Jeanie strained her eyes and ears to catch the faintest sign of her father’s approach. The quaver of the grey-bird and the chirrup of the chipmunk came occasionally from the recesses of the woods, which lay sleeping in the April sunshine that glorified everything, but no rustle of branch or cracking of dried stick that would indicate an approaching footstep. The usually silent creek, now swollen by melted snow, lapped its banks in pursuing its tortuous course, murmuring a soothing lullaby to the genial day; and that great peace, to be found only in mountain recess or forest depth, brooded over the scene. But there, where all the influences of nature were so soothing, were two hearts filled with anxious care. “Jeanie,” suddenly exclaimed the mother, after a long pause, and staying the whirr of the wheel, “you maun gang and seek your father. Gae down to Palmer’s and there you’ll find the rafts, and the men will tell you whether he left for hame or no.” “But I dinna like to leave you, mother, and I am sure you are taking trouble without need. He will be here by dark.” The mother understood the affectionate motive of her child in trying to make light of her fears, but well knew her anxiety was no less than her own. “Say nae mair, my lassie, but gang while there is time for you to get back. You ken the yarn for the Yankee wife at the Fort is ready and there is no flour until he gangs there for it.” Casting one long eager glance down the creek, along which her father should come, the girl turned in from the door and made ready for the journey. Her preparations were easily made. The slipping on of her stoutest pair of shoes and throwing a plaid over her arm, as a hap from the cold after sunset, comprised them, and bidding her mother not to fret for she would bring back good news she started. She did not follow the creek, but struck northward across the peninsula that forms the township of Elgin, her design being to reach Trout river, as being more fordable than the wider Chateaugay. The path was, probably, at first a deer run, which the few who travelled it, chiefly lumbermen, had roughly brushed. Only one accustomed to the woods could have kept the track, for, to a stranger’s eye, it differed little from the openings which ever and anon appeared among the trees. Jeanie, however, was no novice to the path or to the bush, and she stepped quickly and with confidence on her way. She had walked about an hour beneath the solemn gloom of the primeval forest when she saw an opening ahead, and knew she was approaching Trout river. On reaching it, she followed its bank, until, with one end grounded in a little bay, she found a large log. Grasping the first straight stick she saw lying about to serve as a pole, she pushed the log from its anchorage, and stepping on it as it moved guided it across the narrow river. From the liability of the log to roll, such a mode of ferrying is dangerous to those unused to it,