“Yes, the storm will blow over, but where will we be then? You forget, my poor boy, that the lake ends in rapids, and we are hurrying towards them as fast as wind and wave can drive us. Your mother and your sisters and brothers will have sore hearts tomorrow.” Allan had not thought of the rapids. On their way from Montreal he had seen them, watched their foaming surges, and knew their canoe could not live a moment among them. The thought of death was bitter to him, and as the hours passed and they went drifting downwards, amid the storm and darkness, towards the jaws of the dreaded danger, his heart was filled with anguish, not alone for his mother, his brothers and sisters, but for her with whom he had secretly plighted troth. “Allan, I will shout to you when I see the rapids. Jump and try to make the shore, for it may be near; do not trouble with me, or we both may be lost. Be a good lad to your mother, and tell her and your brothers and sisters my last thoughts were of them.” CHAPTER II. Mrs McDonald had tidied up the one and only room of the shanty, and was expecting momentarily the arrival of her husband and son, when she was terror-struck by the unlooked for sound of the squall among the trees. Hurrying from the house, she stood on the beach, on which the waves were beginning to break, but the darkness and rain prevented her seeing many yards. In her agony of apprehension she shouted, in the hope that the missing ones were near: from the stormy waters came no reply. Bidding her children, who had followed her, to go and alarm the neighbors, very soon every soul in the settlement was by her side, talking rapidly in Gaelic and excitedly suggesting what ought to be done. They were all agreed that if the canoe was on the lake when the storm burst she was lost, and their sole hope was she had not left the other shore. The only other canoe they had was no larger than the one that was gone, and to launch it in order to search the lake, would be to add to the calamity. All that could be done was to build a bonfire on the most prominent point, to guide the missing canoe if within sight, and hope for the best. Laying his hand on Mrs McDonald’s arm, as she stood wistfully gazing on the now foaming waters of the lake, the oldest man of the settlement said, “Come with us out of the cold and wet; we can do no good here.” Gathered in the shanty, the fire was replenished until it roared in the ample chimney, and the neighbors talked hopefully to the family and despondently among themselves. When the hope that the storm was only a passing squall was dissipated by its settling into a gale, under the influence of which the waves lashed the sandy beach with a roar so appalling that it stifled the groanings of the forest, the men agreed among themselves that McDonald and his son were at the bottom of the lake, and their hearts grew sore for those whom they believed to be widowed and orphaned by the calamity.