hear Roger Audemard as he rose from his chair. For a moment
the riverman stared at the back of David's head, and in that moment he
was fighting to keep back what wanted to come from his lips in words.
He turned before David faced him again, and did not pause until he
stood at the cabin door with his hand at the latch. There he was partly
in shadow.

"I shall not see you again until you reach the Yellowknife," he said.
"Not until then will you know--or will I know--what is going to happen.
I think you will understand strange things then, but that is for the
hour to tell. Bateese has explained to you that you must not make an
effort to escape. You would regret it, and so would I. If you have red
blood in you, m'sieu--if you would understand all that you cannot
understand now--wait as patiently as you can. Bonne nuit, M'sieu
Carrigan!"

"Good night!" nodded David.

In the pale shadows he thought a mysterious light of gladness illumined
Black Roger's face before the door opened and closed, leaving him alone
again.

XXIV

With the going of Black Roger also went the oppressive loneliness which
had gripped Carrigan, and as he stood listening to the low voices
outside, the undeniable truth came to him that he did not hate this man
as he wanted to hate him. He was a murderer, and a scoundrel in another
way, but he felt irresistibly the impulse to like him and to feel sorry
for him. He made an effort to shake off the feeling, but a small voice
which he could not quiet persisted in telling him that more than one
good man had committed what the law called murder, and that perhaps he
didn't fully understand what he had seen through the cabin window on
the raft. And yet, when unstirred by this impulse, he knew the evidence
was damning.

But his loneliness was gone. With Audemard's visit had come an
unexpected thrill, the revival of an almost feverish anticipation, the
promise of impending things that stirred his blood as he thought of
them. "You will understand strange things then," Roger Audemard had
said, and something in his voice had been like a key unlocking
mysterious doors for the first time. And then, "Wait, as patiently as
you can!" Out of the basket on the table seemed to come to him a
whispering echo of that same word--wait! He laid his hands upon it, and
a pulse of life came with the imagined whispering. It was from
Marie-Anne. It seemed as though the warmth of her hands were still
there, and as he remove