pe I must have perished
to-day, Katherine. I am really very much in your debt. Do you
think I shall ever be able to repay you?"

"Of course; if not me, then someone else. Such things are always
passed on," she said lightly.

"Of choice I would rather pay my debt in this case, if indeed it
can be paid, to the person to whom I owe it," he said, with a slow
emphasis which made her heart beat tumultuously. Then she
remembered that it was her duty to stand aside for Mary's sake, and
that she must not let this man love her if Mary had set her own
affections upon him, as Nellie had more than hinted.

A cold shiver shook Katherine then, for now the chill came from
within as well as without, and the dreary day wrapped her exhausted
body in its dismal discomfort.

"Don't talk," she said with a touch of authority in her tone.
"Save your strength for enduring. See, here comes a man running
down from the fish-flakes; he has come to help us, and now we shall
get on faster, you will find."

CHAPTER XXI

Matter for Heartache

Three days had passed away, and life had dropped into its
accustomed monotony again. Mrs. Burton said there never was
anything to vary the sameness of existence at Roaring Water Portage
unless someone was in danger of his or her life, and really events
had a way of proving her to be right. When Katherine had rushed
off in such a hurry that day, to help Mary Selincourt out of her
fix, Mrs. Burton had left her sewing, and, taking her sister's work
in hand, had finished cleaning the shelves, then restored to them
the various canisters and boxes according to her own ideas of
neatness, instead of with any remembrance as to how they had been
arranged previously.

On reaching home that afternoon, wet, cold, weary, and with chill
foreboding in her heart, Katherine's first sensation was one of
lively gratitude to Nellie for having dispersed the confusion she
had left behind when she departed so hurriedly. But when a
customer came in a little later for a quarter of a pound of
mustard, and it took half an hour of hard searching to find it,
Katherine began to wonder whether after all it would not have been
easier to have been left to deal singlehanded with the confusion on
the floor, for at least she had known where to find things.

Then someone wanted corn-flour, which entailed a still longer
search; but the culminating point came when Mrs. M'Kree sent down
in hot haste for carbonate of soda and d