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“There,” he said, pointing to planks resting on big stones, “you cross the St Louis and keep the track until you come to the first house after you pass the rapids. It is not far, but the road is shockingly bad. There you will ask them to ferry you to the other side, when you’ve a long walk to the Ottawa before you. I’d advise you to turn yet.” Maggie shook her head decisively. “Weel, weel, so be it; he that will to Cupar maun to Cupar. Here tak this,” and he put in her hand two silver dollars.

Maggie winced. “I’ll hae nae need o’ siller.”

“Ye dinna ken; ye may get into trouble that money will help you out o’. Dinna fear to take it; I’ve made (and here his voice sank to a whisper) I’ve made a hunner o’ thae bricht lads by ae guid run o’ brandy kegs across the Hinchinbrook line. It’s Yankee siller.”

Maggie smiled and, as if the questionable mode of their acquisition justified their acceptance, clasped them, and nodding to the little man, tripped her way to the other side of the river. The road, as predicted, proved execrable. Walled in and shadowed by trees, neither breeze nor sunlight penetrated to dry it, and it was a succession of holes filled with liquid mud. So bad was it, that an attempt to haul a small cannon along it had to be abandoned despite the efforts of horses, oxen, and a party of blue jackets. Tripping from side to side, and occasionally passing an unusually deep hole by turning into the bush, Maggie made all haste. Once only she halted. A party of artillerymen and sailors were raising a breastwork at the head of the Cascade rapids, whereon to mount a gun that would sweep the river, and she watched them for a while. That was the only sign of life along the road until the white-washed shanty of the ferryman came in sight, in front of which a troop of half-naked children were tumbling in boisterous play, and who set up a shrill cry of wonder when they saw her. Their mother, so short and stout as to be shapeless, came to the door in response to their cries and gazed wonderingly at the stranger. She volubly returned Maggie’s salutation and led her into the house, the interior of which was as bare as French Canadian houses usually are, but clean and tidy. Her husband was away, helping to convey stores to the fort at the Coteau, and there was not, to her knowledge, a man within three miles capable of ferrying her across. Could not madam paddle her over? The woman’s hands went up in pantomimic amazement. Would she tempt the good God by venturing in a canoe alone with a woman? Did she not know the current was swift, and led to the rapids whose roaring she heard! No, she must stay overnight, and her good man would take her over in the morning. Maggie could only submit and seated herself behind the house, to gaze towards the other bank which she was so anxious to set foot upon. From where she sat, the bank abruptly sank to a depth of perhaps thirty feet, where a little bay gave shelter to a canoe and a large boat fitted to convey a heavy load. Beyond the rocks that headed the tiny inlet, which thus served as a cove for the ferryman’s boats, the river swept irresistibly, and where in its channel between the shore and the islands that shut out the view of the north bank, any obstacle was met, the water rose in billows with foaming heads. Maggie knew that she was looking upon the south channel of the great river, and that the main stream lay on the other side of the tree-covered islands, which varied in size from half a mile long to rocks barely large enough to afford foothold to the tree or two whose branches overhung the foaming current. The motion of the rushing water contrasted so finely with the still-life and silence of the forest that framed it, and the many shaped and many colored islands that diversified its surface, that the scene at once soothed the anxious mind of the peasant maid and inspired her with fresh energy.