f your trust. After all that you underwent from the first
moment of your being left alone on the tote-road I cannot wonder
at your desire to go away. But I feel that without you I could
never have pulled through and that by this time the prospect of a
life spent without you is unbearable.

I am not begging you humbly for your love. I don't want to owe it
to your pity for the man who was so ill, to the deep charity and
the kindness of a sweet and unselfish nature. That is why I
couldn't speak out my longing for you and the love that fills my
heart, lest I might surprise you into a hasty consent. I could not
have restrained my emotion and I know I would have begged and
implored--and that might have made it very hard and painful for
you to refuse.

Please return to me after you have read and thought this over. If
we are to remain but friends you will extend one hand to me and I
shall know what it means. I daresay I shall survive that hurt as I
survived the other. Have no fear for me.

But if you feel in your heart that you can give me all I long for,
that you are willing to become my wife, then stretch both of those
little hands to me, since it will take the two to carry such a
precious gift.

Your hopeful and grateful patient,
HUGO.

After she had finished she tried to read the paper again, but it was
too hard to see. For a moment she stared at the Roaring Falls through
the misty veil of their spray. Thrusting the letter into her bosom she
found her feet, suddenly, and ran to the little shack. Hugo had risen
and was standing in the doorway, his heart beating fast and his face
very pale. As Madge came near she uplifted both hands, but she could
hardly see him. Once more her eyes were suffused with tears, but it
was as if the glory of a wondrous sunlit world had been too strong for
them. She was smiling happily, however, when he took both little hands
into his right.

"I--I hurried back," she panted. "Neither--neither did I feel
that--that I could live without you--without this wonderful peace of
beautiful Roaring River, and--and the love that it has brought to
me!"

A few moments later they heard Big Stefan's familiar shout from the
tote-road. The toboggan could no longer be used and he had driven over
a shaggy old horse that had pulled a reliable buckboard.

"Dot's yoost great!" he roar