she differed from most maidens--left
her lover to arrange all the business of the marriage ceremony,
stipulating only that it must be private. But she had at the same time
bound him by a lover's oath that all details of the honeymoon must be
left to her; that he should neither know where and how it was to be
spent, nor seek to enquire. She would meet him at the church porch in
the village below--in what garb, even, she would not promise; and after
the ceremony he must be ready to ride away with her--she would not
promise whither.

Her project had been to build a camp far in the woods; and to this end
she had made her many purchases in Port Nassau. They included, besides
an array of provisions and cooking-pots, a hunter's tent such as the
backwoodsmen used in their expeditions after beaver and moose.
It weighed many pounds, and a part of her problem was how to convey it
to any depth of the forest unaided.

The easterly gale blew itself out. The next morning broke with rifts of
blue, and steadied itself, after two hours, to clear sunshine.
She awoke in blithe spirits, and after breakfast went off without waste
of time to saddle Madcap. By the stable door she found Mr. Strongtharm
seated and polishing his gun, and paused to catechise him on the forest
tracks, particularly on those leading up through Soldier's Gap--by which
name he called the gorge at the head of the plain.

"The best track beyond, you'll find, lies pretty close 'longside the
river," he said. "But 'tis no road for the mare. I doubt if a mule
could manage it after the third mile. The river, you see, comes through
in a monstrous hurry--by the look of it here you'd never guess.
No, indeed, 'tisn't a river at all, properly speakin', but a whole heap
o' streams tumblin' down this-a-way, that-a-way, out o' the side
valleys; and what you may call the main river don't run in one body, but
breaks itself up considerable over waterfalls. Rock for the most part,
an' pretty steep, with splashy ground below the falls. I han't been
right up the Gap these dozen years; an' a man's job it is at the best--a
two days' journey. The las' time I slept the night, goin' an' comin',
in Peter Vanders' lodge."

"A lodge?"

"That's what they call it. He was a trapper, and a famous one, but
before my time; an' that was his headquarters--a sort o' cabin, pretty
stout, just by the head in the sixth fall, or maybe 'tis the seventh--
I forget. He lived up there without wi