down at the
canoe. The next instant, with a powerful shove, he sent the empty
birchbark speeding far out into the open water.

Jan caught his breath. He heard Jackpine's cry of amazement behind him.
Then he saw the two men start on a swift run over the portage trail,
and with a fierce, terrible cry he sprang toward his rifle, which he
had leaned against a tree.

In that moment he would have fired, but O'Grady and the Indian had
disappeared into the timber. He understood--O'Grady had tricked him, as
he had tricked him in other ways. He had a second canoe waiting for him
at the end of the portage, and perhaps others farther on. It was
unfair. He could still hear O'Grady's taunting laughter as it had rung
out in Porcupine City, and the mystery of it was solved. His blood grew
hot--so hot that his eyes burned, and his breath seemed to parch his
lips. In that short space in which he stood paralyzed and unable to act
his brain blazed like a volcano. Who--was helping O'Grady by having a
canoe ready for him at the other side of the portage? He knew that no
man had gone North from Porcupine City during those tense days of
waiting. The code which all understood had prohibited that. Who, then,
could it be?--who but Marie herself! In some way O'Grady had got word
to her, and it was the Cummins' canoe that was waiting for him!

With a strange cry Jan lifted the bow of the canoe to his shoulder and
led Jackpine in a run. His strength had returned. He did not feel the
whiplike sting of boughs that struck him across the face. He scarcely
looked at the little cabin of logs when they passed it. Deep down in
his heart he called upon the Virgin to curse those two--Marie Cummins
and Clarry O'Grady, the man and the girl who had cheated him out of
love, out of home, out of everything he had possessed, and who were
beating him now through perfidy and trickery.

His face and his hands were scratched and bleeding when they came to
the narrow waterway, half lake and half river, which let into the Blind
Loon. Another minute and they were racing again through the water. From
the mouth of the channel he saw O'Grady and the Chippewayan a quarter
of a mile ahead. Five miles beyond them was the fourth portage. It was
hidden now by a thick pall of smoke rising slowly into the clear sky.
Neither Jan nor the Indian had caught the pungent odors of burning
forests in the air, and they knew that it was a fresh fire. Never in
the years that Jan could rem