repared for, and as there was money in
plenty to pay for the work which had to be done, it seemed probable
that Mr. Selincourt's plans would be pushed forward as fast as he
desired.

Astor M'Kree had set up a team of dogs and a sledge painted a
brilliant blue, and in this equipage, or on snowshoes, he was up
and down between his house and the bay several times in most days.
Some of the fishermen were fairly expert carpenters, and these
found the winter brought them as much work as the summer had done,
with less risk and better pay.

To Katherine the weeks of winter passed like a dream. Sometimes
she contrasted them with the dark, anxious weeks of the previous
winter, when the nightmare trouble about her father had first
descended upon her. She was a keener business woman now than then,
readier at buying and selling, quicker to see what was the right
thing to do under the circumstances of the moment; but her chief
aim this winter was to stand back and push Miles forward so that
other people might understand who was to be business chief of the
establishment in the future. Whenever Jervis could spare time to
come over the river and help Phil in the store, Katherine had Miles
for companion on the long journeys which were still necessary here
and there.

It was pure comedy now when they went to the Indian encampment.
The Indians of the bay shore could not be brought to believe that a
person could have any sound, reliable judgment on any subject
whatever until he had done growing; so, when Katherine appealed to
Miles regarding every skin offered in barter, the red men first
mocked. Then, however, they grew doubtful, and finally they veered
round to a respectful attitude towards the young tradesman which
Miles found very soothing.

Mr. Selincourt had arranged for an intermittent postal service
between Maxohama and Seal Cove, to be carried on by Indians, during
the winter. Two mails had safely reached the post office at
Roaring Water Portage in this way; then three months passed with
never a word from the outside world reaching the little isolated
colony on the bay shore, and the people thus cut off could not
understand the reason why no tidings reached them. Then one day
when Katherine and Miles had gone up to Ochre Lake, where a company
of Indians had made themselves winter quarters, they came upon a
clue to the mystery of the missing mails.

Ochre Lake was, as usual, frozen solid, except at one end, where an
e