ere 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