"Wounded and left for dead, darling," said Catherine, who was not unwilling to flavour her tale with a spice of romantic horror; " and a wonder it is that those Blackfoot savages did not take the young gentleman's scalp

"Don't-pray don't, nurse! How can you think of such a shocking thing? But do you think, dear Catherine, that

"That Mr. Rivers will live? Surely, since he survived the jolting through the forests, and the cold; though the Indians had taken care of him, I will say that for them; but since he survived all that, I think it would be very perverse of him to die now he is so well cared for. Ah, that is right, my pretty! Your colour is coming again now; and let but your bright eyes smile on the poor sick man, I think there will be no fear that he shall not live to thank you for your kind thoughts of him."

"It is foolish of you to say so, nurse dear," said Rose, gravely, as she left her room to seek her father.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE PATIENT.

CATHERINE had not exaggerated Harry Rivers' danger. For many days he continued in a state of delirium; and when this yielded to the febrifuges which the experience of his two nurses enabled them to prescribe, he sunk into extreme bodily weakness, which for many weeks seemed to render his recovery almost hopeless.

It was quite true that he had been very severely and dangerously handled. A fearful gash on the side of the head, probably nflicted by an Indian weapon, was the least serious of the many

wounds he had received. be gathered from the account given by the friendly Indians, who, perhaps, had saved his life. There had been a fight with some outlying tribe, in which some at least of the exploring party had lost their lives; but under what circumstances the quarrel had arisen, or what was the present state of the defensive party, the settlers had no means of knowing.

How he had received them could only

To do the Indian guides justice, it is right to say that they had not only exposed themselves to the fatigues and privations of a very long and toilsome journey to place the wounded man under the care of his friends in the settlement, but they had also skilfully and judiciously dressed and bound up his wounds in their own rude fashion, so that inflammation was prevented, and a favourable process of healing had already commenced. It had not been in their power, however, any more than it was in the power of nurse Catherine and her coadjutor, to restore at once to the exhausted arteries and veins the life-blood which had poured out from those wounds, nor to give tone to the nervous system of the sufferer. In short, it was evident that, if it should eventually take place, the recovery of Harry Rivers would necessarily be very long protracted.

It was well indeed for him that he had dropped, not only upon such good quarters, but into such able hands as our two nurses (to say nothing of Rose and her father) proved themselves to be; for the nearest physician, or surgeon, or apothecary, or, rather, the single representative of these three humane professions bound up in one small specimen, lived at the distance of some sixty miles from the settlement. It is true, a sleigh journey of sixty, or four times sixty miles, is but a bagatelle when you are used to it; and it may be sufficient to show that Mr. Vincent (we still give Vincent Fleming the benefit of his alias) was solicitous for the guest, thus for the second time imposed upon him uninvited, when we state that, the day after

the arrival of the wounded and apparently dying man, he caused his best horse to be harnessed to the sleigh, and started off alone to the doctor's place of abode, and, travelling at the rate of twelve miles an hour, reached his destination before the shades of evening closed in. Fortunately he found the little professional gentleman sufficiently disengaged, not only to listen to his story, but to return with him to the settlement on the following day. Manifestly, however, these visits could not be often, if at all, repeated; and having, therefore, deliberately examined the patient, given many verbal instructions to the nurses, who (as is usual in similar cases) mentally reserved obedience or neglect according to their own opinions on the matter, and having also disburdened himself of various medicines with which he had providently stored his travelling-bag, the doctor took his leave on the next day, returning to his home as he left it, under convoy of Mr. Vincent, confidently predicting that if the patient did well he would assuredly recover; guarding his encouraging vaticination, however, with the cautious observation that if the constitutional vigour of the patient should prove not to be equal to the emergency, he would in all probability sink under it.

"As if I could not have told him as much myself, le charlatan !” muttered nurse Catherine, as soon as the doctor's back was turned. He did not hear the gentle compliment, however.

As to Mr. Vincent, it would be difficult to describe, perhaps even to imagine, the various and contradictory feelings which at this time agitated his frail and enfeebled mind. Urged on by genuine hospitality and sympathy, and perhaps also by some occult natural affection which he dared not avow, towards his unfortunate guest, he had eagerly undertaken the long and benevolent errands just mentioned, and probably enjoyed while thus engaged a happy respite from the terrors by which he had so long been haunted. But when these journeys were over, and he found himself once more under the same roof with his nephew,

and compelled to play towards him the part of a generous host, while he dared not, because of his unreal and morbid fears, reveal that relationship, all those terrors returned with increased malignity. Evil was pursuing him-hunting him-to overthrow him. And not him alone. This was enough, truly; but the misery of it was that his Rose" sole daughter of his house and heart"-must suffer with him, and share in his overthrow. It was useless-so, no doubt, the unhappy man argued—useless to attempt an evasion of his fate. As the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, so Providence, in its hidden and silent movements, was fighting against him. Else, why had young Rivers and himself been so strangely brought together in the first place? or why, after that meeting had passed off innocuously, had the stream of events once more compelled this second contact? There was more in this conjunction than mere accident: it was the preordained manner in which, at length, just and righteous punishment was to be brought home to his weary soul. So the conscience-stricken man believed.

It might indeed have been argued, per contra, that Vincent Fleming (to call him once more, in this stage of our story, by his rightful name) had no reason to fear evil from his own nephew, whom he had never injured either personally or relatively; and that the chance or the providential bringing of him under his own roof might more justly, more naturally at least, be interpreted as a good omen. Unhappily Vincent had no one to place this line of argument before him. His determined reticence with regard to his former life placed it out of his daughter's power to offer him the consolation of a kind and sympathising counsellor; and now, in the extremity of distress forced upon him by his diseased imagination, he shrunk with threefold horror from making her his confidante. "Poor Rose," he thought: "the bolt will fall soon enough as it is, without my cruelly subjecting her to the agony of suspense."

And so conscience made a coward of Vincent Fleming, as, we are told, it makes cowards of us all. The blood he had shed in the heyday of his youth and dissipated folly was heavy on his soul: like the fancied spot on the "little hand" of Macbeth's wife, it would not come out. He was sorry, he always had been sorry for his sin; but his sorrow was of the sort that "worketh death." And before you, reader, condemn our poor infirm friend for his pusillanimity, think whether there may not be, in your history, passages which will not bear thinking over, events which you keep locked up jealously in your own breast, which, by-andby, ten, twenty, forty years hence, may recoil upon your memory, and wake it into almost unendurable torment. "The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?"

The one and only efficient remedy for this heart disease is in the merciful hand of the Great Physician; and happily He is alike able and willing to dispense it, "without money and without price." Listen to His invitation, O wounded one: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I WILL GIVE YOU REST."

CHAPTER XL.

CONVALESCENCE.

WE shall pass lightly and rapidly over the days and weeks of Harry Rivers' illness, with its fluctuations and relapses. The chronicles of a sick chamber are not necessarily uninteresting nor uninstructive; but the future events of our story are beckoning us onward, and it is necessary only to say, that, with the sudden outburst of the Canadian spring-time, the invalid began