ved a task beyond her
powers, for she was more exhausted than she realized by the long
journey over river and trail, and the hot day was making the
fatigue felt.

One letter, short and scrappy, got itself written, and then
weariness had its way. Mary went into her little bedroom, and,
lying down, went fast asleep. It was three hours later when she
awoke, and, feeling fearfully ashamed of her laziness, she went out
to the little kitchen to light a fire for getting a cup of tea
ready for her father.

No matter how well-to-do in money and gear people may be, if they
leave the beaten tracks of civilization and immure themselves in
the wilderness they will have to learn to help themselves or else
suffer hardship. So Mary Selincourt, whose father's yearly income
was a good way advanced in a four-figured total, found herself
compelled to the necessity of lighting her own fire, or going
without the tea. There was plenty of kindling wood close to her
hand, so the task presented no especial difficulty, but she laughed
softly to herself as she watched the leaping flames, and thought
how astonished some of her aristocratic friends would be if they
could see her doing domestic work amid such humble surroundings.

When the kettle began to sing she went into the little sitting-room
to set the table for tea, and was enjoying the work as if it were
play and she a child again, when a sound of voices and footsteps
brought her in haste to the open door. Two of the boatmen were
coming up the path from the river leading a mud-coated figure whom
at first Mary did not recognise. But a second glance showed her
that it was really her father. With a cry of alarm she met him at
the door, full of concern for his uncomfortable plight, yet not for
a moment realizing how terrible his danger had been.

"Dear Father, where have you been?" she cried.

"Within a hand-grip of death," he answered, with a quaver of
breakdown in his voice, for it had shaken him fearfully, that long,
slow torture of being sucked into the green ooze of the muskeg.

"Don't talk about it!" she said hastily. "I will put your clean
things ready. There is happily a kettle on the boil; the men will
help you to bath, and when you are in bed I will bring you tea."

"Yes," he answered languidly, while she flew to get things ready,
and called one of the men to assist her in putting water into the
big tin pan which was the only bath the house afforded.

She was going t