ials.

The people were for the large part still homeless. Many were still
down in the villages, living upon neighbourhood kindness and the scant
help of public charity. Only the comparative few who could obtain
ready credit had been able even to begin rebuilding. If they were not
roused to prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be upon them
before the hills were resettled. And with the coming of the pinch of
winter men would be ready to sell anything upon which they had a
claim, for the mere privilege of living.

When they came up into the burnt country, the bitterness which had
been boiling up in his heart through those weeks and which he had
thought had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day now
ran over completely. His heart raved in an agony of impotent anger and
a thirst for revenge. His life had been in danger. Gladly would he now
put it ten times in danger for the power to strike one free, crushing
blow at this insolent enemy. He would grapple with it, die with it
only for the power to bring it to the ground with himself!

The others had become accustomed to the look of the country, but the
full desolation of it broke upon his eyes now for the first time. The
hills that should have glowed in their wonderful russets from the red
sun going down in the west, were nothing but streaked ash heaps,
where the rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between, where the
autumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes should
have stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing but
blackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on the
east, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circle
of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in the
eye; misery and the food of hate in the heart!

Very late in the night they came to French Village. The people here
were still practically living in the barrack which the Bishop had seen
built, the women and children sleeping in it, the men finding what
shelter they could in the new houses that were going up. There were
enough of these latter to show that French Village would live again,
for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed had carried credit and
good faith to men who were judges of paper on which men's names were
written and they had brought back supplies of all that was strictly
needful.

Here was food and water for man and beast. Men roused themselves from
sleep to cheer the young W