her was near
him in the flesh, but severed from him by a whole world of fevered
imaginings. Sometimes Humphrey found it in his heart to wish that
the Indians would come back and make a final end of them both. All
hope and zest and joy in life seemed to have been taken from him at
one blow. He could neither think of the happy past without pangs of
pain, nor yet face a future which seemed barren of hope and
promise.

He could only sit beside his brother, tend him, nurse him, pray for
him. But the words of prayer too often died away upon his lips. Had
they not all prayed together, after the godly habit of the
household, upon the very morning when this awful disaster fell upon
them? Were these vast solitudes too far away for God to hear the
prayers that went up from them?

Humphrey had never known what awful loneliness could engulf the
human spirit till he sat beside the fevered man in the vast
solitude of the primeval forest, asking in his heart whether God
Himself had not forsaken them.

It was the hour of sundown, and Humphrey had gone outside for a
breath of fresh air. He looked ten years older than he had done a
few days back, when he had come whistling through the forest track,
expecting to see the children bounding forth to meet him. His eyes
were sunken, his face was pale and haggard, his dress was unkempt
and ragged. There were no clever fingers now to patch tattered
raiment, and keep things neat and trim.

There was an unwonted sound in the forest! It was distant still. To
some ears it would have been inaudible; but Humphrey heard it, and
his heart suddenly beat faster.

The sound was that of approaching steps--the steps of men. A few
minutes more and he heard the sound of voices, too. He had been
about to dash into the shed for his gun, but the fresh sounds
arrested his movement.

He had ears as sharp as those of an ambushed Indian, and he
detected in a moment that the men who were approaching the clearing
were of his own nationality. The words he could not hear, but he
could distinguish the intonation. It was not the rapid,
thin-sounding French tongue; it was English--he was certain of it!
And a light leaped to his eyes at the bare thought of meeting a
brother countryman in this desolate place.

Probably it was some other settler, one of that hardy race that
fringed the colony on its western frontier. Miles and miles of
rolling forest lay between these scattered holdings, and since war
was but lately