long, bleached grasses. So perfectly did it resemble a piece of decayed and mottled wood that even Dick's keen eye almost passed it over, until it sprang up from this cosy day-time retreat, and blundered away among the trees. Dragon-flies, unlike their brethren of the earlier year, in that they were clad in crimson and russet plush, and not in green and pink and sapphire mail, took their flashing flights among the faded undergrowth. The air was warm and golden still, but a keen nose might detect in it a threatening of frost; and the fallen leaves yielded a delicate fragrance as of damp earth and new mown hay.

A chipmunk ran down a tree trunk and scolded him viciously, and then fled before him to another tree, where it awaited him angrily, evidently under the impression that he was following it with evil designs upon its winter stores. In this way it preceded him to the edge of the corn-field, and finally vanished into a hole in a half-dead pine that stood near the clearing, putting out its head once more with a last outpouring of abuse. "Oh! little fellow," said Dick, "I am afraid your nuts will be wasted, for to-morrow we chop the tree down. But I 've promised Stephanie that first I 'll climb up and poke you out with a stick—and get bitten for my pains, I suppose, you little spitfire. So you need not be afraid you 'll be killed." He ran a hand over the smooth bark, blue-black, mottled with fragile green lichens, with no thought of its beauty. "Half rotten," he said to himself, "and it ought to go down as easily as a bulrush." And he turned away, his mind full of the fascinating way in which the bright blades of the axes would bite deep through that beautiful dark bark into the sweet-smelling white wood beneath; of how the chips would scatter and fly, and lie like creamy shreds of ivory underfoot; of the tremor that would seem to shake the neighbouring woods at the sound of the falling of the tree.

CHAPTER II.

The Fall of the Tree.

Next morning the year had grown perceptibly older; or so it seemed to Stephanie, as she stood in the doorway of the log-cabin, looking across the misty clearing to the golden forests that encircled it. The fallen leaves looked browner, each furred at the edge with a delicate fringe of hoar-frost; and the newly risen sun strove as yet in vain to send some heat through the faint, cold haze. It was more penetratingly chill than if it had been the drier winter time. Stephanie snuggled into her little gray shawl with a keen appreciation of its rough warmth, and watched her breath floating as tiny silver clouds in the almost motionless air.

She was a tall, strong girl, with an unexpectedly plaintive face—a quaint, dark-eyed face which suited well with her quaint foreign name. Already she looked older than Dick, for her eyes were grave, and her mouth had taken a firm, responsible curve; it was a look which comes sometimes to motherless girls who have men-folk to manage and care for.

The room behind her was neat and clean, but almost bare of even such comforts as might have been found in pioneer homes. Here and there some little stool or shelf showed that her brother's deft fingers had been at work; but in this as in most things he lacked the steadiness of application which would have served to better their lot. And Captain Underwood was a broken man, plunged in a lethargy of remorse and disappointment which threatened never to lighten. Since her mother's death, life would have been almost unendurable to Stephanie had it not been for two things: these were the passionate affection existing between herself and Dick, and her intense love for and kinship with nature. All her scanty hours of idleness she spent roaming about the clearing or the edge of the forest—she knew the haunts of every weed and flower for a mile around. In the winter, flocks of little hungry birds were her pensioners, and it is likely that she would have seriously diminished their own stores in feeding them, had not Dick collected berries and wild rice and seeds in the fall as a provision for emergencies.

On this keen autumn morning there were very few birds about; the robins had flown, and the owls were going to bed; far away some noisy crows wheeled and cawed above the trees, but no longer could Stephanie hear the innumerable small twitterings and tentative songs of a morning in the summer. The forest was very silent. Indeed, the only sound that broke the half-awakened quietness was the distant thud and throb of axes biting deep into the trunk of a tree.

It was a curiously insistent sound, that seemed to claim more notice than it was worth. Very clearly on the clear air was borne the noise of every blow, and occasionally a faint crack as of a blade being wrenched away. It forced itself on Stephanie's attention, growing louder and fainter as slight breaths of wind moved the hazy air, but never ceasing in its continual, irregular thud—thud; thud—thud. Her father and Dick were chopping down the half-dead pine; she could distinguish the difference between the weight of their respective strokes.

Half unconsciously she listened. There was no cessation in the dull noise; and to her it seemed full of threat and menace. She fancied that the other trees must be shaking all their remaining leaves in fear that a like fate might befall them, and she hoped that Dick had remembered to chase the chipmunk out of his hole. The chipmunk had been a friend of hers, and she used to drop acorns at the foot of the tree where he might find them. Vaguely she wondered whether she would recognise the little fellow again if she saw him in some other tree, and concluded that it was scarcely possible. While all the time the thud—thud of the axes seemed to weave itself into a sort of irregular accompaniment to her wandering thoughts. And then suddenly she was aware that it had stopped, and that a brief silence had once more fallen over the golden woods and the hazy field of corn.

The silence was broken by a sharp crack. Then a series of small tearing, rushing, rending sounds ended in a mighty crash. Stephanie knew that the tree was down, and an odd little feeling of regret came over her; once more there was a moment of utter silence. Then, sharp and keen and terribly distinct, she heard a wild cry from Dick.

She had run down the garden almost before that cry ceased to ring in the air, and now she fled over the rough ground outside with as swift and sure a step as a young deer might use. Her face was grey and drawn with the sense of coming disaster, but neither her feet nor her breath failed her as she breasted the low rise of ground, slippery with pine needles, which lay between her and the place from which that cry had come.

As she gained the crest of the hill, she staggered back a step and almost fell, but recovered and ran on, though for a minute she was blind and deaf and scarcely conscious.

The pine, shorn of its few branches, lay upon the ground, and near the stump lay her father, with Dick kneeling beside him. When her sight came back to her, she found that she also was kneeling there, staring stupidly at her brother's agonised face, and at the great branch torn from a neighbouring maple, which told all the terrible tale. Somewhere in the silent woods a chipmunk chattered shrilly, and she wondered when it would stop, for the noise hurt her head. Someone seemed to be saying drearily over and over again, "What are we to do? What are we to do?" and she felt angry with the momentous question. Surely silence was the only fitting thing.

Then her senses seemed suddenly to wake into painful life again, and she stood up and looked about in dry-eyed desperation. That her father was seriously injured she knew, for the branch had struck him at the base of the head. But he appeared to be still living; and what were they to do for the best? A feeling of their utter loneliness swept over her, bringing back that other irremediable loss of two years ago.