bargain is
closed."

"An' what may that pe?" asked Angus, with a shade of anxiety.

"That this smoking-box and the ground on which it stands, together with
the footpath leading up to it, shall remain my property as long as I
live."

Angus smiled. He had the peculiarity of turning the corners of his
mouth down instead of up when he did so, which gave a remarkably knowing
look to his smile.

"You shall pe fery welcome," he said. "And now, Muster Ruvnshaw, I came
here to say a word for my poy. You know it iss natural that Ian will pe
getting anxious apout the wedding. It iss impatient he will pe,
whatever. He is a little shy to speak to you himself, and he will pe
botherin' me to--"

"All right, Angus, I understand," interrupted Mr Ravenshaw. "You know
both he and Lambert are busy removing your barn from my lawn. When that
is finished we shall have the weddings. My old woman wants 'em to be on
the same day, but nothing can be done till the barn is removed, for I
mean to have the dance on that lawn on the double-wedding day. So you
can tell them that."

Angus did tell them that, and it is a remarkable fact which every one in
the establishment observed, that the unsightly barn, which had so long
disfigured the lawn at Willow Creek, disappeared, as if by magic, in one
night, as Cora put it, "like the baseless fabric of a vision!"

Time passed, and changed the face of nature entirely. Wrecks were swept
away; houses sprang up; fences were repaired; crops waved on the fields
of Red River as of yore, and cattle browsed on the plains; so that if a
stranger had visited that outlying settlement there would have been
little to inform his eyes of the great disaster which had so recently
swept over the place. But there would have been much to inform his
ears, for it was many a day before the interest and excitement about the
great flood went down. In fact, for a long time afterwards the flood
was so much in the thoughts and mouths of the people that they might
have been mistaken for the immediate descendants of those who had
swarmed on the slopes of Ararat.

Let us now present a series of pictures for the reader's inspection.

The first is a little log-hut embosomed in bushes, with a stately tree
rising close beside it. Flowers and berries bedeck the surrounding
shrubbery, pleasant perfumes fill the air. A small garden, in which the
useful and ornamental are blended, environs the hut. The two windows
are fil