A faint cheer was heard in
the distance. It was followed, or rather accompanied, by a loud, manly,
and well-known shout.

Mrs Gore grew pale, and would have fallen to the ground had not Jeff
caught and supported her.

"Why, I _do_ declare it's Robin--an'--eh! if there beant the children
wi' 'im!"

The advancing party broke into a run as he spoke, another loud cheer
burst forth, and in a few seconds Nelly was locked once more in her dear
mother's arms.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

CONCLUSION.

It is not necessary to say that there was joy--powerful, inexpressible--
within the wooden walls of Fort Enterprise on that New Year's morning,
and a New Year's hymn of praise welled up continually from the glad
mother's heart, finding expression sometimes in her voice, but oftener
in her eyes, as she gazed upon the faces of her dear ones, the lost and
found.

The flag at Fort Enterprise, which had not flaunted its red field from
the flagstaff since the sad day--that day twelve months exactly--when
the children were lost, once more waved gaily in the frosty air, and
glowed in the beams of the wintry sun. The sound of joyful revelry,
which had not been heard within the walls of the Fort for a long, long
year, once again burst forth with such energy that one might have been
led to suppose its being pent up so long had intensified its power.

The huge fireplace roared, and blazed, and crackled, with a log so
massive that no other Yule log in the known world could have held a
candle to it; and in, on, and around that fire were pots, pans, and
goblets innumerable, all of which hissed, and spluttered, and steamed at
Larry O'Dowd, as if with glee at the sight of his honest face once again
presiding over his own peculiar domain. And the parlour of Fort
Enterprise--that parlour which we have mentioned as being Robin's
dining-room and drawing-room, besides being his bedroom and his
kitchen--was converted into a leafy bower by means of pine branches and
festooned evergreens, and laid out for a feast the like of which had not
been seen there for many a day, and which was transcendently more
magnificent than that memorable New Year's day dinner which had been
cooked, but not eaten, just three hundred and sixty-five days before.

In short, everything in and about Fort Enterprise bore evidence that its
inmates meant to rejoice and make merry on that first day of a new year,
as it was meet they should do under such favourable circumst