The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Silver Maple, by Marian Keith

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Title: The Silver Maple

Author: Marian Keith

Release Date: May 4, 2009 [EBook #28688]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SILVER MAPLE ***

Produced by Al Haines

The Silver Maple

by

Marian Keith

Author of "Duncan Polite"

TORONTO

THE WESTMINSTER COMPANY LIMITED

1905

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. IN THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS
II. A NEW NAME
III. WINNING HIS SPURS
IV. "CAPE CANADA"
V. THE REFORMATION
VI. AN IGNOMINIOUS TASK
VII. THE AVENGING OF GLENCOE
VIII. THE END OF THE FEUD
IX. RALPH STANWELL AGAIN
X. IN THE REALMS OF GOLD
XI. THE WEAVER'S REWARD
XII. A WELL-MEANT PLOT
XIII. THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS
XIV. THE VOYAGEURS
XV. THE SECRET OF THE NILE
XVI. RE-VOYAGE
XVII. THE PROMISED LAND

THE SILVER MAPLE

I

IN THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS

Like the great rest that cometh after pain,
The calm that follows storm, the great surcease,
This folding slumber comforts wood and plain
In one white mantling peace.
--WILLIAM WILFRED CAMPBELL.

The storm was over, the snow had ceased falling, and under its muffling
mantle, white and spent with the day's struggle, lay the great swamp of
the Oro. It seemed to hold in its motionless bosom the very spirit of
silence and death. The delicately traced pattern of a rabbit or weasel
track, and a narrow human pathway that wound tortuously into the
sepulchral depths, were the only signs of life in all the white
stillness. Away down the dim, cathedral-like aisles, that fainted into
softest grey in the distance, the crackling of an overburdened twig
rang startlingly clear in the awesome hush. The tall firs and pines
swept the white earth with their snow-laden branches, the drooping
limbs looking like throngs of cowled heads, bent to worship in the
sacred stillness of a vast temple. For the forest was, indeed, a place
in which to wonder and to pray, a place all white and holy, filled with
the mystery and awe of death.

But suddenly into this softl