had stood with his
gun levelled upon the man whom Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she
would to keep back the knowledge which she knew she must never under
any circumstances reveal, those words came ringing upon her ears.
And she knew that the secret would haunt her and taunt her always.

As they came over the last of the ridges, the grey waste of the
country sloping from all sides to the lake lay open before them. There
was not a ruin, not a standing stick to show them where little French
Village had once stood along the lake. The fire had gone completely
around the lake to the very water edge and a back draught had drawn it
up in a circle around the east slope. There it had burned itself out
along the forest line of the higher hills. It had gone on toward the
west, burning its way down to the settled farm lands. But there would
be no more fire in this region.

"Would the people make their way down the river," the Bishop asked;
"or did they escape back into the higher hills?"

"I don't think they did either," Ruth answered as she scanned the lake
sharply. "There is something out there in the middle of the lake, and
I wouldn't be surprised if they made rafts out of the logs and went
through the fire that way. They'd be better off than we were, and that
way they could save some things. If they had run away they would have
had to drop everything."

The horses, sniffing the moist air from the lake, pricked up their
ears and started briskly down the slope. It was soon plain that Ruth
was right in her conjecture. They could now make out five or six
large rafts which the people had evidently thrown together out of the
logs that had been lying in the lake awaiting their turn at the
sawmill. These were crowded with people, standing as they must have
stood all through the night; and now the freshening wind, aided by
such help as the people could give it with boards and poles, was
moving all slowly toward the shore where their homes had been.

The heart of the Shepherd was very low as he rode fetlock deep through
the ashes of what had been the street of a happy little village and
watched his people coming sadly back to land. There was nothing for
them to come back to. They might as well have gone to the other side
of the lake to begin life again. But they would inevitably, with that
dumb loyalty to places, which people share with birds, come back and
begin their nests over again.

For nearly an hour they stood on the littl