ford in making his business arrangements here, and hope all
will prove satisfactory. I have only to add that, although you must
be prepared for much that you will find different from English life,
much that is rough and ungainly and uncomfortable, you may feel
confident that, with a little patience, the worst roughness of
colonial life will soon be overcome, and that you will find compensation
a thousand times over in the glorious climate and cheerful prospects of
this new land.

As I have never had the pleasure of meeting Captain and Mrs. Rexford, I
trust you will excuse me for addressing this note of welcome to you,
whom I trust I may still look upon as a friend. I have not forgotten the
winter when I received encouragement and counsel from you, who had so
many to admire and occupy you that, looking back now, I feel it strange
that you should have found time to bestow in mere kindness.

Here there followed courteous salutations to the lady's father and
mother, brothers and sisters. The letter was signed in friendly style
and addressed to an hotel in Halifax, where apparently it was to await
the arrival of the fair stranger from some other shore.

It is probable that, in the interfacings of human lives, events are
happening every moment which, although bearing according to present
knowledge no possible relation to our own lives, are yet to have an
influence on our future and make havoc with our expectations. The train
is laid, the fuse is lit, long before we know it.

That night, as Robert Trenholme sealed his letters, an event took place
that was to test by a strange influence the lives of these three
people--Robert Trenholme, the lady of whom he thought so pleasantly, and
the young brother to whom he had written so laboriously. And the event
was that an old settler, who dwelt in a remote part of the country, went
out of his cabin in the delusive moonlight, slipped on a steep place,
and fell, thereby receiving an inward hurt that was to bring him death.

CHAPTER II.

The Indian summer, that lingers in the Canadian forest after the fall of
the leaves, had passed away. The earth lay frozen, ready to bear the
snow. The rivers, with edge of thin ice upon their quiet places,
rolled, gathering into the surface of their waters the cold that would
so soon create their crystal prison.

The bright sun of a late November day was shining upon a small lake that
lay in the lonel