ing these announcements is beyond our powers of
description; we therefore prefer to leave it to your own vivid
imagination.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

THE LAST.

A change--like the flashing colours of a kaleidoscope; like the phantoms
of a dream! Red River settlement is dry again, or drying; but ah! what
a scene of wreck and ruin! It looks as if the settlement had been
devastated by fire and sword as well as water. Broken-down houses,
uprooted fences and trees, piles of debris, beds and boxes, billets of
wood and blankets, habiliments and hay, carioles and cordage and
carcasses of cattle, all mixed up more or less, and cemented together
with mud. Nearly every house in the settlement had been destroyed.

Of course many a day passed after the great catastrophe before Red River
was itself again, with its river confined to the proper channel, and its
prairies rolling with grass-waves; but it was not long before the
energetic inhabitants returned to their labours and their desolated
houses to begin the world anew. About the 1st of May the flood began;
by the 20th of the same month it had reached its height, and on the 22nd
the waters began to assuage. On that day they had made a decided fall
of two inches. The height to which the waters had risen above the level
of ordinary years was fifteen feet. The flood subsided very gradually.
About the middle of June the ploughs were at work again, and the people
busy sowing what was left to them of their seed-barley and potatoes.

Among the busiest of the busy at that bustling time was Peegwish. While
others were hard at work clearing, rebuilding, ploughing, and sowing,
our noble savage was fishing. The labour of this occupation consisted
chiefly in staring at his line, while he sat on a mud-heap on the river
bank, and smoked in the pleasant sunshine. Occasionally he roused
himself to haul out a goldeye. Wildcat assisted him ably in his
labours, and still more ably in the after consumption of the goldeyes.
Angus Macdonald discovered them thus occupied, and had difficulty in
resisting his desire to pitch the lazy fellow into the river.

"What wass you doin' there?" he cried. "Wass it wastin' your time wi'
small fush you will pe doin', an' every wan else workin' hard? Go an'
putt the ox in the cart an' haul watter. Look sharp!"

Angus concluded with some deep gutturals in Gaelic which we cannot
translate, and Peegwish, rising hastily, went off to do as he was bid.