He dug
his paddle into the water and sent the canoe hissing up the river. His
blood pounded like that of a racehorse on the home-stretch. Of all the
things that had happened, of all he had learned, this was the most
significant. Every thought ran like a separate powder-flash to a single
idea, to one great, overpowering question. Were Fort o' God and its
people the key to the plot against himself and his company? Was it the
rendezvous of those who were striving to work his ruin? Doubt,
suspicion, almost belief came to him in those few moments, in spite of
himself.

He looked at Jeanne. The gray dawn was breaking, and now light followed
swiftly and dissolved the last mist. In the chill of early morning,
when with the approach of the sun a cold, uncomfortable sweat rises
heavily from the earth and water, Jeanne had drawn one of the bearskins
closely about her. Her head was bare. Her hair, glistening with damp,
clung in heavy masses about her face. There was a bewitching
childishness about her, a pathetic appeal to him in the forlorn little
picture she made--so helpless, and yet so confident in him. Every
energy in him leaped up in defiance of the revolution which for a few
moments had stirred within him. And Jeanne, as though she had read the
working of his mind, looked straight at him and smiled, with a little
purring note in her throat that took the place of a thousand words. It
was such a smile, and yet not one of love, which puts the strength of
ten men in one man's arms; and Philip laughed back at her, every chord
in his body responding in joyous vibration to the delicate note that
had come with it. No matter what events might find their birth at Fort
o' God, Jeanne was innocent of all knowledge of plot or wrong-doing.
Once for all Philip convinced himself of this.

The thought that came to him, as he looked at Jeanne, found voice
through his lips.

"Do you know," he said, "if I never saw you again I would always have
three pictures of you in my memory. I would never forget how you looked
when I first saw you on the cliff--or as I see you now, wrapped in your
bearskins. Only--I would think of you--as you smiled."

"And the third picture?" questioned Jeanne, little guessing what was in
his mind. "Would that be at the fire, when I burned the bad man's
neck--or--or when--"

She stopped herself, and pouted her mouth in sudden vexation, while a
flush which Philip could easily see rose in her cheeks.

"When I docto