n, hunger urging them and the water-softened
moccasins holding them back and making them pick their way like children
in the first few days of the barefoot season. The distance proved to be
about three miles and they made it in something over an hour. The embers
of their morning fire were still alive, and the belated midday meal was
quickly cooked and despatched.

"Now for the hard part of it," Prime announced, as he began to pack the
camp outfit. "You sit right still and rest, and I'll get things ready
for the tote."

"Then you have determined to ride roughshod over the rights of the
people who own the things?" the young woman asked.

Prime turned his back deliberately upon the pool of dread.

"Necessity knows no law, and we can't stay here forever waiting for
something to turn up. Somebody has given us a strong-hand deal, for what
reason God only knows, and we've got to fight out of it the best way we
can. We'll take these things, and we are willing to pay for them if
anybody should ask us to; but in any event we are going to take them,
because it is a matter of life and death to us. I'll shoulder all the
responsibility, moral and otherwise."

She laughed a little at this. "More of the protective instinct? I can't
allow that--my conscience is my own. But I suppose you are right. There
doesn't seem to be anything else to do. And you needn't fit all of
those packs to your own back; I propose to carry my share."

He protested at that, and learned one more thing about Lucetta
Millington: up to a certain point she was as docile and leadable as the
woman of the Stone Age is supposed to have been, and beyond that she was
adamant.

"You said a little while ago it was a pity I wasn't a man: it is the
woman's part nowadays to ask no odds. Will you try to remember that?"

Here was a hint of a brand-new Lucetta, and Prime wondered how he had
contrived to live twenty-eight years in a world of women only to be
brought in contact for the first time with the real, simon-pure article
in the heart of a Canadian wilderness. Nevertheless he took her at her
word and made a small pack for her, with a carrying-strap cut from the
remains of the deerskin. At the very best the portage promised to demand
three trips, which was appalling.

It was well past the middle of the afternoon when they reached the canoe
at the end of the first carry. The three-mile trudge had been made in
silence, neither of the amateur carriers having breath t