"Father, rouse yourself a little." She took Markham's old felt hat, upon
which the insensible head was lying, and set it warmly over his brow.
She unfastened the bands that tied his body to the log. She had not come
without a small phial of the rum that was always necessary for her
father, in the hope that she might find him alive. She soaked some
morsels of bread in this, and put it in the mouth of the man over whom
she was working. It was very dark; the only marvel was, not that she did
not recognise Toyner, but that she and he were not both engulfed in the
black flood beneath them in the struggle which she made to take him in
the canoe.

Twice that day Toyner had stirred and become conscious; but
consciousness, except that of confused dreams, had again deserted him.
The lack of food, if it had preserved him from fever, had caused the
utmost weakness of all his bodily powers; yet when the small amount of
bread and rum which he could swallow gave him a little strength, he was
roused, not to the extent of knowing who he was or where, but enough to
move his muscles, although feebly, under direction. After a long time
she had him safely in the bottom of the canoe, his head lying upon her
jacket which she had folded for a pillow. At first, as she began to
paddle the canoe forward, he groaned again and again, but by degrees the
reaction of weakness after exertion made him lapse into his former state
that seemed like sleep.

Ann had lost now all her fears of unknown and unseen dangers. All that
she feared was the loss of her way, or the upsetting of her boat. The
strength that she put into the strokes of her paddle was marvellous. She
had just a mile to go before she came to another place where a stretch
of still water opened through the trees. There were several of these