can tell him from me to get on with that new boat
as fast as he can, and we will name it the Katherine."

"Are you joking?" asked Mrs. M'Kree, who had suddenly become very
serious, as she looked from Jervis to Katherine, whose face was a
study in blushes.

"No, I am quite in earnest," he answered. "But we must go now, for
we dumped a lot of fish out on the portage path, and I should not
be surprised if half the dogs in the neighbourhood are there,
sampling it, when we get back."

"I hope not, or my trouble in bringing it over the long portage
will all have been thrown away," said Katherine, who could not help
smiling at the bewilderment on the face of Mrs. M'Kree.

There was no need to row going down the river; they just sat side
by side and let the boat drift on the current, while they talked of
the present and the future. Katherine remembered her other journey
down, earlier in the afternoon, and the bitter, black misery which
had kept her company then.

[Illustration: Drifting down the river.]

"What a difference things make in one's outlook!" she exclaimed.

"What things?" he demanded.

"I was thinking of when I let the boat drift down this afternoon,"
she said. "The pine trees looked so gloomy then, and those great,
black spruces yonder on the bank made me think of the decorations
on funeral hearses years and years ago, the sort of thing one sees
only in pictures; but now----"

"What do they let you think of now?" he asked, holding her hand in
a tighter clasp, as the boat swept slowly past the funereal spruces.

"Oh! they make me think of the ornamental grounds in Montreal, or
of the Swiss mountains which I see in visions when I dream I am
'doing Europe', as the Yankees say," and she laughed happily at her
wild flights of fancy.

"Would you like to do Europe--after we are married?" he asked, a
gravity coming into his tone that she could not understand.

"Why worry about the impossible?" she said gently. "Books are
cheap, if travel is not, and we will do our European travel sitting
by a winter fire."

"It might be possible some day; one never knows quite how things
may turn out," he said gravely. Then he asked: "Did anyone tell
you that I came up river to see you that afternoon before we sailed
for the Twins?"

"Yes," she answered, flushing as she remembered how much his visit
and its purpose had been in her mind during those days of keen
anxiety.

"I came then to ask you the question I ask