rstanding of the truth which made his hands clench as he sat down
on the edge of the raft with his feet and legs submerged in the
slow-moving current of the river. The thing was not uncommon. It was
the same monstrous story, as old as the river itself, but in this
instance it filled him with a sickening sort of horror which gripped
him at first even more than the strangeness of the fact that Carmin
Fanchet was the other woman. His vision and his soul were reaching out
to the bateau lying in darkness on the far side of the river, where St.
Pierre's wife was alone in her unhappiness. His first impulse was to
fling himself in the river and race to her--his second, to go back to
St. Pierre, even in his nakedness, and call him forth to a reckoning.
In his profession of man-hunting he had never had the misfortune to
kill, but he could kill St. Pierre--now. His fingers dug into the
slippery wood of the log under him, his blood ran hot, and in his eyes
blazed the fury of an animal as he stared into the wall of gloom
between him and Marie-Anne Boulain.

How much did she know? That was the first question which pounded in his
brain. He suddenly recalled his reference to the fight, his apology to
Marie-Anne that it should happen so near to her presence, and he saw
again the queer little twist of her mouth as she let slip the hint that
she was not the only one of her sex who would know of tomorrow's fight.
He had not noticed the significance of it then. But now it struck home.
Marie-Anne was surely aware of Carmin Fanchet's presence on the raft.

But did she know more than that? Did she know the truth, or was her
heart filled only with suspicion and fear, aggravated by St. Pierre's
neglect and his too-apparent haste to return to the raft that night?
Again David's mind flashed back, recalling her defense of Carmin
Fanchet when he had first told her his story of the woman whose brother
he had brought to the hangman's justice. There could be but one
conclusion. Marie-Anne knew Carmin Fanchet, and she also knew she was
on the raft with St. Pierre.

As cooler judgment returned to him, Carrigan refused to concede more
than that. For any one of a dozen reasons Carmin Fanchet might be on
the raft going down the river, and it was also quite within reason that
Marie-Anne might have some apprehension of a woman as beautiful as
Carmin, and possibly intuition had begun to impinge upon her a
disturbing fear of a something that might happen. But