_ Mr. Selincourt?"

"I suppose so; I certainly don't know any other," he said, smiling
a little, which had a grotesque effect, for the mud with which his
face was so liberally smeared had dried stiff in the sunshine, and
the smiling made it crack like a painted mask which has been
doubled up.

"But I thought you had gone to Akimiski?" Katherine said, her
astonishment still so great that she would hardly have believed
even now that the stranger was telling the truth, had it not been
for the trembling which was upon her now that she found herself
face to face with the man whom her father had so seriously wronged
away back in the past.

"I should have been much wiser if I had gone," said Mr. Selincourt.
"But at the last moment I decided to stay and survey the land on
both sides of the river. I am sending back some of the boatmen
with mails to-morrow, and it seemed essential that I should be able
to write definitely to my agent in Montreal about land which I
might wish to purchase. Then I got Stee Jenkin to put me across
the river, and I wandered along the shore, then back along the
river bank until I reached these beautiful green meadows, as I
thought them. But when I started to walk across I began to sink, so
slowly at first that I hardly realized what was wrong."

"That is because the mud is firmer near the bank," said Katherine.
"Right out in the centre it will not bear a duck."

"I should have been under long before, only when I saw what was
coming I sat down, so sank more slowly. But it was horrible,
horrible!" he exclaimed, with a violent shudder.

"Don't think about it more than you can help, and we shall not be
long in getting you home," she said; then bent to her oars and
tried to forget how sorely her blistered hands were hurting her.

CHAPTER XVI

"We Must be Friends!"

When her father decided not to go to Akimiski, Mary spent a long
morning in roaming about Seal Cove, visiting the various little
houses dotted near the fish shed, and making herself thoroughly
acquainted with the neighbourhood. But when her father got into
Stee Jenkin's boat, and was rowed across the river to survey the
land on the farther side, Mary had herself rowed up the river, with
the intention of spending the afternoon in arranging the little
brown house to suit her own fancy. The afternoon proved so warm
that she decided on leaving the arranging to the next day, and sat
down to write letters instead. Even this pro