Hardly had I finished when he sprang up.

"Thank you, Mr. Mills, for thinking of me in
such a muss. I'll just jump up stairs for my
rifle and ball-pouch, and I'll get Stormswallow
out of dock, and we'll make shift to lug her
down creek. Once on the lake, she'll show her
heels, I guess, and if we do meet those robbers
and their red bloodhounds, why—-"

Here he caught sight of his mother's wistful
gaze fixed upon him; he stopped short.

Mrs. Kendal's first remark was not an
unnatural one: "Suppose Willy should be killed!"

It was her husband who answered, and though
there were tears in the old farmer's hardy eyes,
his voice was firm as he said:

"Wife, we must not hold back our boy from
a work of mercy. If I knew how to steer as he
does, I'd go in his place, and take all risk, sooner
than lie snug and warm in my bed, and leave
women and young girls to the murdering
tomahawk of the savage. But let our dear boy go,
in God's name, and trust to the Heaven above
us all to send him safe back to us."

So it was settled; but the parting was a
painful one. The sisters clung, weeping, to
Willy as he went to and fro, and though Mrs.
Kendal kept her feelings down for a while, and
made a mighty show of business equanimity in
giving out blankets and hides, provisions,
cordials, and other necessaries, for the storing of
the yacht during our wild trip, she broke down
at last, and caught her son to her heart with
a burst of passionate sobbing very painful to
hear.

"Let the mistress have her cry out. It will
do her good," whispered the old farmer. "You
and I, lieutenant, will go down and get out the
boat."

We went down, followed by two of the hired
men, a negro and white, bending under the
weight of our provisions and wrappings. With
the help of these two men, we dragged the cutter
from her miniature dock, got up her topmast,
removed the tarpaulins, unlocked the cabin
doors, bent the sails, and drew the light vessel
to the frozen creek. Then Willy Kendal, his
face stained with tears but flushed and eager
with courage and hope, came up to us, with his
gun on his shoulder, and his ammunition slung
to his wampum-fringed belt.

"Aboard, if you please, Mr. Mills! We'll
pull down the creek. Good-by, father. I'll
soon be back. Cheer up mother and the girls.
There's no danger."

Down the creek we slowly went, and by the
soft light I could see the old farmer with his hat
off, and his face turned up towards the bright
starry Heavens, praying for the safety of his
first-born.

Then we turned the corner, dark with
maple-trees, and saw him no more. Willy gave me
the needful instructions as to trimming the
sails, while he grasped the helm. We were on
the broad glassy lake, now ploughing through a
seam of snow, now flitting lightly across a dark
sheet of ice, polished and resonant as metal. The
Stormswallow was a well-built boat, large,
commodious, and swift. Willy Kendal, young as
he was, had a very high reputation for skill in
this peculiar and perilous navigation. He knew
Ontario well, and had ranged its most, distant
waters scores of times. The light wind was
tolerably favourable, and we were soon abreast
of Port Hope, and showed a light three times,
as I had concerted with my captain.

Presently a footstep was heard on the hard
ice, and two muffled figures approached us. One
was Haworth. The other was the Indian. In a
moment they joined us.

"Thank you, Kendal, thank you, my brave
lad," said Haworth; "and you, too, Mills.
I'm no great hand at speeches; but if ever you
want a friend, I owe you a debt a lifetime would
be too short to pay. See, Mills! The Indian
wants to go, tired as he is. He's a rare guide, and
you may meet the enemy, and if so, his forest
cunning may prove useful."

Elk-that-runs had by this time squatted
himself on the deck, and was deftly proceeding
to kindle his long pipe, the stem of which was
of wild cherry, while the bowl was of soapstone
from the western prairies. I pressed
Haworth's hand once more, and we parted: he
to plod his way back to shore: the crew
of the Stormswallow to skim towards the
west. We had to shape our course in a much
more southerly direction than that in which
Hamilton lay, to avoid weak places in the ice
that would not have borne the weight of our
vessel. Willy Kendal showed great adroitness
in taking advantage of every puff of the light
and fickle breeze, and I toiled to the best of my
power to trim sail as he bade me; but our
progress was not as fast as I could have desired.
The cold, too, was bitter. In spite of our
blanket-suits and robes, our fur-gloves and
flap-eared caps of racoon-skin, we could hardly keep
ourselves from stagnation of the blood, and our
breath congealed in shaggy icicles on our
wrappings of fur and woollen. For a time the
boat glided on, ghost-like, over the smooth lake,
under the pointed silvery stars; but presently a
low sighing sound reached our ears, and a film
like a black crape veil began to draw across the
spangled dark-blue sky.

"A snow-squall comin' up!" said young
Kendal.

Lashing the tiller, to keep the boat's head
right, he sprang to help me in reducing sail.
Just as we had got the cutter under a modicum
of canvas, the sigh of the wind swelled into a
roar, and Willy caught the helm while a whirling
dash of snow-flakes reached us, whitening our
decks, and the wind made us heel over
perilously.

"We must let her run before it," said
Willy; and in a moment we were rushing over
the frozen lake at such a speed as I had never
dreamed of, and which realised the hackneyed
comparison of arrow-swift. On we went, lashed
by the hissing gale and driving snow: the ice
and the land and the sky equally hidden from our
sight by the dazzling thickness of the shower of
whirling flakes. There was something weird and