Then he got on the caboose, where the crew welcomed him. As one of the company doctors he had the right to ride on anything that came along, and the men were always glad to see him. They made him comfortable in a corner and offered him hot tea and large soggy buns. But he thanked them, smilingly, and sat down in a corner. From his bag he took out a medical journal and was soon immersed in an exceedingly interesting article on hysteria. Strangely enough, at that very moment Miss Sophy had run up to her room and thrown herself on the bed, face downwards and buried in a pillow. She was weeping and uttering incoherent cries. When her mother came in, alarmed, the old lady was indignantly ordered out again while the girl's feet beat against the mattress hurriedly, and she bit the knuckles of her hands. CHAPTER XV The Peace of Roaring River It is particularly in the great north countries that the season changes from the lion into the lamb, with a swiftness that is perfectly bewildering. The sick man was getting well. Over a week since, Dr. Starr had declared that all danger had passed. And as the days went by the cold that had shackled the land disappeared so that the frosted limbs by the great falls wept off their coating of gems, and the earth, in great patches, began to show new verdure. Then had come twenty-four hours of a pelting, crashing rain, that had melted away more snow and ice. After the rain was over and the sky had cleared again, Madge had gone out and stood by the brink of the great falls, where she watched the thundering turbid flood as it madly rushed into the great pit below. Incessantly great cakes of ice poised on the brown-white edge above for an instant, and hurled themselves furiously into the chasm as if bent on everlasting devastation. The river itself was rising swiftly and from time to time the great logs that had remained stranded in the upper reaches of the river also plunged into the vortex, where they twisted and sank and rose, endlessly. There was something fascinating in this vast turmoil of mighty forces, in this leaping forth of a great river now liberated and escaping towards the great lakes and thence to the ocean. Hitherto Madge had gazed upon them timidly, with sudden shivers, as if all this had represented part of the great peril of life and actually threatened her. But now it seemed to have become a part of the immensity of this world, a fragment of the wondrous heritage of nations still to be born. And just as the flood still had a long journey to travel ere it found rest in the Atlantic's bosom, so now Madge felt that her own course represented but the beginning of a new and greater life.