managed canoes or
bateaux, succeeding the deep still waters now and then and frothing
and fuming only as if in play. Here a big blue heron rose from it, and
there a couple of kingfishers jabbered and scolded and shrieked.
Partridges crossed the road in front of the horses, and the inevitable
rabbit scampered away in leisurely fashion.

But they reached the little path that led to the shack without seeing
anything of the tiny home or of the falls beyond, for the bushes and
shrubs were in full foliage and seemed to be concealing their Eden
from passers-by. Madge leaped from the wagon. Her kingdom was over
there, just a few rods away, and she was eager to see it again.

Yes! The shack was still there, looking tinier than ever. But very
close to it a foundation had been dug from which rose rough walls of
broken stone. Upon these strong scantlings had been fastened and men
were clapboarding them over into a bigger and finer home.

Above the trees some smoke was showing. It marked a place where a
half-score shacks and little barracks were going up, to shelter the
men who were to follow deeper those promising veins in the great
rocks. There would soon be blasting and more drilling and the breaking
up of ore, which would be carried down the river to the railroad. But
from the edge of the great falls nothing of all this could be seen.
Except for the new house everything seemed to be unchanged. It was
with a sentiment of a little awe, of gratefulness, of a surprise which
the passing of the weeks had not yet been able to dispel, that Madge
realized that this was now her own, the place of her future toil, the
spot where she was to found a home and fill it with happiness.

It was marvelous! It was a thousand times more splendid than anything
she could have conceived when first she was journeying to this
country. And the greatness of it lay in the fact that she understood,
that she realized, that she knew that the whole world lay before her
and her husband, to make or mar, to convert into a part of the great
effort that is always a joy, the upbuilding of a home, or to allow to
revert into the wilderness again if strength were lacking.

At first she could not step farther than the little spot from which
her dwelling-place first stood revealed.

"What do you think of it, Madge?" asked her husband.

"I think that if I had prayed all my life for a wonderful home, before
coming here, I would never have been able to pray for anythin