without any medical assistance. I pictured her to
myself as sinking rapidly into fever and delirium. Stimulated by all
these thoughts, I hurried on, while the doctor with difficulty
followed. At length, we arrived within half a mile of the Falls; but I
could not see any signs of the house which I wished to find, or of the
road that led to it. I looked into all the roads that led to the river;
but none seemed like that one which I had traversed.

The doctor grew every moment more vexed.

"Look here now, Macrorie," said he, at last--"I'll go no farther--no,
not a step. I'm used up. I'll go into the nearest house, and wait."

Saying this, he turned abruptly, and went to a house that was close by
I then dismounted, went to the upper bank of the Montmorency, where it
joins the St. Lawrence below the Falls, and looked down.

The ice was all out. The place which yesterday had been the scene of my
struggle for life was now one vast sheet of dark-blue water. As I
looked at it, an involuntary shudder passed through me; for now I saw
the full peril of my situation.

Looking along the river, I saw the place where I must have landed, and
on the top of the steep bank I saw a house which seemed to be the one
where I had found refuge. Upon this, I went back, and, getting the
doctor, we went across the fields to this house. I knocked eagerly at
the door. It was opened, and in the person of the _habitant_ before me
I recognized my host of the evening before.

"How is madame?" I asked, hurriedly and anxiously.

"Madame?"

"Tea, madame--the lady, you know."

"Madame? She is not here."

"Not here!" I cried.

"Non, monsieur."

"Not here? What! Not here?" I cried again. "But she must be here.
Didn't I bring her here last night?"

"Certainly, monsieur; but she's gone home."

At this, there burst from the doctor a peal of laughter--so loud, so
long, so savage, and so brutal, that I forgot in a moment all that he
had been doing for my sake, and felt an almost irresistible inclination
to punch his head. Only I didn't; and, perhaps, it was just as well.
The sudden inclination passed, and there remained nothing but an
overwhelming sense of disappointment, by which I was crushed for a few
minutes, while still the doctor's mocking laughter sounded in my ears.

"How was it?" I asked, at length--"how did she get off? When I left,
she was in a fever, and wanted a doctor."

"After you left, monsieur, she slept, and awoke, toward morni