into the terrible wilds that she had heard stories
about. Her knees gave away in her terror. Crouching, a little red
tumbled heap, on the bottom of the bateau, she lifted up her voice in
shrill wailings, which so frightened the woodchuck that he came and
crept under her skirt.

Below the Settlement the river ran for miles through a country of
ever-deepening desolation, without cabin or clearing near its shores,
till it emptied itself into the yet more desolate lake known as "Big
Lonely," a body of forsaken water about ten miles long, surrounded by
swamps and burnt-lands. From the foot of Big Lonely the river raged
away over a mile of thundering ledges, through a chasm known to the
lumbermen as "The Devil's Trough." The fury of this madness having
spent itself between the black walls of the canyon, the river
continued rather sluggishly its long course toward the sea. A few
miles below the Settlement the river began to get hurried and
turbulent, chafing white through rocky rapids. When the bateau plunged
into the first of these, Mandy Ann's wailing and sobbing stopped
abruptly. The clamour of the white waves and the sight of their
lashing wrath fairly stupefied her. She sat up on the middle thwart,
with the shivering woodchuck clutched to her breast, and stared about
with wild eyes. On every side the waves leaped up, black, white, and
amber, jumping at the staggering bateau. But appalling as they looked
to Mandy Ann, they were not particularly dangerous to the sturdy,
high-sided craft which carried her. The old bateau had been built to
navigate just such waters. Nothing could upset it, and on account of
its high, flaring sides, no ordinary rapids could swamp it. It rode
the loud chutes triumphantly, now dipping its lofty nose, now bumping
and reeling, but always making the passage without serious mishap. All
through the rapids Mandy Ann would sit silent, motionless, fascinated
with horror. But in the long, comparatively smooth reaches she would
recover herself enough to cry softly upon the woodchuck's soft brown
fur, till that prudent little animal, exasperated at the damp of her
caresses, wriggled away and crawled into his hated basket.

At last, when the bateau had run a dozen of these noisy "rips," Mandy
Ann grew surfeited with terror, and thought to comfort herself.
Sitting down again upon the bottom of the bateau, she sadly sought to
revive her interest in the "Chaney House." She would finger the
choicest bits of