neighbours have to leave their houses?”

“The barn is ready, mother,” said Elsie. “Father and I have been arranging it all the morning with the aid of Peegwish, poor fellow, who has been sent to us by Macdonald.”

“Ay, and it’s as trim as an hospital,” added Mr Ravenshaw; “but I hope it won’t be wanted. The ice is now clearing away. When it is gone, the river will be sure to fall.—Tell the boy to saddle the horse, Cora,” continued the old gentleman, attacking his fourth egg. “I shall ride up to see how Winklemann gets on. Lambert is helping him.”

“Is Lambert’s own house safe?” asked Elsie, with a glance at her sister.

“Safe enough just now,” replied her father; “for it stands much higher and further back.”

“Don’t forget old Liz Rollin,” said Elsie. “Her hut stands high, but if things get worse she will be in danger, and there is no one to look after her, you know.”

“No fear of my forgetting the mother of the man who is helping to search for my dear boy,” returned Ravenshaw, “besides, old Liz is not without friends. Both Louis and Winklemann have promised to keep their eyes on her.”

This reference to the mother of Michel Rollin turned the thoughts of the party into a channel that was very familiar, for the lost Tony and his brother were seldom absent from their thoughts. Of late, however, they had ceased to talk much of the absent ones, because, as months flew by without any tidings, their anxieties increased, and as their fears increased they felt less inclined to talk hopefully. Long before the breaking up of the ice Mr Ravenshaw had sent off an expedition at his own cost in search of the searchers. It consisted of a trusty Indian and two half-breeds. They were to cross the plains towards the Saskatchewan district, and make inquiries among the fur-traders there; but nothing had yet been heard of them, and although the face and figure of Tony were never absent from the old man’s memory, his name was not now so frequently on his lips.

A sigh from Miss Trim revealed clearly the nature of her thoughts. Poor Miss Trim! Her occupation was almost gone since Tony’s disappearance. Besides losing the terrible and specific task of teaching Tony his lessons, the amiable lady had lost the general duty of keeping Tony in order, putting right what Tony had put wrong, and, generally, undoing what Tony did. She also missed painfully those little daily attentions to her hands and shins, which were rendered necessary in consequence of Tony’s activity with his nails and the toes of his boots, to say nothing of his teeth. For many weeks past—it seemed to her years—Miss Trim had not bandaged a cut, or fomented a bruise, or mollified a scratch with ointment. She absolutely felt as though she had suffered bereavement.

The silence which had descended on the breakfast-table was not broken until Mr Ravenshaw’s horse was reported ready at the door. On his way to the main road the old gentleman had to pass close to the summer-house on the knoll so much coveted by Angus Macdonald. There he reined up a few minutes. The position commanded an extensive view, and the aspect of the river was sufficiently alarming. The ice, which by that time had broken up, was rolling and crashing along with inconceivable force before the impetuous torrent. The water had risen to such a height that the lower lands were completely inundated. That it was still rising was made obvious by the fact that the rolling masses at the river-sides were being thrust higher and higher on obstructing points, carrying bushes and trees before them. Even while he gazed a lofty elm that grew on a low part of Angus Macdonald’s property was overthrown as if it had been a mere twig, and swept away. Several young maple and oak trees further down shared the same fate a few minutes later.

The house of Angus was full in view. It occupied a mound nearly, though not quite, as high as the knoll on which he stood, and was still, like his own dwelling, far above the reach of the raging flood. The spot where the hut of Peegwish had stood was by that time deep below the surface of the ice-torrent.

Mr Ravenshaw did not remain long in contemplation. The weather, which had been stormy, became suddenly cold, and a blinding fall of sleet induced him to button his greatcoat up to the chin as he hastened away.

Arriving at the mission station after a gallop of several miles, he found a state of things which almost beggars description. Men, women, and children were hurrying to and fro, laden with their chief valuables, or driving carts loaded with household goods, which they deposited on the mission premises for safety, preparatory to the desertion of houses, which was expected to take place on the morrow. Goods of every description were scattered about in wild confusion, for many of the people were half mad with alarm. The missionary, with his assistants, was doing his best to reduce the chaos to order.

Farther up the river Mr Ravenshaw encountered Herr Winklemann bearing a huge arm-chair on his shoulders. “Mine hause is toomed!” he said.

“Doomed? I hope not. Where are you going with the chair?”

“To zee hause of old Liz.”

Without waiting for a rejoinder the stout German hurried on, and was soon lost to view among the bushes. Ravenshaw followed him shortly afterwards, and found old Liz arranging and piling away the belongings of Winklemann, who, after depositing the arm-chair by the side of the fire opposite the corner occupied by Daddy, had returned to his doomed house for more. Anxious to know in what condition his friend’s house was, the old gentleman took the road to it. The house of old Liz, as we have said, stood high, and well back from the river. It had been made a place of refuge by the nearest neighbours, and was not only filled but surrounded by goods and furniture, as well as live stock. A dense mass of willow bushes, by which the little hut was surrounded, completely shut out the view all round, except backward, in the direction of the prairie, so that Ravenshaw did not come in sight of the spot where the flood had already commenced its work of destruction until he had traversed a footpath for nearly a quarter of a mile. Many wet and weary settlers passed him, however, with their possessions on their backs, and here and there groups of women and children, to all of whom he gave a cheering word of hope and encouragement.

On clearing the bushes the full extent of desolation was presented to view. The river here had overflowed its banks, so that a large part of the country wore the aspect of a lake. Knolls and slight eminences, which in happier times had been scarcely observable, now stood boldly out as conspicuous islets, while many farmhouses were either partly submerged or stood on the margin of the rising waters which beat against them. There was a strong current in some places, elsewhere it was calm; but the river itself was clearly traceable by the turmoil of crashing ice and surging water which marked its course. Men and women were seen everywhere—in the water and out of it—loading carts or barrows with their property, and old people, with children, looked on and shivered, for the thermometer had fallen to five degrees below the freezing-point of Fahrenheit’s scale, as indicated by the thermometer at the parsonage. The sleet had ceased, and the wind had fallen, but dark masses of clouds hurried athwart the lowering sky, and the dreary character of the scene was heightened by the poor cattle, which, being turned out of their warm places of shelter, stood on knolls or in the water and lowed piteously.

One of the most conspicuous objects of the scene, from Ravenshaw’s point of view, was poor Winklemann’s house—a small one which stood on a low spot already surrounded by water. In front of it was Winklemann himself, wading through the flood, without coat or hat, and carrying a large bundle in his arms.

“What have you got there?” asked Ravenshaw, as German went staggering past.

“Mine moder,” he replied, and hurried on.

Herr Winklemann had a mother—as old as the hills, according to his own report, and any one who beheld her feeble frame and wrinkled visage might well have believed him. With tender regard for her welfare her stout son had refrained from removing or even alarming her until the last moment, partly from fear that fright and the removal might do her serious injury, and partly from the hope that the flood had reached its highest point; but when the danger to his dwelling became great he resolved to carry her to the hut of old Liz, and, as a preliminary step, had removed her old arm-chair, as we have seen, to be ready for her reception. On returning to the house, however, he found that a portion of the river bank above had unexpectedly given way, diverging the flood a little in that part, so that his dwelling was already a foot deep in water. The old woman, however, lay safely on the bed where Winklemann had placed her, and was either unconscious of, or indifferent to what was going on. She did indeed look a little surprised when her son wrapped the blanket, on which she lay, completely round her, and took her up in his arms as if she had been a little child, but the look of surprise melted into a humorous smile as he drew the last fold over her face. She clearly believed it to be one of her dear boy’s little practical jokes, and submitted without a murmur.

Staggering through the flood with her, as we have said, Winklemann carried her to the cottage of old Liz, who received her with tender care, helped to place her in the big chair, and remembering Daddy’s tendency to fall into the fire, tied her securely therein.

Meanwhile Winklemann ran back to his house, where he found Mr Ravenshaw and Louis Lambert assisting several men to secure it on its foundations by tying it with ropes to the nearest trees.

Joining these, he lent his powerful aid; but a power greater than his was at work, which could not be resisted. Not only did the water rise at an alarming rate and rush against the house with tremendous violence, but great cakes of ice bore down on it and struck it with such force as to make every timber tremble. Like all the other houses of the settlement, it was built entirely of wood, and had no other foundation than the levelled ground on which its framework stood.

When the water rose considerably above his knees, and ice-floes threatened to sweep him away, Mr Ravenshaw thought it was time for an elderly gentleman to retire. The others continued for some time longer securing the ropes and, with poles, turning aside the ice; but ere long they also were driven to the higher ground, and compelled to stand idly by and watch the work of destruction.

“You’ve got everything out, I fancy?” asked Lambert.

“Everyt’ing,” replied Winklemann, with a deep sigh; “not’ing is left but zee hause.”

“An’ that won’t be left long,” observed Mr Ravenshaw, as a huge mass of ice went against its gable-end like a battering-ram.

It seemed to be the leader of a fresh battalion of the destroyer. A succession of ice-floes ran against the house and trees to which it was fastened. An additional rush of water came down at the same time like a wave of the sea. Every one saw that the approaching power was irresistible. The wave, with its ice-laden crest, absolutely roared as it engulfed the bushes. Two goodly elms bowed their heads into the flood and snapped off. The ropes parted like packthread; the building slewed round, reeled for a moment with a drunken air, caught on a shallow spot, and hung there.

“Ach! mine goot old hause—farvell!” exclaimed Winklemann, in tones of deepest pathos.

The house bowed as if in recognition of the old familiar voice, sloped into deeper water, gurgled out its latest breath, like a living thing, through its doors and windows, and sank beneath the wreck and ruin of its old surroundings.

It was what men aptly term a clean sweep, but Winklemann’s was not the only house that succumbed to the flood on that occasion. Many besides himself were rendered homeless. That night, (the 4th of May), the waters rose four feet, and the settlers even on the higher grounds began to think of flight.

Chapter Fifteen.

The Flood continues to do its Work.

Rapidly and steadily did the waters of the Red River rise, until, overflowing all their banks, they spread out into the plains, and gradually settler after settler retired before the deluge, each forsaking his home at the last moment, and going off in quest of higher ground with his cattle and property.

These high places were not numerous, for the whole region was very level. Many settlers discovered at that time a number of features in the colony which had been unrecognised before, and found refuge on spots which had never been observed as lying above the dead level of the plains. Even these spots were not all safe. Many of them were speedily submerged, and those who had fled to them sought refuge on the still higher knolls, which soon became inconveniently crowded. Some miles from the river there was an elevation of ground named the “Little Mountain,” and to this many of the people repaired. It was about as deserving of its title as is a molehill; nevertheless it proved a safe asylum in the end.

Louis Lambert was driven from his home the day after that on which the house of his friend Winklemann was destroyed. His house was a stout one of two storeys, and, owing to its position, was less exposed to the current of the flood than many other dwellings. Confident of its strength and the security of its position, its owner had carried all his goods and furniture to the upper storey, but on returning, after assisting his friend, he found the water in it so high that he feared it might be set afloat—as some of the houses had already been—and finally made up his mind to remove. But where should he remove to? That was the question.

“To zee hause of old Liz,” observed his friend. “It is close to hand, an’ zere is yet room.”

This was true, but Lambert’s inclinations turned in the direction of Willow Creek; he therefore protested there was not room.

“No, no,” he said; “it’s not fair to crowd round old Liz as we are doing. I’ll ride down to Ravenshaw’s and see if there is room on his ground to place my property. There will be plenty of time. Even if the water should go on rising, which I hope it won’t, my house can’t float for many hours. Meanwhile, if you’ll fetch round the boat, and place some of the heavy goods in it, you’ll be doing me a good turn.”

“Vell, vell,” muttered the German, as he looked after his friend with a quiet smile and a shake of the head, “dere is no madness like lof! Ven a man falls in lof he becomes blind, qvite blind!”

The blind one, meanwhile, mounted his steed and galloped away on the wings of “lof.” Lambert was a reckless rider, and an impatient though good-natured fellow. He dashed at full speed through shallow places, where the floods were creeping with insidious, tide-like persistency over the farm-lands, and forded some of the creeks, which almost rendered swimming unavoidable; but in spite of his daring he was compelled to make many a vexatious dÉtour in his headlong course down to Willow Creek. On the way his mind, pre-occupied though it was, could not escape being much affected by the scenes of devastation through which he passed. Everywhere near the river houses were to be seen standing several feet deep in water, while their owners were either engaged in conveying their contents in boats and canoes to the nearest eminences, or removing them from such eminences in carts to spots of greater security. Some of the owners of these deserted houses had become so reckless or so despairing under their misfortunes, that they offered to sell them for merely nominal sums. It is said that some of them changed hands for so small a sum as thirty shillings or two pounds.

Cantering round the corner of a fence, Lambert came within a hundred yards of a house round which the water was deep enough to float a large boat. Here he observed his friends, John Flett and David Mowat, embarking household goods into a large canoe out of the parlour window. Riding into the water, Lambert hailed them.

“Hallo, Flett, d’ee want help?”

“Thank ’ee, no; this is the last load. Got all the rest down to the church; the minister is lettin’ us stow things in the loft.”

“You’re in too great haste, Flett,” returned Lambert. “The water can’t rise much higher; your place is sure to stand.”

“Not so sure o’ that, Louis; there’s a report brought in by a redskin that all the country between the sources of the Assinaboine and Missouri is turned into a sea, and the waters o’ the Missouri itself are passing down to Lake Winnipeg. He says, too, that a whole village of redskins has been swept away.”

“Bah! it’s not true,” said Lambert.

“True or false,” rejoined Flett, resuming his work, “it’s time for me to clear out o’ this.”

Forsaking the road, which he had hitherto attempted to follow, Lambert now stretched out at full gallop into the plains. He came to a small creek and found that the simple wooden bridge had been washed away, and that the waters of the river were driving its tiny current in the wrong direction. In a fit of impatience he applied the whip to his steed, which, being a fiery one, rushed furiously at the creek. Fire does not necessarily give an untrained horse power to leap. The animal made an awkward attempt to stop, failed, made a still more awkward attempt to jump, failed again, and stumbled headlong into the creek, out of which he and his master scrambled on the opposite side.

Lambert shook himself, laughed, leaped into the saddle, and went off again at full speed. He came to the mission station, but did not stop there. It still stood high above the waters, and was crowded with settlers. Not far from it was a spot of rising ground, which was covered with more than a hundred tents and wigwams belonging to Canadian and half-breed families. Passing on, he came upon other scenes of destruction, and finally arrived at the abode of old Mr Ravenshaw. It, like the mission premises, still stood high above the rising flood. The family were assembled in the chief sitting-room, old Ravenshaw enjoying a pipe, while the ladies were variously occupied around him.

“You’ve heard the report brought by the Indian about the flood, I fancy?”

“Oh, yes; but I give no ear to reports,” said the old gentleman, emitting an indignant puff of smoke; “they often end like that.”

“True; nevertheless, it’s as well to be prepared,” said Lambert, with a glance at Elsie and Cora, who sat together near the window; “and I’ve come to beg for house-room for my goods and chattels, for the old house is not so safe as I had thought.”

“There’s plenty of room in the barn for people in distress,” said Elsie, with a glance at her sister.

“Or in the cow-house,” added Cora, with a laugh and a slight toss of her head; “we’ve had the cattle removed on purpose to make room for you.”

“How considerate! And the cow-house of Willow Creek, with its pleasant associations, is a palace compared to the hall of any other mansion,” said the gallant Louis.

A crash was heard outside just then. On looking from the windows, a great cake of ice about five feet thick, with a point like a church spire, was seen attempting, as it were, to leap the lower end of the garden-fence. It failed; but on making a second attempt was more successful. The fence went slowly down, and the spire laid its head among the vegetables, or rather on the spot where the vegetables would have been had the season been propitious. It was accompanied by a rush of water.

The sight was viewed with comparative composure by old Mr Ravenshaw, but his better half took it less quietly, and declared that they would all be drowned.

“I hope not!” exclaimed Miss Trim fervently, clasping her hands.

“We’re high and dry just now, Louis,” said Mr Ravenshaw gravely, “but Willow Creek won’t be a place of refuge long if the rise goes on at this rate. See, my neighbour is beginning to show signs of uneasiness, though the ground on which he stands is not much lower than my own.”

As he spoke, the old fur-trader pointed to the house of Angus Macdonald, where a large cart was being loaded with his property.

Angus himself entered at the moment to beg leave to remove some of his valuables to his friend’s barn.

“It iss not the danger, you see, Muster Ruvnshaw, that troubles me; it iss the watter. There are some things, as the leddies fery well know, will pe quite destroyed py watter, an’ it is puttin’ them out of harm’s way that I will pe after.”

“Put whatever you like in the barn, Macdonald,” said Mr Ravenshaw promptly; “Elsie and I have had it and the other outhouses prepared. You are heartily welcome. I hope, however, that the water won’t rise much higher.”

“The watter will rise higher, Muster Ruvnshaw,” returned Angus, with the decision of an oracle; “an’ it will pe goot for us if it will leave our houses standin’ where they are. Peegwish will be tellin’ me that; an’ Peegwish knows what he iss apout when he is not trunk, whatever.”

Peegwish did indeed know what he was about. At the very time that Angus was speaking about him, Peegwish, feeling convinced that Macdonald’s house was in danger, was on his way to the mission station, which he knew to be a place of greater safety, and where he felt sure of a welcome, for the Reverend Mr Cockran—in charge at the time—had a weakness for the old hypocrite, and entertained strong hopes of bringing about his reformation. For two days he stayed in the parsonage kitchen, smoking his pipe, revelling in the odds and ends, such as knuckle-bones, stray bits of fat and tripe, which fell to his lot, and proudly exhibiting himself in one of the minister’s cast-off black coats, which contrasted rather oddly with a pair of ornamented blue leggings and a scarlet sash. When not busy in the kitchen, he went about among the homeless settlers assembled round the mission, sometimes rendering a little help, oftener causing a good deal of obstruction, and vainly endeavouring to obtain beer, while he meditated sadly now and then on his failure in the brewing line.

At the end of these two days, however, a great change took place at the mission station, for the flood continued steadily to increase until it reached the church and parsonage, and drove the hundreds of people who had assembled there away to the more distant knolls on the plains. Mr Cockran, with his household and Sabbath scholars, besides a few of the people, resolved to stick to the church as long as it should stick to the ground, and Peegwish remained with them. He had unbounded confidence in the good missionary, and still more unbounded confidence in the resources of the parsonage kitchen. Wildcat was similarly impressed.

At last the water rose to the church itself and beat against the foundations of the parsonage, for the current was very strong and had carried away some of the fences. All the people were thus obliged to take refuge in the church itself, or in the parsonage.

On the 13th of May there were very few dry spots visible on or near the banks of the Red River. Dozens of houses had been carried away, and were either destroyed or stranded on localities far from their original sites. As far as the eye could reach, the whole region had been converted into a mighty lake, or rather sea; for in the direction of the plains the waters seemed to join the horizon. Everywhere this sea was studded with islets and knolls, which grew fewer and smaller as the floods increased. Here and there piles of floating firewood looked like boats with square-sails in the distance, while deserted huts passed over the plains with the stream like fleets of Noah’s arks!

When the water began to touch the parsonage, its owner gave orders to collect timber and make preparation for the erection of a strong stage as a final place of refuge.

“Come,” said he to Peegwish, when his orders were being carried out; “come, get your canoe, Peegwish, and we will pay a visit to the poor fellows on the knoll up the river.”

The Indian waded to a spot close by, where his canoe was fastened to a post, and brought it to the door, after the fashion of a gondolier of Venice. The faithful Wildcat took the bow paddle; the clergyman stepped into the middle of the craft and sat down.

They shot swiftly away, and were soon out of sight. The day was calm and warm, but the sky had a lurid, heavy appearance, which seemed to indicate the approach of bad weather. Paddling carefully along to avoid running against sunk fences, they soon came into the open plains, and felt as though they had passed out upon the broad bosom of Lake Winnipeg itself. Far up the river—whose course was by that time chiefly discernible by empty houses, and trees, as well as bushes, half-submerged—they came in sight of a stage which had been erected beside a cottage. It stood only eighteen inches out of the water, and here several women and children were found engaged in singing Watts’ hymns. They seemed quite comfortable, under a sort of tarpaulin tent, with plenty to eat, and declined to be taken off, though their visitors offered to remove them one at a time, the canoe being unable to take more. Further up, the voyagers came to the hut of old Liz.

This hut was by that time so nearly touched by the water that all the people who had formerly crowded round it had forsaken it and made for the so-called mountain. Only Liz herself remained, and Herr Winklemann, to take care of their respective parents.

“Do you think it safe to stay?” asked the clergyman, as he was about to leave.

“Safe, ya; qvite safe. Besides, I have big canoe, vich can holt us all.”

“Good-bye, then, and remember, if you want anything that I can give you, just paddle down to the station and ask for it. Say I sent you.”

“Ya, I vill go down,” said Herr Winklemann gratefully. And Herr Winklemann did go down, much to his own subsequent discomfiture and sorrow, as we shall see.

Meanwhile Mr Cockran reached the knoll which he had set out to visit. It was of considerable extent, and crowded with a very miscellaneous, noisy, and quarrelsome crew, of all sorts, ages, and colours, in tents and wigwams and extemporised shelters.

They received the clergyman heartily, however, and were much benefited by his visit, as was made apparent by the complete though temporary cessation of quarrelling.

The elements, however, began to quarrel that evening. Mr Cockran had intended to return home, but a gale of contrary wind stopped him, and he was fain to accept the hospitality of a farmer’s tent. That night the storm raged with fury. Thunder and lightning added to the grandeur as well as to the discomfort of the scene. Some time after midnight a gust of wind of extreme fury threw down the farmer’s tent, and the pole hit the farmer on the nose! Thus rudely roused, he sprang up and accidentally knocked down Peegwish, who happened to be in his way. They both fell on the minister, who, being a powerful man, caught them in a bear-like grasp and held them, under the impression that they had overturned the tent in a quarrel while he was asleep.

At that moment a cry of fire was raised. It was found that a spark from a tent which stood on the windward side of the camp had caught the long grass, and a terrestrial conflagration was added to the celestial commotions of the night. It was a moment of extreme peril, for the old grass was plentiful and sufficiently dry to burn. It is probable that the whole camp would have been destroyed but for a providential deluge of rain which fell at the time and effectually put the fire out.

Of course Mr Cockran became very anxious about those he had left at home, for the storm had increased the danger of their position considerably. Happily, with the dawn the gale moderated. The improvement did not, indeed, render canoeing safe, for the white-crested waves of that temporary sea still lashed the shores of the new-made islet; but the case was urgent, therefore the clergyman launched his canoe, and, with Peegwish and the faithful Wildcat, steered for the station.

Chapter Sixteen.

Winklemann and Old Liz get into Trouble.

At the parsonage, before the storm had fairly begun, the canoe party was thought of with considerable anxiety, for Mrs Cockran knew how frail the craft was in which her husband had embarked, and among the sixty-three persons who had taken refuge with her not one was capable of taking command of the rest in a case of emergency. Great, therefore, was her satisfaction when Herr Winklemann appeared in his canoe with a request for a barrel of flour.

“You shall have one,” said Mrs Cockran, “and anything else you may require; but pray do not leave me to-night. I can give you a comfortable bed, and will let you go the moment my husband returns. I fully expect him this evening.”

“Madam,” answered the gallant Winklemann, with a perplexed look, “you is vere goot, bot de gale vill be rise qvickly, an’ I dares not leaf mine moder vidout protection.”

“Oh! but just stay for an hour or two,” entreated Mrs Cockran, “and show the people how to go on with the stage. Perhaps my husband may return sooner than we expect. Perhaps the storm may not come on; many such threatenings, you know, come to nothing.”

Winklemann looked anxiously up at the sky and shook his head, but the entreaties of the lady prevailed. The good-natured German consented to remain for a “ver leetle” time, and at once set about urging on and directing the erection of the stage. This stage was planned to be a substantial platform about thirty feet square, supported on posts firmly driven into the ground, so that the water might pass freely under it. In the event of the parsonage becoming untenable it would form a refuge of comparative safety.

It was while Winklemann was busily engaged on the stage that the storm broke forth which compelled the clergyman to spend the night on the islet, as already described. Of course the storm also forced Winklemann to remain at the station. But that impulsive youth’s regard for his “moder” would not permit of his giving in without a struggle. When he saw that the gale increased rapidly, he resolved to start off without delay. He launched his canoe; a half-breed in his employment managed the bow paddle, but they found that their united strength was insufficient to drive the craft more than a hundred yards against wind and waves. Returning to the station, Winklemann engaged two additional men to aid him, but the increasing gale neutralised the extra force. After a vain struggle the canoe was hurled back on the knoll, a wave caught the bow, overturned it, and threw the men into the water at the very door of the parsonage.

The canoe was partially broken. Time was required to repair it. Time also gave the gale opportunity to gather power, and thus the chafing German was compelled to spend the night at the station.

Meanwhile, those men whom he had left behind him spent a terrible night, but the brunt of the trouble fell upon old Liz.

Poor old Liz! She was a squat piece of indomitable energy, utterly regardless of herself and earnestly solicitous about every one else.

When the storm commenced, her dwelling had begun to show symptoms of instability. This fact she carefully concealed from Daddy and old Mrs Winklemann, who remained in their respective chairs smiling at each other, for both were accustomed to good treatment from their children, and regarded life in general from a sunny point of view. They knew that something very unusual was going on, but the old frau said—or thought—to herself, “My boy will look after me!” while Daddy said, or thought, “Liz knows all about it.” Happy trustful spirits! Enviable pair!

Having informed the pair that she was going away for a minute or two to look after something outside, old Liz left them. She found herself up to the knees in water, of course, the moment she passed the doorway. From an outhouse she procured a strong rope. This she fastened to a large iron ring in the side of the hut, and attached the other end to a thick tree whose branches overshadowed it. Even during the brief time she was thus engaged the flood increased so rapidly, and the rising wind blew so wildly, that the poor creature was almost carried off her short legs. But old Liz had a powerful will, and was strong-hearted. Having accomplished her object, and lost for ever her frilled cap in so doing, she struggled back towards the door of the hut. A passing billet of firewood tripped her up and sent her headlong into the flood. She disappeared, but emerged instantly, with glaring eyes, gasping mouth, and streaming hair. A resolute rush brought her to the door-step; she seized the door-post, and was saved.

“Hech! but it’s an awfu’ time,” gasped old Liz, as she wrung the water from her garments.—“Comin’, Daddy! I’ll be their this meenit. I’ve gotten mysel’ a wee wat.”

“What’s wrang?” asked Daddy, in a feeble voice, as his ancient daughter entered.

“It’s only a bit spate, Daddy. The hoose is a’maist soomin’, but ye’ve nae need to fear.”

“I’m no’ feared, Liz. What wad I be feared o’ whan ye’re there?”

“Ver is mine boy?” demanded old Mrs Winklemann, looking round.

“He’s gane to the kirk for floor. Ne’er fash yer heed aboot him. He’ll be back afore lang.”

The old woman seemed content, though she did not understand a word of Liz’s Scotch.

“Bless mine boy,” she said, with a mild smile at Daddy, who replied with an amiable nod.

But this state of comparative comfort did not last long. In half an hour the water came over the threshold of the door and flooded the floor. Fortunately the old couple had their feet on wooden stools and thus escaped the first rush, but old Liz now felt that something must be done to keep them dry. There was a low table in the room. She dragged it out and placed it between the couple, who smiled, under the impression, no doubt, that they were about to have their evening meal.

“Daddy, I’m gaun to pit yer legs on the table. It’ll be mair comfortabler, an’ll keep ye oot o’ the wat.”

Daddy submitted with a good grace, and felt more easy than usual, the table being very little higher than his chair. Mrs Winklemann was equally submissive and pleased. Covering the two pairs of legs with a blanket, old Liz produced some bread and cheese, and served out rations thereof to keep their minds engaged. She plumed herself not a little on the success of the table-and-legs device, but as the water rose rapidly she became anxious again, though not for herself. She waded about the hut with supreme indifference to the condition of her own lower limbs. At last she mounted upon the bed and watched, as the water rose inch by inch on the legs of the two chairs.

“What wull I do whan it grups them?” she muttered, experiencing that deep feeling of anticipation with which one might watch the gradual approach of fire to gunpowder.

The objects of her solicitude snored pleasantly in concert.

“It’ll kill them wi’ the cauld, to say naething o’ the start,” continued the old woman with deepening, almost desperate, anxiety. “Oh man, man, what for did ye leave us?”

This apostrophe was addressed to the absent Winklemann.

One inch more, five minutes longer, and the flood would reach the bodies of the old couple. Liz looked round wildly for some mode of delivering them, but looked in vain. Even if her strength had been adequate, there was no higher object in the room to which she could have lifted them. The bed, being a truckle one, and lower than the chairs, was already submerged, and old Liz herself was coolly, if not calmly, seated in two inches of water. At the very last moment deliverance came in an unexpected manner. There was a slight vibration in the timbers of the hut, then a sliding of the whole edifice. This was followed by a snap and a jolt: the ring-bolt or the rope had gone, and old Liz might, with perfect propriety, have exclaimed, in the words of the sea song, “I’m afloat! I’m afloat! and the Rover is free!”

For one moment her heart failed; she had read of Noah’s ark, but had never quite believed in the stability of that mansion. Her want of faith was now rebuked, for the old hut floated admirably, as seamen might say, on an even keel. True, it committed a violent assault on a tree at starting, which sent it spinning round, and went crashing through a mass of drowned bushes, which rendered it again steady; but these mishaps only served to prove the seaworthiness of her ark, and in a few minutes the brave little woman revived. Splashing off the bed and spluttering across the room, she tried to open the door with a view to see what had happened and whither they were bound, for the two windows of the mansion were useless in this respect, being fitted with parchment instead of glass. But the door was fast, and refused to open.

“We’ll a’ be lost!” exclaimed Daddy, in alarm, for he had been awakened by the shock against the tree, and was now slightly alive to their danger.

“Ver is mine boy?” asked the old frau, in a whimpering voice.

“Nae fear o’ ’ee,” said Liz, in a soothing tone. “Him that saved Noah can save us.”

“Open the door an’ see where we are, lassie,” said the old man.

“It’ll no’ open, Daddy.”

“Try the wundy, then.”

“I’m sweer’d to break the wundy,” said Liz. “Losh, man, I’ll try the lum!”

The chimney, to which old Liz referred, was capacious enough to admit a larger frame than hers. Moreover, it was a short one, and the fire had long ago been drowned out. With the enthusiasm of an explorer, the little woman stooped and entered the fireplace. She felt about inside for a few moments, and in doing so brought down an enormous quantity of soot. Immediately there was a tremendous coughing in the chimney.

“Lassie! lassie! come oot! Ve’ll be chokit,” cried Daddy, in alarm.

“Hoots, man, hand yer gab,” was the polite reply.

Liz was not to be easily turned from her purpose. Raising one leg up she found a crevice for her right foot, and the aged couple beheld the old creature, for the first time, in the attitude of a danseuse, standing on one toe. Next moment the remaining leg went up, and she disappeared from view. If there had been any one outside, the old woman would have been seen, two minutes later, to emerge from the chimney-top with the conventional aspect of a demon—as black as a Zulu chief, choking like a chimpanzee with influenza, and her hair blowing freely in the wind. Only those who have intelligently studied the appearance of chimney-sweeps can form a proper idea of her appearance, especially when she recovered breath and smiled, as she thought of her peculiar position.

But that position was one which would have damped the courage of any one except old Liz. The storm was beginning to grow furious; the sun, which had already set, was tingeing the black and threatening clouds with dingy red. Far as the eye could reach, the once green prairie presented an angry sea, whose inky waves were crested and flecked with foam, and the current was drifting the hut away into the abyss of blackness that seemed to gape on the horizon.

“What see ye, Liz?” cried Daddy, bending a little, so as to send his voice up the chimney.

“I see naethin’ but watter; watter everywhere,” said Liz, unconsciously quoting the Ancient Mariner, and bending so as to send her reply down. She did more; she lost her balance, and sent herself down to the bottom of the chimney, where she arrived in a sitting posture with a flop, perhaps we should say a squash, seeing that she alighted in water, which squirted violently all over her sooty person.

This sudden reappearance astonished the aged couple almost more than it surprised Liz herself, for she could not see herself as they saw her.

“Hech! but that was a klyte; but ne’er heed, Daddy. I’m nane the waur. Eh, but I’ll ha’e to clean mysel’,” said old Liz, rising slowly and going straight to a corner cupboard, whence she took a slab of soap, and began to apply it vigorously, using the entire room, so to speak, as a wash-tub. The result was unsatisfactory; beginning the process as a pure black, she only ended it as an impure mulatto, but she was content, and immediately after set herself to fasten the aged pair more securely in their chairs, and to arrange their limbs more comfortably on the table; after that she lighted a candle and sat down on the sloppy bed to watch.

Thus that household spent the night, rocked, as it were, on the cradle of the deep.

At daylight Herr Winklemann rose from his sleepless couch at the parsonage, and finding that the wind had moderated, launched his canoe. He left the mission station just an hour before Mr Cockran returned to it.

Anxious was the heart of the poor youth as he wielded the paddle that morning, and many were the muttered remarks which he made to himself, in German, as he urged the canoe against wind and current. As he neared home his fears increased. On reaching a certain part from which he had been wont to descry the chimney of old Liz’s hut, he perceived that the familiar object was gone, and uttered a mighty roar of horror.

The half-breed in the bow ceased paddling, and looked back in alarm.

“Git on, you brute!” shouted Winklemann, at the same time exerting his great strength as though he meant to urge the light craft out of the water into the air.

A few minutes more and they swept round into the space where the hut had once stood. There was nothing left but the bit of rope that had been made fast to the ring-bolt. Poor Winklemann let his paddle drop and sank almost double with his face in his hands.

“Mine moder,” was all he could say, as he groaned heavily. In a few seconds he recovered with a start and bade the man in the bow paddle for his life.

Winklemann, of course, knew that the house must have floated downwards with the current, if it had not been utterly overwhelmed. He directed his search accordingly, but the breadth of land now covered by the flood caused the currents to vary in an uncertain manner, as every ridge, or knoll, or hollow in the plains modified them. Still, there could be only one general direction. After a few minutes of anxious reflection the bereaved man resolved to keep by the main current of the river. He was unfortunate in this, for the hut, in commencing its adventurous career, had gone off in the direction of the plains. All day he and his companion paddled about in search of the lost family, but in vain. At night they were forced to return to the parsonage for a little food and rest, so as to fit them for a renewal of the search on the following morning.

At the mission station they found Mr Cockran, with his wife and forty of his people, established on the stage. Early in the day the water had burst into the parsonage, and soon stood a foot deep on the floor, so that the pastor deemed it high time to forsake it and take to the last refuge. It was a crowded stage, and great was the anxiety of many of the mothers upon it lest their little ones should be thrust over the edge into the water. No such anxiety troubled the little ones themselves. With that freedom from care which is their high privilege, they even gambolled on the brink of destruction.

Next day was the Sabbath. To go to church was impossible. There were three and a half feet of water in that building. The day was fine, however, and sunny. The pastor, therefore, had service on the stage, and being an earnest, intelligent man, he made good use of the floods and the peculiarity of their circumstances to illustrate and enforce his discourse.

Long before the hour of worship had arrived, however, poor Winklemann went off in his canoe, and spent the whole of that day, as he spent several succeeding days, in anxious, diligent, hopeful, but finally despairing search for his lost old “moder.”

Chapter Eighteen.

Old Ravenshaw goes Exploring and Rescuing.

Another fine calm day came to comfort the victims of the flood in the midst of that tempestuous time, with its April character of mingled storm and sunshine. The rise in the water on the previous night had been almost imperceptible. Feeling, therefore, somewhat easier in his mind, old Mr Ravenshaw determined to embark in his boat for the purpose of paying a visit to those unfortunates who, after being driven from their homes, had taken refuge on the imperceptible eminence which had been styled “The Mountain.” Taking with him Lambert and a stout crew, he embarked from his upper bedroom window, bade his wife and daughters an affectionate adieu, hoisted his sail, and pushed off.

The hoisting of the sail was a mere matter of form.

“It’s of no use at present, but will be ready to catch the first puff that may favour us,” observed the old gentleman, as he sat down and took the tiller. “Give way, lads.”

The oars were dipped, and the Willow Creek mansion was soon but a speck on the horizon of the watery waste.

And now the old fur-trader learned the full extent of the desolation with which it had pleased God to visit the settlement at that time. While taken up with the cares and anxieties connected with Willow Creek, he was of course aware that terrible destruction, if not death, must have been going on around him; but now, when he rowed over the plains, saw the state of things with his own eyes, and heard the accounts of many settlers, some of whom he rescued from positions of danger, the full extent of the damage done by the great flood of 1826 was borne powerfully in upon his mind.

The varied stories which some had to tell of their escapes, others of their losses, and all, of their sufferings, were sad as well as interesting. Some of the people had taken shelter in garrets or on stages, where they had to wait anxiously till some boat or canoe should turn up to rescue them. Some had been surprised by the sudden rise of the flood at night while asleep, and had wakened to find themselves and their beds afloat. Two men who had gone to sleep on a rick of hay found themselves next morning drifting with the current some three miles below the spot where they had lain down. Others, like old Liz, had been carried off bodily in their huts. Not a few had been obliged to betake themselves to the housetops until help came. Some there were who took to swimming, and saved themselves by clinging to the branches of trees; yet, strange to say, during the whole course of that flood only one man lost his life. (See Note 1.)

It was very different, however, with regard to the lower animals. When at its height the water spread out on each side of the river to a distance of six miles, and about fourteen miles of its length, so that not only were many horses, cattle, pigs, and poultry drowned in the general stampede, but the pretty little ground squirrels were driven out of their holes, and along with rats, mice, snakes, and insects, perished in thousands. Even the frogs discovered that too much of a good thing is bad, for they found no rest for the soles of their feet, except floating logs, planks, and stray pieces of furniture, on which many of them were seen by our voyagers gazing contemplatively at the situation.

Everywhere houses and barns were seen floating about, their owners gone, but with dogs and cats in the doorways and windows, and poultry on the roofs; and the barking, mewing, and cackling of these, with the squealing of sundry pigs, tended to increase the general desolation. Such of the contents of these houses as had been left behind in the flight were washed out of them, and the waters were sprinkled here and there with bedsteads, chairs, tables, feather-beds, and other property, besides the carcasses of dead animals.

At certain points of the river, where there were shallows towards which the currents set, carts, carioles, boxes, carriages, gigs, fencing, and property of every description were stranded in large quantities and in dire confusion, but much of the wreck was swept onward and engulfed in Lake Winnipeg.

The unfortunate settlers found refuge ultimately, after being driven from knoll to knoll, on the higher ground of the Assinaboine, on the Little Mountain, and on a low hill twelve miles from the settlement.

On his way to the Little Mountain Mr Ravenshaw touched at the mission station. Here the various groups in the garret of the parsonage, the gallery of the church, and on the stage, were greatly reduced in numbers, many of the refugees having availed themselves of the visits of several settlers and gone off to the mountain in their boats or canoes, with what of their property they had managed to save.

Among those who remained there was a marked spirit of cheerful submission.

“You see,” said the pastor, in reply to an observation of Mr Ravenshaw on this point, “I have endeavoured to impress upon my poor people that mere quiet submission to the inevitable is not a Christian characteristic, that men of all creeds and nations may and do thus submit, and that it is the special privilege of the follower of Jesus to submit cheerfully to whatever befalls—pleasant or otherwise—because he has the promise that all things shall work together for his good.”

“Humph!” said the trader with a shrug of his shoulders; “it seems to me that some of us don’t avail ourselves much of our privilege.”

The pastor could scarcely repress a laugh at the grumpy tone in which his visitor spoke.

“You are right, Mr Ravenshaw, none of us come nearly up to the mark in our Christian course. The effort to do so constitutes much of the battle that we have to fight, but our comfort is, that we shall be more than conquerors in the long-run. There sits a widow now,” he continued, pointing to an Indian woman seated on the stage who was busy making a pair of moccasins for a little child that played by her side, “who is fighting her battle bravely at present. Not a murmur has yet escaped her lips, although she has lost all her possessions—except her boy.”

“Ah! except her boy!” The old trader did not speak. He only thought of Tony and quickly changed the drift of the conversation.

Soon after leaving the mission station a breeze sprang up; the sail filled; the oars were pulled in, and they went more swiftly on. Ere long they sighted the stage on which the women had been previously discovered singing hymns. They did not sing now. Their provisions were failing, their hopes of an abatement in the flood were dying out, and they no longer refused to accept deliverance from their somewhat perilous position.

“Have you seen anything of Herr Winklemann lately?” asked Lambert of one of the women.

“Nothing; but John Flett and David Mowat passed our stage yesterday in a canoe, and they told us that the hut of old Liz Rollin has been carried away with her and her father and Winklemann’s mother, and they say that her son has been seen in a small canoe rangin’ about by himself like a madman searchin’ for her.”

“The moment we reach the Mountain I’ll get hold of a canoe and go in search of him,” said Lambert.

“Right, boy! right!” said Ravenshaw; “I fear that something may have happened to the poor lad. These small canoes are all very well when you can run ashore and mend ’em if they should get damaged, but out here, among sunk posts and fences, and no land to run to, it is dangerous navigation.—Hist! Did ye hear a cry, lads?”

The men ceased to talk, and listened intently, while they gazed round the watery waste in all directions.

Besides a stranded house here and there, and a few submerged trees, nothing was to be seen on the water save the carcasses of a few cattle, above which a couple of ravens were wheeling slowly.

The cry was not repeated.

“Imagination,” muttered old Ravenshaw to himself, after Lambert had given a lusty shout, which, however, elicited no reply.

“It must have been; I hear nothing,” said Lambert, looking round uneasily.

“Come, out oars again, lads,” said the old gentleman, as the sail flapped in the failing breeze. “Night will catch us before we reach—. Hallo! back your oars—hard! Catch hold of ’im.”

A living creature of some sort came out from behind a floating log at that moment, and was almost run down. The man at the bow oar leaned over and caught it. The yell which followed left no shadow of doubt as to the nature of the creature. It was a pig. During the next two minutes, while it was being hauled into the boat, it made the air ring with shrieks of concentrated fury. Before dismissing this pig, we may state that it was afterwards identified by its owner, who said it had been swept way from his house two days before, and must therefore have been swimming without relief for eight-and-forty hours.

“That accounts for the cry you heard,” said Louis Lambert, when the screams subsided.

“No, Louis; a pig’s voice is too familiar to deceive me. If it was not imagination, it was the voice of a man.”

The old trader was right. One of the objects which, in the distance, resembled so closely the floating carcass of an ox was in reality an overturned canoe, and to the stern of that canoe Herr Winklemann was clinging. He had been long in the water, and was almost too much exhausted to see or cry. When the boat passed he thought he heard voices. Hope revived for a moment, and he uttered a feeble shout, but he failed to hear the reply. The canoe happened to float between him and the boat, so that he could not see it as it passed slowly on its course.

Poor Winklemann! In searching wildly about the wide expanse of water for his lost mother, he had run his canoe violently against the top rail of a fence. The delicate birch bark was ripped off. In another minute it sank and turned bottom up. It was a canoe of the smallest size, Winklemann having preferred to continue his search alone rather than with an unwilling companion. The German was a good swimmer; a mere upset might not have been serious. He could have righted the canoe, and perhaps clambered into it over the stern, and baled it out. But with a large hole in its bottom there was no hope of deliverance except in a passing boat or canoe. Clinging to the frail craft, the poor youth gazed long and anxiously round the horizon, endeavouring the while to push the wreck towards the nearest tree-top, which, however, was a long way off.

By degrees the cold told on his huge frame, and his great strength began to fail. Once, a canoe appeared in the distance. He shouted with all his might, but it was too far off. As it passed on out of sight he raised his eyes as if in prayer, but no sound escaped his compressed lips. It was noon when the accident occurred. Towards evening he felt as though his consciousness were going to forsake him, but the love of life was strong; he tightened his grasp on the canoe. It was just then that he heard the voices of Ravenshaw’s party and shouted, but the cry, as we have said, was very feeble, and the poor fellow’s sense of hearing was dulled with cold and exhaustion, else he would have heard Lambert’s reply.

“Oh! mine moder! mine moder!” he sighed, as his head drooped helplessly forward, though his fingers tightened on the canoe with the convulsive grasp of a drowning man.

Night descended on the water. The moon threw a fitful gleam now and then through a rift in the sailing clouds. All was still and dark and desolate above and around the perishing man. Nothing with life was visible save a huge raven which wheeled to and fro with a solemn croak and almost noiseless wing.

But the case of Winklemann was not yet hopeless. His chum, Louis Lambert, could not shake himself free from a suspicion that the cry, which had been put down to imagination, might after all have been that of some perishing human being—perhaps that of his friend. Arrived at the Little Mountain, Louis lost no time in obtaining a canoe, also an Indian to take the bow paddle.

The mountain, which was a mere undulation of the prairie, presented a strange scene at that time. Many settlers—half-breeds, Canadians, and Indians—were encamped there; some under tents of various sizes, others under upturned boats and canoes; not a few under the wider canopy of the heavens. Intermingled with the men, women, and children, were horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, dogs, cats, and pets of the feathered tribe, besides goods, household furniture, carts, etcetera, so that no words can adequately describe the scene. It was confusion worse confounded!

Many were the hospitable proposals made here to Louis Lambert that he should remain all night, for he was a general favourite, but to all these he turned a deaf ear, and set out on a searching expedition, in the canoe, just after the sun had gone down.

At first he made as straight as he could for the place where Mr Ravenshaw had fancied he heard the cry, but on consideration came to the conclusion that, as the current must have carried all floating objects considerably farther down the settlement by that time, he ought to change his course. Soon it grew too dark to see objects distinctly, but an occasional gleam of moonshine came to his aid. He passed several floating barns and cow-houses, but found them empty. He also nearly ran against several dead animals, but the silent Indian in the bow was wary and vigilant. Hope was at last beginning to die within Louis’s breast, when he observed a raven circling round some floating object.

“Ho! there’s something yonder. Strike out, old copper-nose,” he exclaimed, as he directed the canoe towards it.

The light craft cut the water like a knife, and was quickly alongside.

“Why, it is a canoe, bottom up. Have a care. Ha! hold on!”

Lambert nearly overturned his own canoe as he made a sudden grasp at something, and caught a man by the hair.

“Hallo! I say, let go your canoe and hold on to me,” cried Lambert, in excitement, but the man spoken to made no reply, and would not let go the wrecked canoe.

Lambert therefore hauled him powerfully and slowly alongside until his visage was level with the gunwale. Just then a gleam of moonlight broke forth and revealed the face of Herr Winklemann! The difficulties that now beset the rescuers were great, for the poor German, besides being stupefied, had grasped his canoe with tremendous power, and could not be detached. To get an active and living man out of the water into a birch canoe is no easy matter; to embark a half-dead one is almost impossible; nevertheless Lambert and his red-skinned comrade managed to do it between them. Raising his unconscious friend as far out of the water as possible, Louis caught one of his hands and wrenched it from its hold. Meanwhile the Indian leaned out of the opposite side of the canoe so as to balance it. Another violent wrench freed the other hand. It also freed Winklemann’s spirit to some extent, and called it back to life, for he exclaimed, “Vat is dat?” in a tone of faint but decided surprise.

“Here, lay hold of my neck,” said Lambert, in a peremptory voice.

Winklemann obeyed. Lambert exerted all his strength and heaved. The Indian did not dare to lend a hand, as that would have upset the canoe, but he leaned still farther over its other side as a counterpoise. At last Lambert got his friend on the edge, and tumbled him inboard. At the same moment the Indian adroitly resumed his position, and Winklemann was saved!

“You’ll soon be all right,” said Lambert, resuming his paddle. “Haven’t swallowed much water, I hope?”

“No, no,” said Winklemann faintly; “mine lunks, I do tink, are free of vatter, but mine lecks are stranchly qveer. I hav no lecks at all! ’Pears as if I vas stop short at zee vaist!”

Herr Winklemann said no more, but was swiftly borne, in a state of semi-consciousness, to his friends on the Little Mountain.

Twenty-six years later, in 1852, Red River Settlement was visited by a flood very similar in its main features to that of 1826, above described; and it is a curious coincidence that only one man lost his life during the latter flood; also, that the waters of the floods of both years began to subside on exactly the same date.

Chapter Nineteen.

The Red Man receives a Visitor, cogitates deeply, and acts with Decision.

We return now, to the red man, who, with his captive, spent the greater part of that winter on the slopes of the Rocky mountains, in a valley between two spurs of the range which merged gradually into the prairie.

In this sequestered spot Petawanaquat could, by turning to the right hand, seek the rugged haunts of the grizzly near and the Rocky Mountain goat; or, by turning to the left, ride after the buffalo on his own undulating plains. Here the Indian instructed Tony in all the mysteries of the hunter’s craft, showed him how to set traps for wolves and foxes, and snares for rabbits, and taught him how to use the gun, and how to follow the tracks of game in the snow. He also made him a little bow, with a sheaf of blunt-headed arrows, and a pair of snow-shoe frames, the interstices of which were filled up by the red man’s wife.

Petawanaquat had only one wife, named Meekeye. He might have had half a dozen wives if he had chosen, because he was a strong, able, and successful hunter, which is equivalent to saying he was, for an Indian, a rich man, and among the Indians there is no legal limit, we believe, to the number of a man’s wives. But our red man seemed to think one quite enough. He was very good to her—which is more than can be said, alas! of many white men. He never failed to bring her the tit-bits of all animals slain in the chase. He never beat her if she grew weary on the march, as too many of his savage countrymen are wont to do, but, on the contrary, relieved her of part of her burden, and, as a rule, carried the heaviest part of the family baggage on his own shoulders or sledge. Moreover, when on a visit with his furs to the stores of the fur-traders, he never failed to consult Meekeye as to every purchase that he made, and invariably gladdened her heart with gifts of scarlet cloth and white enamelled beads, and brilliant ribbons and little circular mirrors, which were deemed ample in size, though hardly big enough to display to advantage the point of an average nose. In short, Petawanaquat was quite un-Indian and chivalrous in his attentions to his squaw, who repaid him with faithful service, and, above all, with loving looks from the orbs which had originated her name.

Some people may think the loving looks produced the chivalry; others that the chivalry caused the looks. Whichever way it was, the result was mutual felicity. The red man had no family, hence Meekeye took to Tony with something of the fervour of a mother. Tony soon reciprocated. At first he indulged some of his mischievous tendencies, but, being only smiled at when he was naughty, found that the interest of being bad was gone, and ere long gave it up.

In the presence of his new father he never dared to be other than absolute perfection. Petawanaquat’s solemnity was too much for him. Thus it came to pass that Tony was soon thoroughly broken in. Meekeye taught him to make leggings and to ornament moccasins, for the boy was omnivorous in his thirst for knowledge. He swallowed everything with avidity, including immense quantities of food, so that his frame and mind developed together in a marvellous manner.

Of course the red man did not take Tony with him on his longest hunting expeditions, but he took him considerable distances from home notwithstanding, and showed him the “far west” sport in all its phases, insomuch that Tony, who could scarcely sit a trotting horse in the settlements, became Tonyquat the Fearless in the course of time—could ride bare-backed steeds with ease, and could send his little arrows into the flank of a buffalo with as much coolness, if not as much force, as his instructor.

Tony even got the length of drawing first blood from a grizzly bear. It happened thus:—

He was out with Petawanaquat one day, in a narrow defile of the mountains. The Indian carried his gun; the boy his bow. Tony’s quiver contained two sorts of arrows, one set shod with iron, and sharp, the other set not only blunt, but with a lumpy wooden head, meant not to pierce but to stun birds.

“Ho, look here!” exclaimed Tony, fitting a blunt arrow to the string, and pointing up at a tree, among the branches of which sat a bird resembling a grey hen in size and colour.

Petawanaquat stopped, let the butt of his gun fall to the ground, rested his hands on the muzzle, and smiled approval.

The arrow flew, hit the bird on its astonished eye, and brought it down.

“Good! Tonyquat will be a great chief,” said the red man, with another grave nod.

“Ho, look there!” whispered Tony, glaring in the direction of a thicket while he fitted a sharp arrow to his bow.

Turning quickly, the Indian saw a grizzly bear rise from behind a rock and look at the hunters inquiringly. Before he could raise his gun he heard a twang, and next moment saw an arrow quivering in the bear’s neck. The roar of the enraged animal and the report of his own gun commingled. Another instant, and Tony found himself in the midst of the tree out of which he had just brought the grey bird, hurled there by Petawanaquat, who was himself not a moment too soon in climbing to the same place of refuge. From this point of vantage the Indian, having carried his gun up with him, fired several deadly shots, and killed the bear, whose claws Tony afterwards wore in commemoration of the event.

This was but one of the varied and stirring adventures which befell our little hero while under the care of his red-skinned captor.

What passed in the mind of the Indian during that winter Tony had little opportunity of knowing, for he was remarkably taciturn, though at night, when smoking the calumet over his wigwam fire, the thoughtful expression of his face, and occasional troubled look on his brows, suggested the idea that he was ill at ease. He frequently gazed at his captive as if about to speak to him seriously, but as often seemed to abandon the idea with something like a sigh.

One evening, however, Petawanaquat seemed more troubled than usual, and held frequent earnest consultations with Meekeye in an undertone, in the midst of which Tony could distinguish a few words, such as “tracks,” “white strangers,” “encampment,” etcetera. Before going to rest the Indian smoked an extra pipe, and then said—

“Tonyquat is a brave boy!”

“Yes,” answered Tony, with an air of gravity quite equal to that of his red father. The few months he had been in captivity had indeed wrought an almost miraculous change in the child. His ideas were much more manly. Even his speech had lost its childish lisp, and he had begun to express himself somewhat in the allegorical language of the American Indian. Under the influence of a will stronger than his own he had proved himself an apt scholar.

“Tonyquat is a boy who keeps his word?” continued the other, with a keen glance.

Tony turned his large eyes full on the Indian.

“Has my Indian father ever found Tonyquat telling lies?”

To this Petawanaquat said “Good,” and smoked his pipe with increasing vigour, while Tony sat with his hands clasped over one knee, gazing sternly at the fire, as though he were engaged in consulting on matters of life and death. He glanced, however, for one instant at Meekeye, to see that she observed his staid demeanour. The same glance revealed to Tony the fact that Meekeye’s right foot was rather near the fire, with the red-hot end of a log close to it. Tony’s own left foot chanced to rest on the other and unburnt end of the same log. A very gentle motion on his part sufficed to bring Meekeye’s toes and the fire into contact. She drew back with a sudden start, but was too much of an Indian to scream. Tony was enough of one to remain motionless and abstracted like a brown statue. The slightest possible twitch at one corner of Petawanaquat’s mouth showed that he had observed the movement, but his brow did not relax as he said—

“Tonyquat must make his red father a promise. White men are coming here. They travel towards the setting sun. If they hear the voice of Tonyquat they will take him away.”

“Will they take me to my own father?” cried Tony, forgetting his rÔle in the excitement of the moment.

“Petawanaquat has said that the white strangers travel towards the setting sun. Red River lies in the direction of the rising sun. Would Tonyquat like to go with white strangers into the mountains?”

Tony was most emphatic in his denial of entertaining any such desire, and declared with his wonted candour that he loved Petawanaquat and Meekeye next to his own father and mother.

“If this be so,” returned the Indian, “Tonyquat must be dumb when the white men speak to him. He must know nothing. His voice must be more silent than the waters of a lake when the wind is dead.”

Tony promised to be as dumb as a stone, as ignorant as a new-born infant, and as quiet as a dead man. He then questioned the Indian about the white men, but obtained no further information than that Petawanaquat had come on their camp unexpectedly the day before, had observed them secretly from among the bushes, knew that the route they were pursuing would infallibly lead them to his wigwam, and that therefore he had hurried home to be ready for them. He could not tell who the white men were. They looked like traders—that was all he knew, or, at least, chose to communicate.

That night Meekeye repainted Tony’s neck and face with considerable care; dyed his luxuriant hair with grease and charcoal; touched up his eyebrows with the same, and caused him to dirty his hands effectively with mud and ashes.

Next morning, a little after sunrise, the twinkle of bells, the yelping of dogs, and the cracking of whips were heard. Petawanaquat and Tony had just time to step out of the tent when a cariole, somewhat in the form of a slipper-bath, drawn by four dogs, dashed up to the door. The dogs, being fresh and young, took to fighting. Their driver, who wore a head-dress with horns, belaboured the combatants and abused them in French, while a tall, quiet-looking man arose from the furs of the cariole, and, mounting the slope on which the Indian stood to receive him, advanced towards the wigwam. Some minutes later another team of dogs with a provision-sled and driver came rattling up.

“What cheer?” said the tall man heartily, as he held out his hand.

“Wat-chee?” replied Petawanaquat, grasping the hand, and repeating the phrase as he had learnt it in the settlements.

The tall man was very affable, and at once revealed the object of his journey. He was a missionary, he said, and was making a tour among the native tribes of that region to preach the good news of salvation from sin and its consequences through Jesus Christ the Son of God.

Petawanaquat listened with grave intelligence, but with the reticence of an Indian.

“Some tribes of Indians, I have been told, are encamped not far from this spot,” said the missionary through his interpreter.

Petawanaquat admitted that such was the case, and that some lodges of Indians were pitched in the mountains not two days’ march from his tent.

The missionary entered the wigwam and sat down. He gradually introduced the subject of his mission, and endeavoured to bring it home to the Indian and his wife, who, however, replied in very brief sentences. He also addressed Tony, but that sharp child seemed to be less impressionable than a pine stump, and refused to utter a word on any subject. The missionary, however, was a true man, with the love of God burning brightly in his breast. Although slightly disappointed he was not discouraged. He spoke of Christ crucified with great earnestness, and commended the Christian virtues—among others the duty of forgiving, nay, even loving, one’s enemies, and especially of returning good for evil. He also dwelt much on the wickedness of harbouring revengeful feelings, and on the sweetness and blessedness of doing good to others—enforcing his arguments on the latter point by quoting the Saviour’s own words, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”

Still the red man listened with stolid composure, Meekeye with apparent indifference, and Tony with absolute vacancy, so that the missionary, after offering up a silent prayer, went on his way with a sad feeling at his heart that his labour with that family of savages had been in vain. He comforted himself, however, with the reflection that it is written, “Your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”

And he was right. His labour had not been in vain, though it was not given to him at that time to see the fruit thereof.

We have said that Petawanaquat had smoked and pondered deeply in the evenings that winter over his wigwam fire. His slightly enlightened mind had been busy with those difficult problems about good and evil, God and man, which seem to exercise all earnest souls more or less in every land, savage as well as civilised. The revenge which he had taken on Mr Ravenshaw was sweet—very sweet, for his indignation against that irascible old gentleman was very bitter; justifiably so, he thought. But the clergyman at Red River had enlightened the red man’s conscience, and conscience being once aroused cannot easily be put to sleep again. His reasoning powers told him that the revenge which he had taken was far in excess of the injury which he had received. This was unjust, and conscience told him that injustice was wrong. The great Manitou Himself could not be unjust. Had He not taken the guilt of man on Himself in the person of Jesus, in order that, without injustice, He might be the justifier of sinners? Injustice is wrong, reiterated conscience again and again; but revenge is sweet, thought the Indian.

Now this visit of the missionary had cleared the mind of Petawanaquat to some extent. It was a new idea to him that returning good for evil was sweeter than revenge. He coupled this thought with the fact that the Saviour had laid down His life for His enemies, and the result was that a change, gradual but decided, was wrought in the red man’s sentiments. The seed thus sown by the wayside fell into good ground. Unlike ordinary seed, it bore fruit during the winter, and that fruit ripened into action in the spring.

“Tonyquat,” said the red man one morning, after much of the snow had left the ground, “your Indian father intends to start on a long journey to-morrow.”

“Petawanaquat,” replied Tony, “your white-faced son is ready to follow.”

It must be understood that Tony’s language was figurative, for at the time he was speaking his “white” face was changed so much by paint and smoke that it quite equalled that of his adopted father in dirty brownness.

“Meekeye will get ready,” continued the Indian. “Our journey shall be towards the rising sun.”

The result of this order was that on the following day the Indian’s leather tent was taken down, wrapped up into a bundle, and fastened to a couple of poles along with the rest of the family property. One end of each of these poles was fastened to a horse like shafts; the other ends were left to trail on the ground, the load resting between these ends and the steed’s tail. It was, as it were, a cart without wheels or body. Meekeye mounted the horse after the fashion of a man. Petawanaquat and Tony together mounted another steed. Three dogs formed part of the establishment. These were harnessed to little poles like those of the horse, and each dragged a little load proportioned to his size. Thus they left the spur of the Rocky Mountains and travelled over the plains towards Red River settlement.

About the same time, and with the same destination in view, and not far distant from the same region, another party on horseback commenced their journey towards the rising sun.

The two parties ultimately met—but these and other matters we shall reserve for our next chapter.

Chapter Twenty One.

Return of the Lost One.

It chanced that, on the morning of the arrival of Victor and his comrades at the margin of the flood, Peegwish went a-fishing.

That astute Indian was fond of fishing. It suited his tastes and habits; it was an art which was admirably adapted to his tendencies. Peegwish was, naturally as well as by training, lazy, and what could be more congenial to a lazy man than a “gentle art” which involved nothing more than sitting on a river bank smoking a pipe and awaiting a bite? It had a spice of intellectuality about it too, for did it not foster a spirit of meditation, contemplation, and even of philosophical speculation—when he chanced to be awake? Moreover, it saved him from harder labour, and shut the mouths of those ill-natured people who objected to drones, and had a tendency to reproach them, for was he not assiduously procuring for men and women a portion of that nourishment without which labour would be impossible?

The peculiar action of the flood had favoured Peegwish in regard to his beloved art, for, whereas in former days he was obliged to get up from his lair and go down to the river bank to fish, now he had nothing more to do than open the window and cast out his line, and Wildcat was close at hand to fetch him a light when his pipe chanced to go out, which it frequently did, for the red old savage slept much. When, therefore, we say that Peegwish went a-fishing, it must be understood that he merely left his seat by the stove in the upper room at Willow Creek and opened the window.

Wildcat was as fond of fishing as her brother, but there were a few difficulties in her way which did not exist in his. Water had to be drawn, wood to be chopped, moccasins and leggings and coats to be made, as well as meals to be cooked. She was, therefore, compelled to fish in moderation.

“Bring a light,” said Peegwish, in that tone of mild entreaty with which he was wont to make his wants known.

There being no one else in the room at the moment, Wildcat obeyed.

Peegwish looked into the room for a moment, and extended his left hand for the piece of lighted stick; with his right hand he held his line. Suddenly that hand received an amazing tug. Peegwish unintentionally scattered the firebrand, dropped his pipe from his lips, and uttered a shout, while with both hands he held on to the jerking line.

One of Mr Ravenshaw’s largest pigs had been swept out of the outhouse lofts. Struggling with the stream, he passed under the window of the storeroom, and came across the line of Peegwish with his tail. Every one must be familiar with the tendency of tails in general to shut down when touched. The unfortunate pig obeyed the natural law, and the line continued to slip until the hook was reached, when, of course, the natural result followed. There could be no hope of escape, for the tail was remarkably tough and the line strong. Peegwish held on stoutly. Wildcat lent her aid. The jerking on the tail depressed the snout of the pig, whose shrieks, being thus varied by intermittent gurgles, rendered the noise more appalling, and quickly drew the whole household to the windows.

Unfortunately there were none there but women—Mr Ravenshaw and the other men being still absent with the boat. The canoe had also been sent off that morning for a load of firewood, so that the only way of relieving the pig was to haul him in at the window. But he was too heavy to be thus treated, and as Peegwish did not wish to break his line and lose his hook he could only hold on in despair, while Elsie and Cora, with their mother and Wildcat, stood by helpless and horrified, yet amused, by the novelty of the situation and the frightful noise.

While this scene was being enacted at Willow Greek, Victor, with the recovered Tony and the rest of them, were drawing quickly near.

Deeply though the hearts of most of these wanderers were filled with anxious fears, they could not help being impressed with the scenes of desolation—deserted and submerged homesteads, wreck and ruin—through which they passed. At one moment the two canoes were skimming over the waters of a boundless lake; at another they were winding out and in among the trees of a submerged bit of woodland. Presently they found themselves among house tops, and had to proceed cautiously for fear of sunken fences, and then out they swept again over the wide sheet of water, where the once familiar prairie lay many feet below.

The maple-trees were by that time in full leaf, and the rich green verdure of bush and tree was bursting out on all sides, when not submerged. Swallows skimmed about in hundreds, dipping the tips of their blue wings in the flood, as though to test its reality, while flocks of little yellow birds—like canaries, but rather larger, with more black on their wings—flitted from bush to tree or from isle to isle. The month of May in those regions is styled the “flower month,” and June the “heart-berry month,” but flowers and heart-berries were alike drowned out that year in Red River of the North, and none of the wonted perfumes of the season regaled the noses of our voyagers as they returned home.

“There they are at last!” exclaimed Victor, with sparkling eyes, “the elms on the knoll. D’ye see them, Tony? I do believe I see the smoking-box. But for the bushes we might see the chimneys of Willow Creek.”

Tony’s excitement was great, but the effect of his late training was seen in the suppression of all feeling, save that which escaped through the eyes. Paint and charcoal concealed the flush on his cheeks effectually.

“Tonyquat sees,” he replied.

Victor received this with a loud laugh, but Tony, although annoyed, did not lose his dignity, which the red man in the stern of the canoe observed with a look of pride and satisfaction.

Michel Rollin, in the other canoe, close alongside, was observed to hold up his hand.

“Hush!” he said, turning his head as if to listen. “I do hear someting—someting not meloderous.”

“Is it melliferous, then?” asked Vic, with a smile.

But Rollin made no reply. He was far from jesting, poor fellow, at that moment. The thought of his old mother and grandfather, and fears as to their fate, weighed heavily on his heart, and took all the fun out of him.

“It sounds like pigs,” said Ian.

“Oui. Dey be killin’ porkers,” said Rollin, with a nod, as he dipped his paddle again and pushed on.

As they drew near, the excitement of the voyagers increased, so did their surprise at the prolonged and furious shrieking. Gradually the vigour of their strokes was strengthened, until they advanced at racing speed. Finally, they swept round the corner of the old house at Willow Creek, and burst upon the gaze of its inhabitants, while Peegwish and the pig were at the height of their struggles.

Mrs Ravenshaw chanced to be the first to observe them.

“Ian Macdonald!” she shouted, for his form in the bow of the leading canoe was the most conspicuous.

“Victor!” cried the sisters, with a scream that quite eclipsed the pig.

They rushed to another window, under which the canoes were pulled up.

“Oh! Victor, Victor,” cried Mrs Ravenshaw, with a deadly faintness at her heart; “you haven’t found—”

“Mother!” cried Tony, casting off his Indian reserve and starting up with a hysterical shout, “Mother!”

“Tony!” exclaimed everybody in the same breath, for they all knew his voice, though they did not believe their eyes.

It was only four feet or so from the canoe to the window. Mrs Ravenshaw leaned over and seized Tony’s uplifted hands. Elsie and Cora lent assistance. A light vault, and Tony went in at the window, from which immediately issued half-stifled cries of joy. At that moment Peegwish uttered a terrible roar, as he fell back into the room with the broken line in his hand, accidentally driving Wildcat into a corner. A last supreme effort had been made by the pig. He had broken the hook, and went off with a final shriek of triumph.

Thus, amid an appropriate whirlwind of confusion, noise, and disaster, was the long-lost Tony restored to his mother’s arms!

Seated calmly in the stern of his canoe, Petawanaquat observed the scene with a look of profound gravity. His revenge was complete! He had returned to his enemy the boy of whom he had become so fond that he felt as though Tony really were his own son. He had bowed his head to the dictates of an enlightened conscience. He had returned good for evil. A certain feeling of deep happiness pervaded the red man’s heart, but it was accompanied, nevertheless, by a vague sense of bereavement and sadness which he could not shake off just then.

Quite as calmly and as gravely sat Ian Macdonald. His eyes once more beheld Elsie, the angel of his dreams, but he had no right to look upon her now with the old feelings. Her troth was plighted to Lambert. It might be that they were already married! though he could not bring himself to believe that; besides, he argued, hoping against hope, if such were the case, Elsie would not be living with her father’s family. No, she was not yet married, he felt sure of that; but what mattered it? A girl whose heart was true as steel could never be won from the man to whom she had freely given herself. No, there was no hope; and poor Ian sat there in silent despair, with no sign, however, of the bitter thoughts within on his grave, thoughtful countenance.

Not less gravely sat Michel Rollin in the stern of his canoe. No sense of the ludicrous was left in his anxious brain. He had but one idea, and that was—old Liz! With some impatience he waited until the ladies inside the house were able to answer his queries about his mother. No sooner did he obtain all the information they possessed than he transferred Meekeye to her husband’s canoe, and set off alone in the other to search for the lost hut—as Winklemann had done before him.

Meanwhile the remainder of the party were soon assembled in the family room on the upper floor, doing justice to an excellent meal, of which most of them stood much in need.

“Let me wash that horrid stuff off your face, darling, before you sit down,” said Miss Trim to Tony.

The boy was about to comply, but respect for the feelings of his Indian father caused him to hesitate. Perhaps the memory of ancient rebellion was roused by the old familiar voice, as he replied—

“Tonyquat loves his war-paint. It does not spoil his appetite.”

It was clear from a twinkle in Tony’s eye, and a slight motion in his otherwise grave face, that, although this style of language now came quite naturally to him, he was keeping it up to a large extent on purpose.

“Tonyquat!” exclaimed Mrs Ravenshaw, aghast with surprise, “what does the child mean?”

“I’ll say Tony, mother, if you like it better,” he said, taking his mother’s hand.

“He’s become a redskin,” said Victor, half-amused, half-anxious.

“Tony,” said Miss Trim, whose heart yearned towards her old but almost unrecognisable pupil, “don’t you remember how we used to do lessons together and play sometimes?”

“And fight?” added Cora, with a glance at Ian, which caused Elsie to laugh.

“Tonyquat does not forget,” replied the boy, with profound gravity. “He remembers the lessons and the punishments. He also remembers dancing on the teacher’s bonnet and scratching the teacher’s nose!”

This was received with a shout of delighted laughter, for in it the spirit of the ancient Tony was recognised.

But Ian Macdonald did not laugh. He scarcely spoke except when spoken to. He seemed to have no appetite, and his face was so pale from his long illness that he had quite the air of a sick man.

“Come, Ian, why don’t you eat? Why, you look as white as you did after the grizzly had clawed you all over.”

This remark, and the bear-claw collar on the youth’s neck, drew forth a question or two, but Ian was modest. He could not be induced to talk of his adventure, even when pressed to do so by Elsie.

“Come, then, if you won’t tell it I will,” said Victor; and thereupon he gave a glowing account of the great fight with the bear, the triumphant victory, and the long illness, which had well-nigh terminated fatally.

“But why did you not help him in the hunt?” asked Elsie of Victor, in a tone of reproach.

“Because he wouldn’t let us; the reason why is best known to himself. Perhaps native obstinacy had to do with it.”

“It was a passing fancy; a foolish one, perhaps, or a touch of vanity,” said Ian, with a smile, “but it is past now, and I have paid for it.—Did you make fast the canoe?” he added, turning abruptly to the Indian, who was seated on his buffalo robe by the stove.

Without waiting for an answer he rose and descended the staircase to the passage, where poor Miss Trim had nearly met a watery grave.

Here the canoe was floating, and here he found one of the domestics.

“Has the wedding come off yet?” he asked in a low, but careless, tone, as he stooped to examine the fastening of the canoe.

“What wedding?” said the domestic, with a look of surprise.

“Why, the wedding of Mr Ravenshaw’s daughter.”

“Oh no, Mr Ian. It would be a strange time for a wedding. But it’s all fixed to come off whenever the flood goes down. And she do seem happy about it. You see, sir, they was throw’d a good deal together here of late, so it was sort of natural they should make it up, and the master he is quite willin’.”

This was enough. Ian Macdonald returned to the room above with the quiet air of a thoughtful schoolmaster and the callous solidity of a human petrifaction. Duty and death were the prominent ideas stamped upon his soul. He would not become reckless or rebellious. He would go through life doing his duty, and, when the time came, he would die!

They were talking, of course, about the flood when he returned and sat down.

Elsie was speaking. Ian was immediately fascinated as he listened to her telling Victor, with graphic power, some details of the great disaster—how dwellings and barns and stores had been swept away, and property wrecked everywhere, though, through the mercy of God, no lives had been lost. All this, and a great deal more, did Elsie and Cora and Mrs Ravenshaw dilate upon, until Ian almost forgot his resolve.

Suddenly he remembered it. He also remembered that his father’s house still existed, though it was tenantless, his father and Miss Martha having gone up to see friends at the Mountain.

“Come, Vic,” he exclaimed, starting up, “I must go home. The old place may be forsaken, but it is not the less congenial on that account. Come.”

Victor at once complied; they descended to the canoe, pushed out from the passage, and soon crossed the flood to Angus Macdonald’s dwelling.

Chapter Twenty Two.

The “Impossible” Accomplished.

And what a dwelling Angus Macdonald’s house had become!

“What a home-coming!” exclaimed Ian, thinking, in the bitterness of his soul, of Elsie as well as the house.

“It’s awful!” said Victor, with a sympathetic glance at his friend.

The desolation was indeed complete—symbolic, Ian thought, of the condition of his own heart. Besides having eight or ten feet of water on its walls, all the lower rooms were utterly wrecked. A heavy log, ready for the saw-pit, had come down with the torrent, and, taking upon it the duties of a battering-ram, had charged the parlour window. Not only did it carry this bodily into the room, but it forced it into the passage beyond, where it jammed and stuck fast. The butt of this log, projecting several feet from the window, had intercepted straw and hay to such an extent that a miniature stack was formed, in which all sorts of light articles of furniture and dÉbris had been caught. With the stubborn determination of a Celt, Angus had refused to remove his main door, which faced up stream. The result was that the flood removed it for him with a degree of violence that had induced Miss Martha to exclaim, “The house is goin’ at last!” to which Angus had replied doggedly.

“Let it go. It will hef to go some day, whatever.” But the house had not gone. It was only, as we have said, the main door which went, and was hurled through the passage into the kitchen, where it charged the back door, wrenched it off, and accompanied it to Lake Winnipeg with a tail of miscellaneous cooking utensils. Only shreds of the back windows remained hanging by twisted hinges to the frames, telling with mute eloquence of heroic resistance to the last gasp. Whatever had not been removed by Angus from the ground-floor of his house had been swept out at the windows and doorways, as with the besom of destruction.

Paddling in through the front door, the two friends disembarked from their canoe on the staircase, and ascended to the upper floor. Here everything betokened a hurried departure. Furniture was strewn about in disorder; articles of clothing were scattered broadcast, as if Miss Martha and her maid had been summoned to sudden departure, and had rummaged recklessly for their most cherished possessions. In the principal bedroom, on the best bed, stood Beauty in her native ugliness—the only living thing left to do the honours of the house.

“What a brute!” exclaimed Victor.

He seized a saucepan that stood handy, and hurled it at her. Beauty was equal to the emergency; she leaped up, allowed the pan to pass under her, fled shrieking through the window, and took refuge on the top of the house.

“I’m glad you missed her, Vic,” said Ian, in a slightly reproachful tone; “she’s an old friend of the family, and a harmless thing.”

“Miss Trim would not agree with you in your opinion of her,” returned Victor, with a laugh; “but I’m also glad I missed her. It was a sudden impulse that I couldn’t resist, and you know a fellow is scarcely accountable for his impulses.”

“True; not for his impulses, but he is very accountable for actions resulting from impulse. If you had killed Beauty I should have had an irresistible impulse to pitch you over the window. If I were to do so in such circumstances would you hold me unaccountable?”

“I’m not sure,” said Victor, with a grim smile. “But we’ll change the subject; I don’t like argument when I’m likely to get the worst of it. It’s plain that you can do no good here, I therefore propose that we return to Willow Creek, take the small boat, and go up to the Mountain to see father, taking Tony and Petawanaquat along with us.”

Ian shook his head with an expression of sadness that surprised his friend.

“No, Vic, no; my work with you in search of your brother is done, my father’s home now claims my chief care. You are wrong in saying I can do no good here; look round at the wreck and mess. There is much to be done. Now I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll remain here all day and all night too. You will return home and send me the little punt, if it can be spared, for I shall have to row to the outhouses a good deal, and round the house too. As you see, nothing can be done without a craft of some sort. Send Peegwish with it, without Wildcat, she would only be in the way.”

Victor tried to induce his friend to change his mind, but Ian was immoveable. He therefore returned to Willow Creek in the canoe, and sent Peegwish back with the punt—a tub-like little boat, with two small oars or sculls.

Left alone, Ian Macdonald leaned on the sill of a window in the gable of the house, from which he could see the house at Willow Creek, and sighed deeply. “So then,” he thought, “all my hopes are blighted; my air castles are knocked down, my bear-hunting has been in vain; Elsie is engaged to Louis Lambert!”

There was no bitterness in his heart now, only a feeling of profound loneliness. As he raised himself with another sigh, the top of the window tipped off his cap, which fell into the water. He cared little for the loss, but stood watching the cap as it floated slowly away with the current, and compared its receding form with his dwindling joys. The current, which was not strong there, carried the cap straight to the knoll several hundred yards off, on which stood the smoking-box of old Sam Ravenshaw, and stranded it there.

The incident turned the poor youth’s mind back to brighter days and other scenes, especially to the last conversation which he had held with the owner of the smoking-box. He was mentally enacting that scene over again when Peegwish pulled up to the house and passed under the window.

“Come along, you old savage,” said Ian, with a good-humoured nod; “I want your help. Go round to the front and shove into the passage. The doorway’s wide enough.”

Peegwish, who was fond of Ian, replied to the nod with a hideous smile. In a few minutes the two were busily engaged in collecting loose articles and bringing things in general into order.

While thus engaged they were interrupted by Beauty cackling and screaming with tremendous violence. She was evidently in distress. Running up a ladder leading to the garret, Ian found that the creature had forced her way through a hole in the roof, and entangled herself in a mass of cordage thrown in a heap along with several stout ropes, or cables, which Angus had recently bought with the intention of rigging out a sloop with which to traverse the great Lake Winnipeg. Setting the hen free, Ian returned to his work.

A few minutes later he was again arrested suddenly, but not by Beauty this time. He became aware of a peculiar sensation which caused a slight throbbing of his heart, and clearly proved that, although lacerated, or even severely crushed, that organ was not quite broken!

He looked round at Peegwish, and beheld that savage glaring, as if transfixed, with mouth and eyes equally wide open.

“Did you feel that, Peegwish?”

Yes, Peegwish had felt “that,” and said so in an awful whisper without moving.

“Surely—no, it cannot have been the—”

He stopped short. There was a low, grinding sound, accompanied by a strange tremor in the planks on which they stood, as if the house were gradually coming alive! There could be no mistake. The flood had risen sufficiently to float the house, and it was beginning to slide from its foundations!

“Peegwish,” he said, quickly dropping the things with which he had been busy, “is there a stout rope anywhere? Oh, yes; I forgot,” he added, springing towards the attic. “Blessings on you, Beauty, for having guided me here!”

In a few seconds a stout rope or cable was procured. The end of this Ian ran out at the main doorway, round through the parlour window, and tied it in a trice. The other end he coiled in the punt, and soon made it fast to a stout elm, under whose grateful shade Angus Macdonald had enjoyed many a pipe and Martha many a cup of tea in other days. The tree bent slowly forward; the thick rope became rigid. Ian and Peegwish sat in the boat anxiously looking on.

In that moment of enforced inaction Ian conceived an idea! Thought is quick, quicker than light, which, we believe, has reached the maximum of “express speed” in material things. By intermittent flashes, so rapid that it resembled a stream of sparks, the whole plan rushed through his mind, from conception to completion. We can only give a suggestive outline, as follows. The knoll, the smoking-box, the smoker, his words, “Mark what I say. I will sell this knoll to your father, and give my daughter to you, when you take that house, and with your own unaided hands place it on this knoll!” The impossible had, in the wondrous course of recent events, come just within the verge of possibility—a stout arm, a strong will, coupled with a high flood—“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,”—immortal and prophetic bard! There could be no chance of Elsie now, but even to win the right to claim her if she had been willing was better than nothing. In any case old Angus and the knoll would be united!

“Peegwish!” shouted Ian, turning on the unfortunate ex-brewer with a flushed face and blazing eyes that caused him to shrink in alarm, “can you sit still and do nothing?”

“Eh?” exclaimed Peegwish, in surprise.

“Bah!” said Ian, seizing the sculls.

The punt whirled round, leaped over the water, dashed through the doorway, and went crashing into the staircase. Before Peegwish could pick himself up, Ian had vanished up the stairs. The savage found him a moment later wildly selecting a rope from the heap that lay on the floor of the attic. As Peegwish entered, Ian suddenly turned on him with a gaze of increased intensity. Had the young man gone mad? Peegwish felt very uncomfortable. He had some reason to! Another thought had flashed into Ian’s mind—the words “your own unaided hands” troubled him. Peegwish could be kept out of the boat, but he could not be kept from rendering aid of some sort, in some way or other. There was but one resource.

Ian sprang on Peegwish like a lion. The savage was both bold and strong, but he was elderly, and Ian was young and bolder; besides, he had the unusual strength of a half-madman at that moment. Down went the ex-brewer. He struggled hard. Ian crushed him in his arms, raised him, crammed him into a chair, seized a pliant rope and bound him therewith, winding him and the chair round and round in his haste—for there was no time to tie knots—until he resembled a gigantic spool of ravelled thread. Not a moment too soon! There was a snap outside; the rope was gone! A grind, a slide, and then a lurch, as of a ship at sea.

Ian is on the staircase now, in the punt, and out upon the flood with a stout rope fast to the stern and to the door-post. Panting from his recent exertions, and half-wild with the mingled excitement, danger, novelty, and fun of the thing, he draws two or three long breaths as he grasps the sculls and looks quickly round.

The house moves sluggishly, probably retarded by sunken shrubs, or dragging dÉbris connected with the foundation. This is somewhat of a relief. There is time. He pulls ahead till the rope tightens, and then stands up in the punt to observe the situation critically. The current is bearing him straight towards the knoll. So far well; but there are two slightly diverging currents on right and left, caused by the knoll itself, which are so strong that if the house should get fairly into either of them no power that he possessed could prevent its being swept, on the one hand, into the main current of the Red River, on the other hand away over the flooded plains. To watch with lynx eyes the slightest tendency to divergence on the part of the house now absorbs his whole being. But thought again intervenes. What if he should be observed by those at Willow Creek, and they should send assistance? horror! But by good fortune all the males at the Creek have departed, and none are left but women. He casts one of the lynx glances in that direction—no one is coming. He breathes again, freely. Suddenly the house diverges a little to the right. Away flies the punt to the left, and he is just about to bend to the sculls with the force of Goliath, when he perceives his mistake—the divergence was to the left! In agonies of haste he shoots to the other side, where he discovers that the divergence must have been in his own excited brain, for the house still holds on the even tenor of its way; and Ian, puffing straight ahead, tightens the rope, and helps it on its voyage.

Presently there is a sudden, and this time a decided divergence to the right—probably caused by some undercurrent acting on the foundations. Away goes the punt in the opposite direction, and now Goliath and David together were babes to Ian! Talk of horse-power. Elephanto-hippopotamus-Power is a more appropriate term. The muscles of his arms rise up like rolls of gutta-percha; the knotted veins stand out on his flushed forehead, but all in vain—the house continues to diverge, and Ian feeling the game to be all but lost, pulls with the concentrated energy of rage and despair. The sculls bend like wands, the rowlocks creak, the thole-pins crack. It won’t do. As well might mortal man pull against Niagara falls.

At this moment of horrible disappointment the house touches something submerged—a post, a fence, a mound; he knows not nor cares what—which checks the divergence and turns the house back in the right direction.

What a rebound there is in Ian’s heart! He would cheer if there were a cubic inch of air to spare in his labouring chest—but there is not, and what of it remains must be used in a tough pull to the opposite side, for the sheer given to the building has been almost too strong. In a few minutes his efforts have been successful. The house is bearing steadily though slowly down in the right direction.

Ian rests on his oars a few seconds, and wipes his heated brow.

So—in the great battle of life we sometimes are allowed to pause and breathe awhile in the very heat of conflict; and happy is it for us if our thoughts and hearts go out towards Him whose love is ever near to bless those who trust in it.

He is drawing near to the knoll now, and there seems every chance of success; but the nearer he draws to the goal the greater becomes the risk of divergence, for while the slack water at the head of the knoll becomes slacker, so that the house seems to have ceased moving, the diverging currents on either side become swifter, and their suction-power more dangerous. The anxiety of the pilot at this stage, and his consequent shooting from side to side, is far more trying than his more sustained efforts had been.

At last the punt reaches the smoking-box, which itself stands in several feet of water, for the ground of the knoll is submerged, its bushes alone being visible. There is only the length of the rope now between our hero and victory! In that length, however, there are innumerable possibilities. Even while he gazes the house bumps on something, slews round, and is caught by the current on the right. Before Ian has time to recover from his agony of alarm, and dip the sculls, it bumps again and slews to the left; a third favouring bump sends it back into the slack water. The combined bumps have given an impulse to the house under the influence of which it bears straight down upon the knoll with considerable force. Its gable-end is close to the smoking-box. Entranced with expectancy Ian sits in the punt panting and with eyes flashing. There is a sudden shock! Inside the house Peegwish and his chair are tumbled head over heels. Outside, the gable has just touched—as it were kissed—the smoking-box, Elsie’s “summer-house;” Beauty, flapping her wings at that moment on the ridge-pole, crows, and Angus Macdonald’s dwelling is, finally and fairly, hard and fast upon Sam Ravenshaw’s knoll.

Chapter Twenty Three.

Found and Saved.

Now it must not be imagined that old Liz, after being carried away by the flood, submitted to her fate without a struggle. It was not in her nature to give in without good reason. She did not sit down and wring her hands, or tear her hair, or reproach her destiny, or relieve her feelings by venting them on the old couple under her charge. In short, she did not fall back in her distress on any of the refuges of the imbecile.

Her first care was to arrange Daddy and Mrs Winklemann in such a manner that they could sleep with some degree of comfort in their chairs. This she did by means of pillows and blankets, and, after accomplishing it, sat down on the wet bed to contemplate the pair. Her satisfaction was soon marred, however, by the discovery that Mrs Winklemann was given to kicking in her sleep. In one of the spasmodic lunges with her lower limbs she gave Daddy’s legs such a shake that the old gentleman was half awakened by the surprise.

It will be remembered that the pair were seated vis-À-vis in their respective arm-chairs, with a low table between them, and their legs resting thereon. To prevent a recurrence of the kick Liz put a piece of broken plank between them on the table, and by means of a rope wound round legs and table, effectually restrained the unruly members.

She then returned to her place on the soaking truckle-bed, and, leaning her wet shoulders against the wall, endeavoured to think what was to be done when the return of day should enable her to act. To act was easy to Liz, but thought was difficult. In attempting it she fell sound asleep. Her shape helped her; she did not require to lie down. Her head merely dropped on one of her fat shoulders. The rotundity of her frame rendered a collapse impossible. Thus she slept and snored until daylight shone through the parchment windows—until Daddy awoke her with a gasping cough.

“Hough! Hi! Liz, there’s sumthin’ wrang wi’ my legs!”

“Hoots! haud yer gab!” cried his polite daughter, leaping from her damp couch into the water, with no other evidence of feeling than a sharp “Hech!” as the cold element laved her limbs. “There’s naethin’ wrang wi’ yer legs, only I’ve tied them to the table to keep them frae tum’lin’ aff.”

“Mine boy, have he comin’ back?” asked Mrs Winklemann, who was awakened by the conversation.

“Na; he’s no come back yet, but he’ll be here afore lang, nae doot. Be quiet noo, like guid bairns. I canna let yer legs doon yet, for the floor’s dreedfu’ wat. There!” she added, casting loose the ropes and arranging the limbs more comfortably; “jist let them lie where they are, and I’ll gie ye yer brekfists in a meenit.”

She was as good as her word. In a few minutes the submissive pair were busy with bread and cheese, which, with a little cold water, was the only breakfast poor Liz had to give them.

While the morning meal was being dispensed the anxious little woman thrust a bite or two into her own mouth, and ate as she moved about. Then she told the old people she was “gauin’ up the lum to look aboot her.” Without more ado she dipped into the fireplace and disappeared up the chimney.

Her surprise on reaching this point of vantage was very great. The cottage was no longer driven over the bosom of a wide sea, but floated quietly in a calm basin surrounded by trees. During the night it had been carried far down in the direction of Lake Winnipeg, and had got entangled in one of the clumps of wood with which some parts of that region were studded. The hut had been so completely thrust into the copse that it was quite encompassed by foliage, and nothing of the surrounding country was visible from the chimney-top. The only thing that remained obvious to old Liz was the fact that the hut still floated, and was held in position by a stout branch which had caught the roof.

We have said that thought—that is, profound or consecutive thought—was a trouble to old Liz. Her mind leaped in an interjectional, flashing manner. Her actions were impulsive. A tall tree, a squirrel, and a bird’s-eye view flashed into her brain at the same moment. She desired the last, and proceeded to act like the second, by seizing a limb of the first, which hung conveniently at her elbow. But her emulation of the squirrel was not very successful, for, although a strong frame and powerful will are useful in climbing tall trees, petticoats, even when short, are against that operation. It is needless to say, however, that in the case of old Liz difficulties were only met to be overcome. In five or ten minutes she stood with dishevelled hair, bleeding hands, and torn garments, among the topmost branches of the tall tree, and surveyed the world beneath with feelings of mingled surprise and dismay. There was evidently no abatement of the flood. On her left hand lay a boundless lake; on her right there spread out a little archipelago of trees and bushes. While she gazed her eye was arrested by two dark specks on the horizon. Could they be boats? Yes; they moved! Clearly they must be either boats or canoes.

One of the old woman’s intellectual flashes occurred at this point. There was a fishing-rod in the hut below, a primitive one, such as Adam might have used in Eden—the branch of a tree.

Down came old Liz, much faster than she went up; slipping, scratching, rending, grasping, and clutching, until she gained the chimney, down which she went unceremoniously, alighting as formerly, with a squash which not only alarmed but besprinkled the old couple.

Liz caught up the rod, tied an apron to it, and then, using it as a lance, charged the fireplace. It stuck, of course, but Liz was in no mood to be baffled. She bent the rod powerfully and forced it up. Following it, she emerged from the chimney, and, with a spirit worthy of Excelsior, bore her banner to the tall tree-top, and fastened it to the topmost bough with the last remnant of her torn neckerchief.

It was in the morning of the day about which we now write, that Victor Ravenshaw and his friends arrived at the settlement. We have said that Michel Rollin set off alone in a canoe in search of his mother the moment he obtained sufficient information to enable him to act. At first he paddled wildly over the watery plain, as if mere exertion of muscle would accomplish his end, but soon he began to consider that without giving definite direction to his energies he could not hope for success. He therefore made straight for the mission station, where he found Mr Cockran’s family and people encamped on the stage, the minister himself being away in his canoe visiting some of his scattered flock, and offering them such comfort as only those can who truly trust in Christ. Here he was advised to go to the Mountain, to which place it was probable his mother and grandfather would have been conveyed if picked up by any passing boat or canoe.

Deciding to do so, he paddled away at once with diminishing hopes and a heavy heart, for the evidences of total destruction around him were terribly real. He had not gone far when a canoe appeared on the horizon. There was one figure in it. As it drew near the figure seemed familiar. Nearer still, and he recognised it.

“Vinklemann!”

“Michel!”

The friends arrested their canoes by grasping hands.

“I seek for ma mÈre,” said the half-breed.

“I for mine moder,” returned the German.

A hurried consultation ensued. It was of no use going to the Mountain. Winklemann had just come from it, having failed to find his mother. He was still suffering from the effects of his recent accident, but he could not wait. He would continue the search till he died. Rollin was of the same mind, though neither he nor his friend appeared likely to die soon. They resolved to continue the search together.

Both of them were thoroughly acquainted with the Red River plains in all directions, but Rollin was more versed in the action of water. The greater part of his boyhood had been spent in canoeing and hunting expeditions with his father, from whom he inherited the French tongue and manners which showed so much more powerfully than the Scotch element in his composition. After his father’s death he had consorted and hunted much with Peegwish, who spoke Indian and French, but remarkably little English. Peegwish was also a splendid canoe-man, so that Rollin had come to study with great intelligence the flow and effect of currents of water, whether deep or shallow, narrow or broad. Hence when Winklemann related circumstantially all he had done, he shook his head and gave it as his opinion that he had not gone the right way to work at all, and that, according to the lie of the land and the height of the flood, it was certain the hut must have been carried far below that part of the settlement in the direction of the lower fort.

Poor Winklemann was so worn out with unsuccessful searching that he was only too glad to follow wherever Michel Rollin chose to lead. Hence it came to pass that in the afternoon of the same day the searchers came in view of the tall tree where old Liz had hoisted her flag of distress.

“VoilÀ!” exclaimed Michel, on first catching sight of the ensign.

“Vat is dat?” said his companion, paddling closer alongside of his friend, and speaking in a hoarse whisper.

“It look like a flag,” said Rollin, pushing on with increased vigour. “There’s something like one crow below it,” he added, after a short time.

“It have stranch voice for von crow,” said the German.

He was right. The yell of triumphant joy uttered by old Liz when she saw that her signal had been observed was beyond the imitative powers of any crow. As the poor creature waved her free arm, and continued to shout, while her loose hair tossed wildly round her sooty face, she presented a spectacle that might well have caused alarm not unmixed with awe even in a manly breast; but there was a certain tone in the shouts which sent a sudden thrill to the heart of Rollin, causing him, strange to say, to think of lullabies and infant days! With eyeballs fixed on the tree-top, open-mouthed and breathing quick, he paddled swiftly on.

“Michel,” said Winklemann, in a whisper, even hoarser than before, “your moder!”

Rollin replied not, but gave a stentorian roar, that rolled grandly over the water.

Why was it that old Liz suddenly ceased her gesticulations, lifted her black brows in unutterable surprise, opened her mouth, and became a listening statue? Did she too recognise tones which recalled other days—and the puling cries of infancy? It might have been so. Certain it is that when the shout was repeated she broke down in an effort to reply, and burst into mingled laughter and tears, at the same time waving her free arm more violently than ever.

This was too much for the branch on which she had been performing. It gave way, and old Liz suddenly came down, as sailors have it, “by the run.” She crashed through the smaller branches of the tree-top, which happily broke her fall, bounded from mass to mass of the thicker foliage below, and finally came down on a massive bough which, shunting her clear of the tree altogether, and clear of the hut as well, sent her headlong into the water.

With something like frozen blood and marrow, Michel witnessed the fall. A few seconds more and his canoe went crashing through the leafy screen that hid the hut. Old Liz was up and floundering about like a black seal, or mermaid. She could not swim, but, owing to some peculiarity of her remarkable frame, she could not sink. Her son was at her side in a moment, seized her, and tried to kiss her. In his eagerness the canoe overturned, and he fell into her arms and the water at the same time.

It was a joyful though awkward meeting. Much water could not quench the love wherewith the poor creature strained Michel to her heart. Winklemann came up in time to rescue both, and dragged them to the door-step of the floating hut, the door of which he burst open with a single kick, and sprang in.

Who shall attempt to describe the meeting that followed? We ask the question because we feel unequal to the task. There issued from the hut a roll of German gutturals. Winklemann, rushing through two feet of water, seized his mother’s hand and fell on his knees beside her. He was thus, of course, submerged to the waist; but he recked not—not he! Michel and old Liz entered, dripping like water-nymphs, and sat down on the soppy bed. Daddy, impressed with the idea that a good practical joke was being enacted, smiled benignantly like a guardian angel.

“Now den, zee night draws on. Ve must be gone,” said Winklemann, turning to Rollin; “git zee canoes ready—qveek!”

Both canoes were soon got ready; blankets and pillows were spread in the centre of each. Mrs Winklemann was lifted carefully into one; Daddy, as carefully, into the other. Old Liz quietly took her seat in the bow of Daddy’s canoe; her son sat down in the stern, while Herr Winklemann took charge of that which contained his mother.

“No room to take any of de property to-night, ma mÈre,” said Michel.

“Hoots! niver heed,” replied Liz.

“No, I vill not heed. Moreover, Veenklemann and moi ve vill retoorn demorrow.”

As he spoke he chanced to look up and saw the apron which had guided him to the spot waving gently at the tree-top. In a few seconds he was beside it. Cutting the staff free, he descended and stuck it in the bow of his canoe as a trophy. Thus they paddled away from the old home.

It was night when they reached the camp of the settlers on the Little Mountain. The homeless people were busy with their evening meal, and, sad though their case was, the aspect of things just then did not convey the idea of distress. The weather was fine; camp-fires blazed cheerfully lighting up bronzed and swarthy men, comely women, and healthy children, with a ruddy glow, while merry laughter now and then rose above the general hum, for children care little for unfelt distress, and grown people easily forget it in present comfort. Ruined though they were, many of them felt only the warmth of the hour.

There was a shout of welcome when Winklemann’s canoe was observed emerging from surrounding darkness, and a cheer burst from those who first heard the glad news—“The old folk saved!” But that was a mere chirp to the roar of congratulation that rang out when the little party landed, and the rescuers strode into camp bearing the rescued in their arms.

Chapter Twenty Five.

Brings Things to a Point.

While Tony was being received at the old home, as already related, and Michel Rollin and Winklemann were rescuing their mothers, and Ian Macdonald was busy transplanting his father’s house, Mr Samuel Ravenshaw was sitting disconsolate on the Little Mountain.

Lest the reader should still harbour a false impression in regard to that eminence, we repeat that the Little Mountain was not a mountain; it was not even a hill. It was merely a gentle elevation of the prairie, only recognisable as a height because of the surrounding flatness.

Among the settlers encamped on this spot the children were the most prominent objects in the scene, because of their noise and glee and mischievous rapidity of action. To them the great floods had been nothing but a splendid holiday. Such camping out, such paddling in many waters, such games and romps round booths and tents, such chasing of cattle and pigs and poultry and other live stock, and, above all, such bonfires! It was a glorious time! No lessons, no being looked after, no restraint of any kind. Oh! it was such fun!

It was the sight of this juvenile glee that made Mr Ravenshaw disconsolate. Seated in the opening of a tent he smoked his pipe, and looked on at the riotous crew with a tear in each eye, and one, that had overflowed, at the point of his nose. The more these children laughed and shouted the more did the old gentleman feel inclined to weep. There was one small boy—a half-breed, with piercing black eyes and curly hair, whose powers of mischief were so great that he was almost equal to the lost Tony. He did his mischief quietly, and, as it were, with restrained enthusiasm. For instance, this imp chanced to be passing a group of Canadian buffalo-hunters seated round one of the camp-fires enjoying a can of tea. One of them raised a pannikin to his lips. The imp was at his elbow like a flash of light; the elbow was tipped, by the merest accident, and half of the tea went over the hunter’s legs. The awful look of hypocritical self-condemnation put on by the imp was too much for the hunter, who merely laughed, and told him to “get along” which he did with a yell of triumph. Old Mr Ravenshaw felt a strong desire to embrace that boy on the spot, so vividly did he bring before his mind his beloved Tony!

Sometimes the older people in that miscellaneous camp emulated the children in riotous behaviour. Of course, in such an assemblage there were bad as well as good people, and some of the former, taking advantage of the unprotected state of things, went about the camp pilfering where opportunity offered. One of these was at last caught in the act, and the exasperated people at once proceeded to execute summary justice. The thief was a big, strong, sulky-looking fellow. He was well known as an incorrigible idler, who much preferred to live on the labours of other men than to work. The captor was Baptiste Warder, the half-breed chief who had acted so conspicuous a part in the buffalo hunt of the previous season.

“Let’s string him up,” cried John Flett, as Warder, grasping the thief’s collar, led him into the middle of the camp.

But there were two objections to this proceeding. First, it was deemed too severe for the offence, and, second, there was not a tree or a post, or any convenient object, whereon to hang him.

“Roast him alive!” suggested David Mowat, but this also was laughed at as being disproportioned to the offence.

“Duck him!” cried Sam Hayes.

This was hailed as a good proposal, though some were of opinion it was too gentle. However, it was agreed to, with this addition, that the culprit’s capote should be cut to pieces. In order to accomplish the latter part of the ceremony with more ease, one of the men removed the capote by the simple process of ripping the back up to the neck, and slitting the sleeves with a scalping-knife. The man here showed a disposition to resist, and began to struggle, but a quiet squeeze from Warder convinced him that it was useless. He was then seized by four men, each of whom, grasping an arm or a leg, carried him down to the water’s edge. They passed Mr Ravenshaw in the opening of his tent. He rose and followed them.

“Serves him right,” said the old gentleman, on hearing who it was, and what he had done.

“Ay, he’s done worse than that,” said one of the men who carried him. “It’s only last Sunday that he stole a blanket out of old Renton’s tent, and that, too, when Mr Cockran was holding service here; but we’ll put a stop to such doings. Now, then, heave together—one, two, three—”

The four powerful men hurled the thief into the air with vigour. He went well up and out, came down with a sounding splash, and disappeared amid shouts of laughter. He rose instantly, and with much spluttering regained the shore, where he was suffered to depart in peace by the executioners of the law, who returned quietly to their tents.

Mr Ravenshaw was left alone, moralising on the depravity of human nature. The sun was setting in a blaze of golden light, and tipping the calm waters of the flood with lines of liquid fire. Turning from the lovely scene with a sigh, the old trader was about to return to his tent when the sound of a voice arrested him. It came from a canoe which had shot suddenly from a clump of half-submerged trees by which it had been hitherto concealed.

As the canoe approached, Mr Ravenshaw ascended a neighbouring mound to watch it. Soon it touched the shore, and three of its occupants landed—an Indian and two boys. A woman who occupied the bow held the frail bark steady. The Indian at once strode up towards the camp. In doing so he had to pass the mound where Mr Ravenshaw was seated on a ledge of rock. He looked at the trader, and stopped. At the same moment the latter recognised Petawanaquat!

If a mine had been sprung beneath his feet he could not have leaped up with greater celerity. Then he stood for a moment rooted to the spot as if transformed into stone—with mouth open and eyes glaring.

To behold his enemy standing thus calmly before him, as if they had only parted yesterday and were on the best of terms, with no expression on his bronzed visage save that of grave solemnity, was almost too much for him! He grasped convulsively the heavy stick which he usually carried. The thought of the foul wrong done him by the red man rushed into his memory with overwhelming force. It did not occur to him to remember his own evil conduct! With a roar of rage worthy of a buffalo bull he rushed towards him. The red man stood firm. What the result would have been if they had met no one can tell, for at that moment an Indian boy ran forward and planted himself right in front of the angry man.

“Father!”

Mr Ravenshaw dropped his cudgel and his jaw, and stood aghast! The painted face was that of a savage, but the voice was the voice of Tony!

The old man shut his mouth and opened his arms. Tony sprang into them with a wild cheer that ended in a burst of joyful tears!

The way in which that boy hugged his sire and painted his face all over by rubbing his own against it was a sight worth seeing.

It had been a concerted plan between Tony and Victor that the latter was to keep a little in the background while the former should advance and perplex his father a little before making himself known, but Tony had over-estimated his powers of restraint. His heart was too large for so trifling a part. He acted up to the promptings of nature, as we have seen, and absolutely howled with joy.

“Don’t choke him, Tony,” remonstrated Victor; “mind, you are stronger than you used to be.”

“Ha! Choke me?” gasped Mr Ravenshaw; “try it, my boy; just try it!”

Tony did try it. But we must not prolong this scene. It is enough to say that when Tony had had his face washed and stood forth his old self in all respects—except that he looked two or three sizes larger, more sunburnt, and more manly—his father quietly betook himself to his tent, and remained there for a time in solitude.

Thereafter he came out, and assuming a free-and-easy, off-hand look of composure, which was clearly hypocritical, ordered tea. This was soon got ready, and the joyful party seated themselves round the camp-fire, which now sent its ruddy blaze and towering column of sparks into the darkening sky.

Victor was not long in running over the chief outlines of their long chase, and also explained the motives of the red man—as far as he understood them—in bringing Tony back.

“Well, Vic,” said Mr Ravenshaw, with a puzzled look, “it’s a strange way of taking his revenge of me. But after all, when I look at him there, sucking away at his calumet with that pleased, grave face, I can’t help thinkin’ that you and I, Christians though we call ourselves, have something to learn from the savage. I’ve been mistaken, Vic, in my opinion of Petawanaquat. Anyhow, his notion of revenge is better than mine. It must be pleasanter to him now to have made us all so happy than if he had kept Tony altogether, or put a bullet through me. It’s a clever dodge, too, for the rascal has laid me under an obligation which I can never repay—made me his debtor for life, in fact. It’s perplexing, Vic; very much so, but satisfactory at the same time.”

There were still more perplexing things in store for old Samuel Ravenshaw that night.

“But why did you not bring Ian Macdonald along with you, Vic?” he asked. “I expect his father here this evening from Fort Garry, where he went in the morning for some pemmican.”

Before Victor had time to reply, Ian himself stepped out of the surrounding darkness. Just previous to this the party had been joined by Herr Winklemann and Michel Rollin, who, after seeing their respective mothers made as comfortable as possible in the circumstances, had been going about the camp chatting with their numerous friends. Louis Lambert had also joined the circle, and Peegwish stood modestly in the background.

“Come along, Ian, we were just talking of you,” said Mr Ravenshaw heartily, as he rose and extended his hand, for the disagreeables of his last meeting with the young man had been obliterated by the subsequent kindness of Ian in going off to aid in the search for Tony.

Ian returned the grasp with good will, but he soon destroyed the good understanding by deliberately, and it seemed unwisely, referring to the two points which still rankled in the old man’s breast.

“Tut, man,” said Mr Ravenshaw, a little testily, “why drag in the subjects of the knoll and my Elsie to-night, of all nights in the year?”

“Because I cannot avoid it,” said Ian. “Events have occurred to-day which compel me to speak of them—of the knoll, at least.”

“Oh, for the matter of that,” interrupted the old gentleman angrily, “you may speak of Elsie too, and the old woman, and Cora, and all the household to boot, for all that I care.”

“I come here to claim a right,” went on Ian, in a calm voice. “It is well known that Samuel Ravenshaw is a man of his word; that what he promises he is sure to perform; that he never draws back from an agreement.”

This speech took Mr Ravenshaw by surprise. He looked round until his eyes rested on Tony. Then he said, in a slightly sarcastic tone—

“What you say is true. Even Tony knows that.”

“Tonyquat knows that what Ian says of his white father is true,” said the boy.

At the name Tonyquat, which was the only word of the sentence he understood, Petawanaquat cast a look of affection on Tony, while his father and the others burst into a laugh at the child’s sententious gravity. But Tony maintained his Indian air, and gazed solemnly at the fire.

“Well, go on, Ian,” said the old gentleman, in somewhat better humour.

“You remember our last meeting in the smoking-box on the knoll?” continued Ian.

“Too well,” said the other, shortly.

“Part of what you said was in the following words: ‘Mark what I say. I will sell this knoll to your father, and give my daughter to you, when you take that house, and with your own unaided hands place it on the top of this knoll!’”

“Well, you have a good memory, Ian. These are the words I used when I wished to convince you of the impossibility of your obtaining what you wanted,” said Mr Ravenshaw, with the determined air of a man who is resolved not to be turned from his purpose.

“What you wanted to convince me of,” rejoined Ian, “has nothing to do with the question. It is what you said that I have to do with.”

Again the irascible fur-trader’s temper gave way as he said—

“Well, what I said I have said, and what I said I’ll stick to.”

“Just so,” returned Ian, with a peculiar smile, “and, knowing this, I have come here to claim the knoll for my father and Elsie for myself.”

This was such a glaring absurdity in the old gentleman’s eyes that he uttered a short contemptuous laugh. At that moment Angus Macdonald appeared upon the scene. His look of amazement at beholding his son may be imagined. Angus was not, however, demonstrative.

He only stepped across the fire, and gave Ian a crushing squeeze of the hand.

“It iss fery glad to see you I am, my poy, but it is taken py surprise I am, whatever. An’ ho!” (as his eyes fell on Tony), “it iss the child you hef found. Well, it iss a happy father you will pe this night, Mr Ruvnshaw. I wish you choy. Don’t let me stop you, whatever. It wass something interesting you would pe telling these chentlemen when I came up.”

“I was just going to tell them, father,” said Ian, resting a hand on his sire’s shoulder, “that I have come straight from Willow Creek with the news that this day I have, with my own unaided hands,”—he cast a sidelong glance at the old gentleman—“transported your house to Mr Ravenshaw’s knoll, and have asked Elsie Ravenshaw to be my wife, and been accepted.”

“Moreover,” continued Ian, in a calm, steady tone, “my father’s biggest barn has, without any assistance from any one, stranded itself on Mr Ravenshaw’s lawn!”

“Bless me, Ian, iss it jokin’ ye are?”

“No, father. It’s in earnest I am.”

Good reader, the aspect of the party—especially of old Ravenshaw and Angus—on hearing these announcements is beyond our powers of description; we therefore prefer to leave it to your own vivid imagination.

Chapter Twenty Six.

The Last.

A change—like the flashing colours of a kaleidoscope; like the phantoms of a dream! Red River settlement is dry again, or drying; but ah! what a scene of wreck and ruin! It looks as if the settlement had been devastated by fire and sword as well as water. Broken-down houses, uprooted fences and trees, piles of dÉbris, beds and boxes, billets of wood and blankets, habiliments and hay, carioles and cordage and carcasses of cattle, all mixed up more or less, and cemented together with mud. Nearly every house in the settlement had been destroyed.

Of course many a day passed after the great catastrophe before Red River was itself again, with its river confined to the proper channel, and its prairies rolling with grass-waves; but it was not long before the energetic inhabitants returned to their labours and their desolated houses to begin the world anew. About the 1st of May the flood began; by the 20th of the same month it had reached its height, and on the 22nd the waters began to assuage. On that day they had made a decided fall of two inches. The height to which the waters had risen above the level of ordinary years was fifteen feet. The flood subsided very gradually. About the middle of June the ploughs were at work again, and the people busy sowing what was left to them of their seed-barley and potatoes.

Among the busiest of the busy at that bustling time was Peegwish. While others were hard at work clearing, rebuilding, ploughing, and sowing, our noble savage was fishing. The labour of this occupation consisted chiefly in staring at his line, while he sat on a mud-heap on the river bank, and smoked in the pleasant sunshine. Occasionally he roused himself to haul out a goldeye. Wildcat assisted him ably in his labours, and still more ably in the after consumption of the goldeyes. Angus Macdonald discovered them thus occupied, and had difficulty in resisting his desire to pitch the lazy fellow into the river.

“What wass you doin’ there?” he cried. “Wass it wastin’ your time wi’ small fush you will pe doin’, an’ every wan else workin’ hard? Go an’ putt the ox in the cart an’ haul watter. Look sharp!”

Angus concluded with some deep gutturals in Gaelic which we cannot translate, and Peegwish, rising hastily, went off to do as he was bid. But Peegwish was a poor water-drawer. The ox turned out to be more obstinate than himself, and also more callous, for when it became fatigued with hauling the water-barrel to and fro, it stopped at the foot of the slope near a corner of the garden, and refused to budge. Peegwish lashed it, but it did not feel—at all events, it did not care. He tried to wheedle it, but failed: he became abusive, and used bad language to the ox, but without success. He was in the height of his distress when Petawanaquat passed by with a load of firewood on his shoulder. The red man having been reconciled to his old enemy, had remained at Red River, partly to assist him, partly to see the end of the flood, and partly to be near his friend Sinclair and his adopted son Tonyquat. From the latter he could not tear himself away.

The Indian stood and gazed solemnly at his brother savage for some minutes, then he threw down his load, and entering the garden, cut the remains of a cabbage which had survived the flood. With this he went to the ox and held it to its nose. The animal advanced; the Indian retreated a few steps. The ox advanced again in the hope of obtaining a savoury mouthful, but the Indian still retreated. Thus, step by step, the slope was ascended!

“Wah!” said Petawanaquat, with a grave look, as he handed the cabbage to Peegwish, who profited by the lesson, and gained his ends.

“She’s fery lazy,” muttered Angus to himself—referring to Peegwish—as he went up the river bank towards the knoll, where his house now stood triumphantly, “fery lazy; more lazy than—than—”

Failing to find a just comparison, he tailed off in expressive but untranslatable Gaelic.

“Goot tay to you, Muster Ruvnshaw,” said Angus, on reaching the summit of the knoll. “It wass fery goot of you, whatever, to let my hoose stand here.”

“Don’t mention it, Angus,” said the old gentleman, removing his pipe with one hand, and extending the other. “It would be difficult to prevent it remaining where it is now. Besides, I passed my word, you know, and that cannot be broken. Come, sit down. I’m thankful your house was so considerate as to spare my smoking-box, though it has given it a shove of a few feet to the south’ard. In other respects the house is an advantage, for while it has not hurt the view, it serves to protect my box from the quarter which used to be exposed to east winds. But there is one stipulation I have to make Angus, before the bargain is closed.”

“An’ what may that pe?” asked Angus, with a shade of anxiety.

“That this smoking-box and the ground on which it stands, together with the footpath leading up to it, shall remain my property as long as I live.”

Angus smiled. He had the peculiarity of turning the corners of his mouth down instead of up when he did so, which gave a remarkably knowing look to his smile.

“You shall pe fery welcome,” he said. “And now, Muster Ruvnshaw, I came here to say a word for my poy. You know it iss natural that Ian will pe getting anxious apout the wedding. It iss impatient he will pe, whatever. He is a little shy to speak to you himself, and he will pe botherin’ me to—”

“All right, Angus, I understand,” interrupted Mr Ravenshaw. “You know both he and Lambert are busy removing your barn from my lawn. When that is finished we shall have the weddings. My old woman wants ’em to be on the same day, but nothing can be done till the barn is removed, for I mean to have the dance on that lawn on the double-wedding day. So you can tell them that.”

Angus did tell them that, and it is a remarkable fact which every one in the establishment observed, that the unsightly barn, which had so long disfigured the lawn at Willow Creek, disappeared, as if by magic, in one night, as Cora put it, “like the baseless fabric of a vision!”

Time passed, and changed the face of nature entirely. Wrecks were swept away; houses sprang up; fences were repaired; crops waved on the fields of Red River as of yore, and cattle browsed on the plains; so that if a stranger had visited that outlying settlement there would have been little to inform his eyes of the great disaster which had so recently swept over the place. But there would have been much to inform his ears, for it was many a day before the interest and excitement about the great flood went down. In fact, for a long time afterwards the flood was so much in the thoughts and mouths of the people that they might have been mistaken for the immediate descendants of those who had swarmed on the slopes of Ararat.

Let us now present a series of pictures for the reader’s inspection.

The first is a little log-hut embosomed in bushes, with a stately tree rising close beside it. Flowers and berries bedeck the surrounding shrubbery, pleasant perfumes fill the air. A small garden, in which the useful and ornamental are blended, environs the hut. The two windows are filled with glass, not parchment. A rustic porch, covered with twining plants, conceals the door, and a general air of tidiness marks all the surroundings. Need we say more to convince the intelligent reader that this is the hut of old Liz? It occupies the spot where it was deposited by the flood, the family having been allowed to remain there.

Under the genius of Herr Winklemann and Michel Rollin the old hut has displayed some characteristics of the cactus in sending forth offshoots from its own body. An offshoot in the rear is the kitchen; another on the right is a mansion, as large nearly as the parent, in which Winklemann has placed his mother, to the great relief of Daddy, who never forgot, and with difficulty forgave, the old woman’s kicking habits when their legs reposed together on the table. It must be added, however, that the old people live on good terms, and that Mrs Winklemann frequently visits Daddy, and smokes with him. The offshoot on the left, built by Michel, is a stable, and an excrescence beyond is a cow-house. There, are fowls in front of the hut, and flour, sugar, pork, and tea within, so it may be concluded that the families are now in comfort.

When the improvements just mentioned were completed, Michel Rollin, unable to settle down, had arranged with Peegwish and Wildcat to go off on a fishing expedition.

Before starting he entered the hut, and said to Winklemann, who was filling his “moder’s” pipe for her—

“You vill be here ven I come back? You vill not leave the ol’ peepil?”

“No; I vill stope till you retoorns. Be sure I vill take care of zee old vons. But dere is not much fear of anodor flood joost now.”

“What says he, Liz?” asked old Daddy, with a hand to his ear. “Speak oot.”

“Oh, he’s jist haverin’ aboot the flood. He says there’s nae fear o’ anither flood, an’ I think he’s aboot right.”

“I’m no sae sure o’ that,” returned Daddy, whose memory for the past was much stronger than for current events. “It’s been said, on the best authority, that there was a seemilar flood i’ the year seeventeen hunner an’ seeventy-sax, anither in seeventeen ninety, an’ anither in aughteen hunner an’ nine.”

“Hoots! haud yer gab. What div ye ken aboot floods?”

Daddy, hearing nothing, and believing from the pleasant expression of Liz’s countenance that she appreciated his remarks, nodded to Mrs Winklemann cheerily, and smiled.

“Ha!” laughed her son; “you is von stranch being, old Liz—ver stranch.”

Having finished the filling of his “moder’s” pipe and lighted it for her, Herr Winklemann arose and followed his friend Michel out of the hut.

Let us look at another picture.

It is a pair of cottages close to each other, and about a stone’s cast from the farm at Willow Creek. The buildings are new, and much alike in form and size. There are well-tilled fields around, and fat cattle and a few sheep. The insides of these mansions have not much to boast of in the way of ornament, but there is enough to display the influence, the good taste, and the refinement of woman.

Immediately after the abating of the waters Ian Macdonald and Louis Lambert set to work to build these houses, and you may be sure they were not long about it, for the tyrannical old father-in-law elect not only compelled them to take down the barn on the lawn before the weddings, but also to build houses for their brides.

And after the knots were tied and the dance on the lawn at Willow Creek was over, and the happy couples were fairly established in their own homes, they kept open house for a long time, and interchanged innumerable visits between Bearclaw Cottage, (that was Ian’s), and Hunter’s Lodge, (that was Lambert’s), and the Ark on Ararat, (that was the house of Angus), and Willow Creek, insomuch that Tony was heard one day to inform Miss Trim confidentially that he found it difficult to tell where he lived, or which was his proper home—and Miss Trim confessed that she was in much the same condition of mind.

“What an amazing time we have passed through!” said Miss Trim, referring to the flood, at one of their social gatherings.

“Yes,” said Victor hastily, for he knew that Miss Trim was on the point of delivering one of her parenthetical and pointless orations, “it was indeed an amazing time! Such boating on the plains, and such camping out! To say nothing of tumbling into the water and being half drowned.”

“By the way,” asked Ian, “was not poor John Flett nearly drowned about the beginning of the flood?”

“Of course he was,” said Mr Ravenshaw, “and if it had not been for your father he and his family would have been lost altogether. Is not that so, Angus?”

“Well, it iss droont he would have been in all probabeelity,” said Angus, “for he was on the wrong road when I met him, an’ he couldn’t find the right wan, whatever. Shon Flett iss a good man, but he iss also foolish. You see, when the watter came on him so strong that his hoose began to slup away, he took two of his oxen an’ he tied them together wi’ ropes, an’ put planks on their backs, which he also tied; ay! an’ so he made a sort of livin’ stage, on which he sat his wife and four children; two of them wass poys and the other two wass girls, whatever. The frightened craters went about the best way they could, sometimes wadin’ an’ sometimes sweemin’, an’ Shon, he wass leadin’ them wi’ a line roond their horns, an’ he wass wadin’ an’ sweemin’ also. I came across them wi’ my post an’ took them in. That was just pefore we saw the hoose on fire floatin’ down the river.”

“The house on fire!” exclaimed Cora; “I did not hear of that.”

“No wonder,” said Lambert. “There have been so many strange incidents and hairbreadth escapes during the flood that we won’t likely hear about them all for many a day to come.”

“But what about the house on fire?” asked Victor; “was any one in it?”

“No, it was only a house that had been left somewhat hastily by its owners, who must have forgot to put out the fire or capsized something over it. At all events the house was seen floating down stream at night, and a splendid sight it was, burning furiously, with the flames glittering in the water that swept it away.”

“How sad!” said Elsie, whose mind dwelt on the evil rather than on the picturesque aspect of the incident.

“I can’t imagine what ever was the cause of the flood,” remarked Mrs Ravenshaw.

“Well, my dear,” said her husband, in a somewhat oracular tone, “no one can certainly tell what caused it, but my own opinion is that it was caused by the unusual wetness of the fall. You remember how it rained; well, when the lakes and rivers were as full as they could hold, and the ground was soaking like a full sponge, the winter came on us suddenly and set all fast, thus preventing the water getting away. Then came the snow, also unusually heavy. Then came a late spring with a sudden burst of warm weather, and a south wind for several days in succession, turning all this accumulation into water. Red Lake, Otter-tail Lake, and Lake Travers overflowed, as you know; the Red River ice burst up and jammed against the solid ice of Lake Winnipeg, which stopped the current, and thus caused the overflow. That’s my notion about the flood. Whether it’s right or no, who can tell?”

“Your observations, sir, are fery goot, whatever,” said Angus, taking an unusually long draw at his pipe.

Turn we now to look upon one more picture. It is on the shores of the great lake—Lake Winnipeg. There among a tangled but picturesque mass of reeds and bushes, a canoe is resting on the reeds, and, not far from it, a rude structure of boughs and bark has been set up. It is open in front, and before it burns a large fire, whose light, however, is paled by the effulgence of the glorious sun as it dips into the lake.

Petawanaquat is there, seated with a book on his knee, and a dignified, yet slightly perplexed expression on his face. His friend Sinclair is there too, teaching him to read the Word of God. Meekeye, faithful partner and sympathiser with the red man, is also there; and beside them reclines our friend Tony. That child’s taste for hunting is strong. Having been—according to Miss Trim’s report—a very good boy and remarkably diligent at his lessons, he has been granted a holiday and permission to go a-hunting with his red father. He is tired after the day’s hunt, and reclines placidly awaiting supper, which Meekeye with downcast look prepares.

Having spent two hours over the Book that evening, Petawanaquat closed it slowly and looked up.

“You find it rather difficult to understand,” said Sinclair, with a pleasant smile.

The red man rose, drew himself up, and, turning his black eyes, like the eagle, on the flashing sun, stretched out his hand.

“My brother,” he said, “beholds the sun. Can he tell where it comes from, or whither it goes? No; but he understands that the Great Spirit guides its course, and he is satisfied. When Petawanaquat was a child he understood very little. He is a man now, and understands a little more. When the Great Spirit takes him up yonder, no doubt his mind shall be made bigger, and it shall be filled. The book that the Great Spirit has sent is very big. Some things in it are hard to understand, but the greatest thing of all is not hard. There is but one thing needful. Is not Jesus the one thing? Petawanaquat wishes to live for ever. To know the Great Spirit and Jesus is to live for ever. Petawanaquat has lived long and seen much. He has seen men torture men like evil spirits. He has seen scalps torn from men and women. He has seen little ones dashed against the stones. The spirit of Petawanaquat has groaned within him—he knew not why—perhaps the Great Spirit was speaking to him in his heart. ‘Shall these deeds of evil never have an end?’ he asked, but there was no answer. Now, an answer has come. Jesus is the Saviour from sin. All things shall be put under Him. When that time comes all things shall be good. At present good and evil are mixed.”

The red man paused a moment, with a slightly troubled look, but the shadow passed like a fleeting cloud as he dropped his arm, and, with an air of simple humility, sat down again beside his friend.

“Petawanaquat is only a child,” he added; “at present he is only learning. In good time he shall know all.”

The sun’s last rays were still gilding the horizon and flickering on the waves of Winnipeg when the tired hunters lay down to rest. Gradually the camp-fire lost its ruddy glow; the evening breeze died slowly down; one by one the stars came out, and the soft curtain of night, descending like a gentle spirit on the wilderness, hid the red man and his comrades from mortal eyes, and wrapped them in profound repose.

The End.