them on the forward promenade. She had left him in quite a lenient mood,
although, as she perceived with amusement, he had done nothing to merit
it, except give her cousin a sprained ankle. At the moment of his
reappearance, Mrs. Ellison had been telling Kitty that she thought it
was beginning to swell a little, and so it could not be anything
internal; and Kitty had understood that she meant her ankle as well as
if she had said so, and had sorrowed and rejoiced over her, and the
colonel had been inculpated for the whole affair. This made Mr.
Arbuton's excuses rather needless, though they were most graciously
received.




III.

ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC.


By this time the boat was moving down the river, and every one was alive
to the scenery. The procession of the pine-clad, rounded heights on
either shore began shortly after Ha-Ha Bay had disappeared behind a
curve, and it hardly ceased, save at one point, before the boat
re-entered the St. Lawrence. The shores of the stream are almost
uninhabited. The hills rise from the water's edge, and if ever a narrow
vale divides them, it is but to open drearier solitudes to the eye. In
such a valley would stand a saw-mill, and huddled about it a few poor
huts, while a friendless road, scarce discernible from the boat, wound
up from the river through the valley, and led to wildernesses all the
forlorner for the devastation of their forests. Now and then an island,