d's house had become!

"What a home-coming!" exclaimed Ian, thinking, in the bitterness of his
soul, of Elsie as well as the house.

"It's awful!" said Victor, with a sympathetic glance at his friend.

The desolation was indeed complete--symbolic, Ian thought, of the
condition of his own heart. Besides having eight or ten feet of water
on its walls, all the lower rooms were utterly wrecked. A heavy log,
ready for the saw-pit, had come down with the torrent, and, taking upon
it the duties of a battering-ram, had charged the parlour window. Not
only did it carry this bodily into the room, but it forced it into the
passage beyond, where it jammed and stuck fast. The butt of this log,
projecting several feet from the window, had intercepted straw and hay
to such an extent that a miniature stack was formed, in which all sorts
of light articles of furniture and debris had been caught. With the
stubborn determination of a Celt, Angus had refused to remove his main
door, which faced up stream. The result was that the flood removed it
for him with a degree of violence that had induced Miss Martha to
exclaim, "The house is goin' at last!" to which Angus had replied
doggedly.

"Let it go. It will hef to go some day, whatever." But the house had
not gone. It was only, as we have said, the main door which went, and
was hurled through the passage into the kitchen, where it charged the
back door, wrenched it off, and accompanied it to Lake Winnipeg with a
tail of miscellaneous cooking utensils. Only shreds of the back windows
remained hanging by twisted hinges to the frames, telling with mute
eloquence of heroic resistance to the last gasp. Whatever had not been
removed by Angus from the ground-floor of his house had been swept out
at the windows and doorways, as with the besom of destruction.

Paddling in through the front door, the two friends disembarked from
their canoe on the staircase, and ascended to the upper floor. Here
everything betokened a hurried departure. Furniture was strewn about in
disorder; articles of clothing were scattered broadcast, as if Miss
Martha and her maid had been summoned to sudden departure, and had
rummaged recklessly for their most cherished possessions. In the
principal bedroom, on the best bed, stood Beauty in her native
ugliness--the only living thing left to do the honours of the house.

"What a brute!" exclaimed Victor.

He seized a saucepan that stood handy, and hurled it a