When they came back to Carcajou again, Stefan was waiting for them with a strong team of horses able easily to negotiate the tote-road. This highway, in many places, had been repaired. Fallen trees were cut across and pulled to one side, swampy bits were corduroyed, big holes had been filled in. Indeed, the traffic had become important, all of a sudden, towards the Roaring Falls. Lumber had been hauled there, and many tools, and kegs of nails, and a gang of men had walked over. Finally they came in sight of the river again, in which were no more black-looking, threatening air-holes. Mostly it was placid now, with rapids that could easily be passed over by ably-managed canoes or bateaux, succeeding the deep still waters now and then and frothing and fuming only as if in play. Here a big blue heron rose from it, and there a couple of kingfishers jabbered and scolded and shrieked. Partridges crossed the road in front of the horses, and the inevitable rabbit scampered away in leisurely fashion. But they reached the little path that led to the shack without seeing anything of the tiny home or of the falls beyond, for the bushes and shrubs were in full foliage and seemed to be concealing their Eden from passers-by. Madge leaped from the wagon. Her kingdom was over there, just a few rods away, and she was eager to see it again. Yes! The shack was still there, looking tinier than ever. But very close to it a foundation had been dug from which rose rough walls of broken stone. Upon these strong scantlings had been fastened and men were clapboarding them over into a bigger and finer home. Above the trees some smoke was showing. It marked a place where a half-score shacks and little barracks were going up, to shelter the men who were to follow deeper those promising veins in the great rocks. There would soon be blasting and more drilling and the breaking up of ore, which would be carried down the river to the railroad. But from the edge of the great falls nothing of all this could be seen. Except for the new house everything seemed to be unchanged. It was with a sentiment of a little awe, of gratefulness, of a surprise which the passing of the weeks had not yet been able to dispel, that Madge realized that this was now her own, the place of her future toil, the spot where she was to found a home and fill it with happiness. It was marvelous! It was a thousand times more splendid than anything she could have conceived when first she was journeying to this country. And the greatness of it lay in the fact that she understood, that she realized, that she knew that the whole world lay before her and her husband, to make or mar, to convert into a part of the great effort that is always a joy, the upbuilding of a home, or to allow to revert into the wilderness again if strength were lacking. At first she could not step farther than the little spot from which her dwelling-place first stood revealed. "What do you think of it, Madge?" asked her husband.