Then she ran shoreward with all speed, dreading what she might find, yet eager to know the worst, if there it might be learned. With her apron over her head, she saw only what lay straight before her, and so passed the Point of Rocks without observing her master lying behind it. But a few steps further she paused, arrested by a sight which turned her numb with superstitious terror. What was that coming over the water? A ghost! a spirit! Did spirits paddle canoes and sing as this one was singing? “The boatman’s song is borne along far over the water so blue, And, loud and clear, the voice we hear of the boatman so honest and true; He’s rowing, rowing, rowing along, He’s rowing, rowing, rowing along-- He’s rowing and singing his song.” The subsiding wind wafted to her ears snatches of the jolly little ballad, in which one could catch the very rhythm and dip of oar or paddle. Still it was as well to wait and see if this were flesh or apparition before pronouncing judgment. It was certainly a canoe, snowy white and most familiar--so familiar that the watcher began to lose her first terror. A girl knelt in it, Indian-fashion, gracefully and evenly dipping her paddle to the melody of her lips. Her bare head was thrown back and her fair hair floated loose. Her face was lighted by the western glow, on which she fixed her eyes with such intentness that she did not perceive the woman who awaited her with such mixed emotions. [Illustration: A GIRL KNELT IN THE CANOE, INDIAN-FASHION] But Tom saw. Tom, the eagle, perched in the bow, keen of vision and of prejudice. Between him and old Angelique was a grudge of long standing. Whenever they met, even after a brief separation, he expressed his feelings by his hoarsest screech. He did so now, and, by so doing, recalled Margot from sky-gazing and his enemy from doubt. “Ah, Angelique! Watching for me? How kind of you. Hush, Tom; let her alone; good Angelique, poor Angelique.” The eagle flapped his wings with a melancholy disdain and plunged his beak in his breast. The old woman on the beach was not worth minding, after all, by a monarch of the sky--as he would be but for his broken wing--but the girl was worth everything, even his obedience. She laughed at his sulkiness, plying her paddle the faster, and soon reached the pebbly beach, where she sprang out, and, drawing her canoe out of the water, swept her old nurse a courtesy. “Home again, mother, and hungry for my supper.” “Supper, indeed! Breakin’ my heart with your run-about ways! and the hoorican, with ever’thin’ ruined; ever’thin’! The master--where’s he, I know not. The great pine broken like a match; the coops, the cow-house, and Snowfoot--Ah, me! yet the little one talks of supper!” Margot looked about her in astonishment, scarcely noticing the other’s words. The devastation of her beloved home was evident, even down on the open beach, and she dared not think what it might be further inland.