The crow laughed as if her haste were amusing. Master sat awhile after she had gone. He could not now endure the thought of leaving. He had planned to go with Strong and visit a number of woodsmen at their camps, and talk to the mill-hands in a few villages on the lower river. It was a formality not to be neglected if one would receive the votes of Pitkin, Till-bury, and Tifton. But suddenly he had become a candidate for greater happiness, he felt sure, than was to be found in politics. His election thereto depended largely on the vote of one charming citizen of a remote corner of Till-bury township. Her favor had now become more important, in his view, than that of all the voters in the county. He would delay his canvass over the week's end. So thinking, Master put off in his canoe with the children, gathering lilies until he came at last to the landing. There Sinth and the Emperor had just arrived. "W-weasels," said Strong, with a little nod in the direction of his sister, who stood on the shore. With him, as Master knew, the weasel had come to be a symbol of needless worry. "About what?" Master inquired. "L-little f-fawns." "Keep thinkin' they're goin' to git lost or drownded," said she, giving each of the children a sugared cooky. "Don't worry. I shall always take good care of the children," said Master. "I know that, but I keep a-thinkin'. Sometimes I wisht there wasn't any woods. I'm kind o' sick of 'em, anyway." Those little people with the dress, talk, and manners of the town--with a subtle power in their companionship, in their very dependence upon her, which the woman felt but was not able to understand--were surely leading her out of the woods. They had increased her work; they had annoyed her with ingenious mischief; they had harassed her with questions, but they had awakened something in her which had almost perished in years of disappointment and utter loneliness. At first they had reminded her of her dead sister, and that, in a measure, had reconciled her to their coming. Later, the touch of their hands, the call of their voices, had made their strong appeal to her. Slowly she had begun to feel a mother's fondness and responsibility and a new interest in the world. Again sound-waves of the great whistle at Benson Falls swept wearily through the silence above them. "Makes me kind o' homesick," said Sinth, as she listened thoughtfully. The Emperor had begun, just faintly, to entertain a feeling akin to hers. Master helped her up the hill on her way to camp with the children. He returned shortly and gave a hand to the building of his little home on the shore of Catamount. It was to be an open shanty, leaning on the ledge, its pole roof covered with tar-paper, its floor carpeted with balsam boughs. "Migleys have gone into c-camp at Nick Pond," said the Emperor. "Tol 'em I had t' go w-with you t'-morrer." "I'm sorry that we have to delay our trip a little," said the young man. Strong laughed.