He was called away to give some directions to his men, and Elizabeth lay dreaming in the firelight of the past and the future, her hands clasped on her breast, her eyes filling with soft tears.  Upstairs, in the room above her, the emigrant mother and baby lay sleeping in the warmth and shelter gathered round them by Elizabeth.  But in tending them, she had been also feeding her own yearning, quickening her own hope.  She had given herself to a man whom she adored, and she carried his child on her heart.  Many and various strands would have gone to the weaving of that little soul; she trembled sometimes to think of them.  But no fear with her lasted long.  It was soon lost in the deep poetic faith that Anderson’s child in her arms would be the heir of two worlds, the pledge of a sympathy, a union, begun long before her marriage in the depths of the spirit, when her heart first went out to Canada—­to the beauty of the Canadian land, and the freedom of the Canadian life.

THE END