Stefan has promised to bring you to us to-morrow. I want you to come, for my wife and the kiddies are awaiting you. From my latest study of conditions at Roaring River I have gathered that you may not stay with us as long as I had first hoped, but at any rate it will be long enough to do a little fixing and arranging of feminine garments. My instinct tells me that your visit to us will be short since our patient, if you tarry too long, may come and steal you away. He will have to come anyway for, just as I'm the nearest doctor to you, so my friend Jamieson is the nearest parson. With every best wish, Very sincerely yours, DAVID STARR. Madge handed the letter over to Hugo who quickly looked it over. "Wonderful fellow is Starr," he declared. Stefan took his friend Hugo up in his arms, in spite of protests on the latter's part that he wanted to try to walk. The young man was a light load, indeed, at this time. He was placed on the seat of the buckboard and, with Stefan carefully leading the horse and Madge walking alongside, was taken up to Papineau's. The woodlands were very different now, thought the girl. When she had arrived the great land was plunged in slumber under its mantle of snow. The few birds there were at the time were voiceless, like the partridges that only find a peep when fluffy broods follow them, or some of the larger fowl which only hoot or shriek. The sound-calls of the wilderness had been those of struggling waters, of cracking trees, of snow-masses violently displaced. But now birds were in full song everywhere, carrying trifles of stick and floss and grass wherewith to build their nests. Formerly there had been the uneasy groans and sighs of a gigantic restless sleeper. Now there was the chant of a heart-free nature engaged again in vigorous toil, in wresting the recurrent glory of surging life and hope from the powers of darkness and bitter, benumbing cold. It was a resurrection! The mile separating the shack from the Papineau homestead had been a long and fatiguing one on the first occasion of Madge's going to see the wounded man. Now the distance was trivial; a few sturdy steps, a few fillings of one's lungs with the scent of conifers; and there was the little chimney smoking and the cow with her little calf, and the dogs, and the few hens that had survived the attacks of weasels. Best of all there were her friends, children and babies and the quiet Frenchman and the kind-hearted, red-cheeked, cheery mother whose influence had been paramount in creating a little paradise in the wilds. She helped Hugo off the buckboard, jealously, deeming herself the only one who could properly handle an invalid, and enthroned him in the best chair, near the open fire. "You--you are h'all so velcome as I can't say," she declared.