ear he had lest it
was Mr. Ferrars who had come to grief."

"What bones, and where did you find them?" asked Katherine, with a
start.

Mary shrugged her shoulders and answered: "Two days ago we did a
portage on the Albany, and came, at camping time, upon the gruesome
spectacle of two skeletons lying side by side under a little
shelter formed of snowshoes and spruce boughs. We supposed that
they must have been the Indians dispatched from Maxohama months ago
with mails, only there were no mail bags, and no food bags either;
so, of course, they might have been only ordinary Indians on a
journey. Our portage men insisted that the remains were those of
Indians, to the intense relief of Mr. Clay. The poor man was
plainly in a great state of worry about the remains, and kept
questioning Father as to whether there would be any likelihood of
Mr. Ferrars trying to work his way down to the railroad in
midwinter."

"I should think those Indians must have been the men who were
bringing the mail, and probably they were caught in a snowstorm and
died in their sleep," said Katherine.

"In that case what had become of the mail bags and the food sacks?"
asked Mary.

"Stolen, doubtless, by other Indians," replied Katherine, who then
told Mary of the discovery she had made of the fragment of a letter
in the hands of a child at the Ochre Lake encampment.

"So you never had that mail? Oh, you poor things, what a long time
you have been without any news of the outside world!" cried Mary.

"But we have survived it, you see," Katherine answered with a
laugh. Then she asked Mary if she would not like to be rowed to
the store first, before going to inspect the new house.

"Yes, please; I want to see your father and Mrs. Burton, to say
nothing of the twins and Miles," Mary answered eagerly. Then she
said, with a wistful note in her voice: "You will let me be
bridesmaid tomorrow?"

"To-morrow?" repeated Katherine in surprise. Then, blushing
vividly, she answered: "But I am not sure that it will be
to-morrow."

"I am," replied Mary calmly, "for the simple reason that the bishop
starts the day after for Marble Island, which he hopes to reach
before the whalers are all broken out of the ice. Father is going
to send him up the bay in the best available boat. You will let me
be bridesmaid, won't you?"

"If you wish, certainly," said Katherine; then the boat bumped
against the mooring post and was made fast, after which the two