t that position was one which would have damped the courage of any one
except old Liz. The storm was beginning to grow furious; the sun, which
had already set, was tingeing the black and threatening clouds with
dingy red. Far as the eye could reach, the once green prairie presented
an angry sea, whose inky waves were crested and flecked with foam, and
the current was drifting the hut away into the abyss of blackness that
seemed to gape on the horizon.

"What see ye, Liz?" cried Daddy, bending a little, so as to send his
voice up the chimney.

"I see naethin' but watter; watter everywhere," said Liz, unconsciously
quoting the Ancient Mariner, and bending so as to send her reply down.
She did more; she lost her balance, and sent herself down to the bottom
of the chimney, where she arrived in a sitting posture with a flop,
perhaps we should say a squash, seeing that she alighted in water, which
squirted violently all over her sooty person.

This sudden reappearance astonished the aged couple almost more than it
surprised Liz herself, for she could not see herself as they saw her.

"Hech! but that _was_ a klyte; but ne'er heed, Daddy. I'm nane the
waur. Eh, but I'll ha'e to clean mysel'," said old Liz, rising slowly
and going straight to a corner cupboard, whence she took a slab of soap,
and began to apply it vigorously, using the entire room, so to speak, as
a wash-tub. The result was unsatisfactory; beginning the process as a
pure black, she only ended it as an impure mulatto, but she was content,
and immediately after set herself to fasten the aged pair more securely
in their chairs, and to arrange their limbs more comfortably on the
table; after that she lighted a candle and sat down on the sloppy bed to
watch.

Thus that household spent the night, rocked, as it were, on the cradle
of the deep.

At daylight Herr Winklemann rose from his sleepless couch at the
parsonage, and finding that the wind had moderated, launched his canoe.
He left the mission station just an hour before Mr Cockran returned to
it.

Anxious was the heart of the poor youth as he wielded the paddle that
morning, and many were the muttered remarks which he made to himself, in
German, as he urged the canoe against wind and current. As he neared
home his fears increased. On reaching a certain part from which he had
been wont to descry the chimney of old Liz's hut, he perceived that the
familiar object was gone, and uttered a mighty roar o