he play?"

"Nothing that I remember; he improvises. It rests him, I suppose."

"Has he many friends?"

"I don't know that he wants many."

"Then he sits there alone in the evenings and plays to himself,--I
wonder if it really is to himself? Don't you believe that somewhere
there must be some one he is playing to, and that it's for some one
he's doing all that's going on?" Elsie spoke a little breathlessly and
her eyes were luminous. "How old is he?"

"Perhaps between thirty-five and forty, I never asked--one doesn't ask
him that sort of thing. He never struck me as being of any particular
age."

"But you're going to follow him always, aren't you, and help to see him
through? He's following something too."

"What's that?" said Belding a little stiffly.

"His star." The girl's voice was very soft. "Perhaps he'll never
reach it, but that doesn't matter, if he follows it."

"Mr. Clark would differ with you there."

"Would he, I don't know. Perhaps I understand him better than you do."

Belding got up in swift discomfort. "It looks as if you did."

Her lips curved into a smile. "Don't go yet. Doesn't it seem as
though all this were meant to be from the beginning, and isn't Mr.
Clark in the grip of something bigger than himself?"

"It's pretty big if he is."

"I know, but isn't he a prophet in the wilderness, the wilderness of
Algoma, and he hasn't much honor except what a few of us give him?"

Belding looked at her strangely. This was a new Elsie, who seemed
wistful--yet not for him. Her eyes were cloudy with thought and he had
a curious sensation that he was at this moment far from her
imagination. She turned to him.

"Take me out in your canoe, now."

He felt suddenly and inexpressibly happy. "Come along."

She leaned back against the cushions while Belding dipped a practiced
blade in the unruffled stream. The night was clear and the sky studded
with innumerable stars.

"Where to?" he said contentedly.

She waved a slim hand towards the rapids. "As near as you can, then
round into the big bay."

He put his back into his work and the canoe shot forward, reaching
presently those long foam-flecked swells that mark the foot of the
turmoil. In ten minutes they were in the heel of the rapids and as far
as Belding dared go with so precious a burden. Elsie felt the cold
spray on her face and her eyes shone with delight. After a little she
pointed northward and the canoe edged into t