d the cloth the sweet breath of her came to him.
And then, in the next instant, he was trying to laugh at himself and
trying equally hard to call himself a fool, for it was the breath of
newly-baked things which her fingers had made.

Yet never had he felt the warmth of her presence more strangely in his
heart. He did not try to explain to himself why Roger Audemard's visit
had broken down things which had seemed insurmountable an hour ago.
Analysis was impossible, because he knew the transformation within
himself was without a shred of reason. But it had come, and with it his
imprisonment took on another form. Where before there had been thought
of escape and a scheming to jail Black Roger, there filled him now an
intense desire to reach the Yellowknife and the Chateau Boulain.

It was after midnight when he went to bed, and he was up with the early
dawn. With the first break of day the bateau men were preparing their
breakfast. David was glad. He was eager for the day's work to begin,
and in that eagerness he pounded on the door and called out to Joe
Clamart that he was ready for his breakfast with the rest of them, but
that he wanted only hot coffee to go with what Black Roger had brought
to him in the basket.

That afternoon the bateau passed Fort McMurray, and before the sun was
well down in the west Carrigan saw the green slopes of Thickwood Hills
and the rising peaks of Birch Mountains. He laughed outright as he
thought of Corporal Anderson and Constable Frazer at Fort McMurray,
whose chief duty was to watch the big waterway. How their eyes would
pop if they could see through the padlocked door of his prison! But he
had no inclination to be discovered now. He wanted to go on, and with a
growing exultation he saw there was no intention on the part of the
bateau's crew to loiter on the way. There was no stop at noon, and the
tie-up did not come until the last glow of day was darkening into the
gloom of night in the sky. For sixteen hours the bateau had traveled
steadily, and it could not have made less than sixty miles as the river
ran. The raft, David figured, had not traveled a third of the distance.

The fact that the bateau's progress would bring him to Chateau Boulain
many days, and perhaps weeks, before Black Roger and Marie-Anne could
arrive on the raft did not check his enthusiasm. It was this interval
between their arrivals which held a great speculative promise for him.
In that time, if his efficiency