p river.

"Hurrah! It is Mr. Selincourt!" yelled Phil, pulling off his cap
and waving it like mad.

"And Mary!" exclaimed Katherine, who suddenly went rosy red, for in
the last boat of all was an elderly man, with a kind face and a
clerical air, whom she instantly recognized as the bishop from the
description Jervis had given her of him.

"Katherine, Katherine, how bonny you look!" cried Mary, and then
the boats came nearer together, and greetings became general.

Katherine was introduced to the bishop, who bowed and smiled in a
kindly fashion, although introductions at fifteen or twenty yards
apart are rather awkward affairs. Then Mary insisted on being
transferred to Katherine's boat, and as unceremoniously ordered
Phil to occupy the place she was leaving.

"Oh, my dear, I am glad to be back again!" she cried, as she
settled herself on the seat from which she had just turned Phil.

"We are very glad to see you back," Katherine answered soberly.
The sight of the bishop had set her pulses fluttering wildly, and
she was hardly mistress of herself again, as yet.

"The journey has been delightful," Mary rattled on, understanding
the cause of Katherine's fluctuating colour, and anxious to give
her time to recover from her confusion. "We are such a large
party, too, that it has been like a perpetual picnic, with only two
drawbacks which really mattered."

"What were they?" asked Katherine, supposing the drawbacks to be
some item of portage discomfort, or rainstorms which came at the
wrong time.

"The first was a horrid little man, a Mr. Clay, who has come all
the way from England to see Mr. Ferrars, and begged to be allowed
to attach himself to our party. A perfect little kill-joy he is,
so prim, so proper and precise, that one is tempted to believe he
must have been born a grown-up, and so has had no childhood at all."

"Where is he now? I did not notice that there was another stranger
beside the bishop," said Katherine, turning her head to look at the
other boats, which were leading.

"We left him behind at the fish sheds with Mr. Ferrars," said
Mary. "He has his own boat and his own men. He turns his
aristocratic little nose up at everything Canadian, and loudly
pities anyone who is fated to live two or three hundred miles from
a railway depot. But he apparently has the most utter admiration
for Mr. Ferrars, and the fright he was in the day we found the
bones was, I am quite sure, entirely due to a f