shall deny?" he cried, fervently.

"What a ridiculous, foolish, lovable fellow it is!"

"I kiss your hand." And he knelt gallantly in the muck.

She jerked her hand away, and, burying it with its mate in his curly
mop, shook his head back and forth. "What shall I do with him, father?"

Jacob Welse shrugged his shoulders and laughed; and she turned
Courbertin's face up and kissed him on the lips. And Jacob Welse knew
that his was the larger share in that manifest joy.

The river, fallen to its winter level, was pounding its ice-glut
steadily along. But in falling it had rimmed the shore with a
twenty-foot wall of stranded floes. The great blocks were spilled
inland among the thrown and standing trees and the slime-coated flowers
and grasses like the titanic vomit of some Northland monster. The sun
was not idle, and the steaming thaw washed the mud and foulness from
the bergs till they blazed like heaped diamonds in the brightness, or
shimmered opalescent-blue. Yet they were reared hazardously one on
another, and ever and anon flashing towers and rainbow minarets
crumbled thunderously into the flood. By one of the gaps so made lay
La Bijou, and about it, saving _chechaquos_ and sick men, were grouped
the denizens of Split-up.

"Na, na, lad; twa men'll be a plenty." Tommy McPherson sought about
him with his eyes for corroboration. "Gin ye gat three i' the canoe
'twill be ower comfortable."

"It must be a dash or nothing," Corliss spoke up. "We need three men,
Tommy, and you know it."

"Na, na; twa's a plenty, I'm tellin' ye."

"But I'm afraid we'll have to do with two."

The Scotch-Canadian evinced his satisfaction openly. "Mair'd be a
bother; an' I doot not ye'll mak' it all richt, lad."

"And you'll make one of those two, Tommy," Corliss went on, inexorably.

"Na; there's ithers a plenty wi'oot coontin' me."

"No, there's not. Courbertin doesn't know the first thing. St.
Vincent evidently cannot cross the slough. Mr. Welse's arm puts him
out of it. So it's only you and I, Tommy."

"I'll not be inqueesitive, but yon son of Anak's a likely mon. He maun
pit oop a guid stroke." While the Scot did not lose much love for the
truculent pocket-miner, he was well aware of his grit, and seized the
chance to save himself by shoving the other into the breach.

Del Bishop stepped into the centre of the little circle, paused, and
looked every man in the eyes before he spoke.

"Is there a man here