f the forenoon the course of the stream had
changed again to the northward, swinging around through a wide
half-circle to the west, and this course, with its Hudson Bay
threatenings, was maintained throughout the remainder of the day.

Their night camp was made at the head of a series of rapids, the first
of which, from the increased volume of the water, looked more perilous
than any they had yet attempted. It was late when they made camp and,
the darkness coming on quickly, they were prevented from reconnoitring.
But they had the thunder of the flood for music at their evening meal,
and it was ominous.

"I am afraid that noise is telling us that we are to have no
thoroughfare to-morrow," was the young woman's comment upon the thunder
music. "Let us hope it will be a short carry this time."

Prime laughed. "Isn't there a passage somewhere in the Bible about the
back being fitted to its burden?" he asked. Then he went on for her
encouragement: "It's all in the day's work, Lucetta-woman, and it is
doing you no end of good. The next time you are able to look into a
mirror you won't know yourself."

Though she had thought that she was by this time far beyond it, the
young woman blushed a little under the rich outdoor brown.

"Then I'm not growing haggard and old?" she inquired.

"Indeed, you are not!" he asserted loyally. "I'm the beauty of the
two"--passing a hand over the three weeks' growth of stubble beard on
his face. "You are putting on weight every day. In another week your
face will be as round as a full moon. It may not sound like it, but that
was meant for a compliment."

"Was I too thin?" she wanted to know.

"Er--not precisely thin, perhaps; but a little strenuous. You gave me
the idea at first that Domestic Science, with gymnasium teaching on the
side, had been a trifle too much for you. Had they?"

"No; I was perfectly fit. But one acquires the habit of living tensely
in that other world that we have lost and can't find again. It is human
to wish to make money, and then a little more money."

"What special use have you for a little more money?" Prime asked
curiously.

"Travel," she said succinctly. "I should like to see the world; all of
it."

"That wouldn't take so very much money. Goodness knows, the pen isn't
much of a mining-pick, but with it I have contrived to dig out a year in
Europe."

"You couldn't have done it teaching the daughters of retired farmers how
to cook rationally," she ave