Arriving there, she leaned forward and spoke to the man, who sat silent and apparently dazed in the stern of the boat.
"Are you staying at Seal Cove, and at whose house ?" she asked gently, feeling exceedingly pitiful for the poor fellow, who must have lost his life if she had not chosen to bring her boat through the weedy back channel that afternoon.
"No, I have a house at Roaring Water Portage; my name is Selincourt," he answered.
The paddle which Katherine was stowing in the boat dropped from her hands with a clatter, and there was positive terror in her eyes as she gasped: "You are Mr.Selincourt, _the_ Mr.Selincourt ?" "I suppose so; I certainly don't know any other," he said, smiling a little, which had a grotesque effect, for the mud with which his face was so liberally smeared had dried stiff in the sunshine, and the smiling made it crack like a painted mask which has been doubled up.
"But I thought you had gone to Akimiski ?" Katherine said, her astonishment still so great that she would hardly have believed even now that the stranger was telling the truth, had it not been for the trembling which was upon her now that she found herself face to face with the man whom her father had so seriously wronged away back in the past.
"I should have been much wiser if I had gone," said Mr.Selincourt.
"But at the last moment I decided to stay and survey the land on both sides of the river.

I am sending back some of the boatmen with mails to-morrow, and it seemed essential that I should be able to write definitely to my agent in Montreal about land which I might wish to purchase.

Then I got Stee Jenkin to put me across the river, and I wandered along the shore, then back along the river bank until I reached these beautiful green meadows, as I thought them.

But when I started to walk across I began to sink, so slowly at first that I hardly realized what was wrong." "That is because the mud is firmer near the bank," said Katherine.
"Right out in the centre it will not bear a duck." "I should have been under long before, only when I saw what was coming I sat down, so sank more slowly.

But it was horrible, horrible!" he exclaimed, with a violent shudder.
"Don't think about it more than you can help, and we shall not be long in getting you home," she said; then bent to her oars and tried to forget how sorely her blistered hands were hurting her..