of your pocket."

"'Twas the baccy I'd in mind."

"Then dig into this." He shoved his pouch into McPherson's shaking
hands. "You'd better shed your coat. Here! I'll help you. And
private, Tommy, if you don't act the man, I won't do a thing to you.
Sure."

Corliss had stripped his heavy flannel shirt for freedom; and it was
plain, when Frona joined them, that she also had been shedding. Jacket
and skirt were gone, and her underskirt of dark cloth ceased midway
below the knee.

"You'll do," Del commended.

Jacob Welse looked at her anxiously, and went over to where she was
testing the grips of the several paddles. "You're not--?" he began.

She nodded.

"You're a guid girl," McPherson broke in. "Now, a've a wumman to home,
to say naething o' three bairns--"

"All ready!" Corliss lifted the bow of La Bijou and looked back.

The turbid water lashed by on the heels of the ice-run. Courbertin
took the stern in the steep descent, and Del marshalled Tommy's
reluctant rear. A flat floe, dipping into the water at a slight
incline, served as the embarking-stage.

"Into the bow with you, Tommy!"

The Scotsman groaned, felt Bishop breathe heavily at his back, and
obeyed; Frona meeting his weight by slipping into the stern.

"I can steer," she assured Corliss, who for the first time was aware
that she was coming.

He glanced up to Jacob Welse, as though for consent, and received it.

"Hit 'er up! Hit 'er up!" Del urged impatiently. "You're burnin'
daylight!"

CHAPTER XXV

La Bijou was a perfect expression of all that was dainty and delicate
in the boat-builder's soul. Light as an egg-shell, and as fragile, her
three-eighths-inch skin offered no protection from a driving chunk of
ice as small as a man's head. Nor, though the water was open, did she
find a clear way, for the river was full of scattered floes which had
crumbled down from the rim-ice. And here, at once, through skilful
handling, Corliss took to himself confidence in Frona.

It was a great picture: the river rushing blackly between its
crystalline walls; beyond, the green woods stretching upward to touch
the cloud-flecked summer sky; and over all, like a furnace blast, the
hot sun beating down. A great picture, but somehow Corliss's mind
turned to his mother and her perennial tea, the soft carpets, the prim
New England maid-servants, the canaries singing in the wide windows,
and he wondered if she could understand. And when h