Everybody was on deck watching their changing shapes, some apparently all rock, and others a bower of greenery, and admiring the skilful steering of the large vessel among them.  Soon after noon the first rapid was shot, a bubbling, seething whirlpool, with clouds of white foam beaten up by the jagged teeth of the sunken rocks.

Winding in and out among the islands till late in the afternoon, they reached their port, and repaired to the hotel, to pursue the rest of their journey by land.

A ricketty waggon—­not an English hay-cart, but a spidery trap, with high wheels, so called—­and a dilapidated buggy were placed at their disposal.  Two children and the old nurse remained to follow in the coach, and the advance guard started, after an anxious consultation as to whether the wheel of the buggy could be trusted to revolve the twelve miles without dislocation.

The corduroy roads were in their usual inefficient state,—­whole planks had disappeared in places, and were loose in others,—­so locomotion became a series of jolts and bumps.  The drivers wished to save two miles by crossing a river, and spoke confidently of a bridge, which, on arriving at, proved to be only some pieces of timber cast wholesale into it, some of them negligently nailed together.

Mrs. Rolleston, who was not of an adventurous nature, though much advanced in that direction since her residence in Canada, wished to return, and go round; but four miles lost was too serious a consideration; so she shut her eyes, clutched her husband, and prayed audibly, as the driver, with a screech of encouragement to his cattle, after a few struggles and flounders, landed the waggon on the opposite side.

But Miss Prosody declared that the wheel of the buggy would certainly be torn off in the attempt, and, losing her usual prudery in terror, whipped off her stockings, and proceeded to wade, to the exposure of a very attenuated pair of calves.

Freddy and Lola hung upon Cecil, powerless with laughter, comparing her to the thin-legged aquatic birds in the Zoo; but the Colonel, with rather a suspicious guffaw, rushed to her aid, relieving her from her hose, and, as she afterwards recollected in deep confusion, a pair of knitted garters.

The buggy bumped over somehow, and they got en route again, the road winding through woods golden in the setting sun.  Occasionally a raccoon, playing about the trunks of trees, beguiled the loneliness of the way; or a strange bird, with harsh note, but gay plumage, flashed across their track.  Colonel Rolleston, however, was not so much entranced as his children at discovering that the road stopped at the hotel on the lake, not coming within half-a-mile of his new property, and that they must embark and cross over in boats to Lyndon’s Landing, as it was called, after the former occupants.

The evening was calm, and the sunset dyed their sail redly as it floated the barque lazily across the slumbering lake to their port at the bottom of a sloping lawn.  The path, winding up hill, led them to a sylvan-looking lodge, where, instead of a bell, hung a hunting-horn.