er, and he came, as St. Pierre had come, to find a
stranger in his home, a stranger who had lain in his bed, a stranger
whom his wife had nursed back to life, a stranger who had fallen in
love with his most inviolable possession, who had told her of his love,
who had kissed her, who had held her close, in his arms, whose presence
had brought a warmer flush and a brighter glow into eyes and cheeks
that until this stranger's coming had belonged only to him. And he
heard her, as St. Pierre had heard her, pleading with him to keep this
man from harm; he heard her soft voice, telling of the things that had
passed between them, and he saw in her eyes--

With almost a cry he swept the thought and the picture from him. It was
an atrocious thing to conceive, impossible of reality. And yet the
truth would not go. What would he have done in St. Pierre's place?

He went to the window again. Yes, St. Pierre was a bigger man than he.
For St. Pierre had come quietly and calmly, offering a hand of
friendship, generous, smiling, keeping his hurt to himself, while he,
Dave Carrigan, would have come with the murder of man in his heart.

His eyes passed from the canoe to the raft, and from the big raft to
the hazy billows of green and golden forest that melted off into
interminable miles of distance beyond the river. He knew that on the
other side of him lay that same distance, north, east, south, and west,
vast spaces in an unpeopled world, the same green and golden forests,
ten thousand plains and rivers and lakes, a million hiding-places where
romance and tragedy might remain forever undisturbed. The thought came
to him that it would not be difficult to slip out into that world and
disappear. He almost owed it to St. Pierre. It was the voice of Bateese
in a snatch of wild and discordant song that brought him back into grim
reality. There was, after all, that embarrassing matter of justice--and
the accursed Law!

After a little he observed that the canoe was moving faster, and that
Andre's paddle was working steadily and with force. St. Pierre no
longer sat hunched in the bow. His head was erect, and he was waving a
hand in the direction of the raft. A figure had come from the cabin on
the huge mass of floating timber. David caught the shimmer of a woman's
dress, something white fluttering over her head, waving back at St.
Pierre. It was Marie-Anne, and he moved away from the window.

He wondered what was passing between St. Pierre a