iscredited by the men who ruled the North, yet brave and infinitely
capable--she remembered the swift fate of Vermilion.

His was nothing of the rugged candour of MacNair--the bluff
straightforwardness that overrides opposition; ignores criticism.
MacNair fitted the North--the big, brutal, insatiate North--the North
of storms, of cold and fighting things; of foaming, roaring white-water
and seething, blinding blizzards.

Chloe's glance strayed out over the river, where the farther bank
showed only the serried sky-line of a wall of jet.

Lapierre was also of the North--the North as it is tonight; soft air,
balmy with the incense of growing things; illusive dark, half
concealing, half revealing, blurring distant outlines. A placid North,
whose black waters flowed silent, smooth, deep. A benign and harmless
North, upon its surface; and yet, withal, portentous of things unknown.

The girl shuddered and arose to her feet, and, as she did so, from up
the river--from the direction of the Indian camp--came the sharp, quick
sound of a shot. Then silence--a silence that seemed unending to the
girl who waited breathlessly, one hand grasping the rough bark of the
gnarled tree, and the other shading her eyes as thought to aid them in
their effort to pierce the gloom.

A long time she stood thus, peering into the dark, and then, an
indistinct form clove the black water of the river, and a long body
slipped noiselessly toward her, followed by another, and another.

"The canoes!" she cried, as she watched the sparkling starlight play
upon the long Y-shaped ripples that rolled back from their bows.

Once more the sense of loneliness almost overcame her. Pierre Lapierre
was going out of the North.

She could see the figures of the paddlers, now--blurred, and
indistinct, and unrecognizable--distinguishable more by the spaces that
showed between them, than by their own outlines.

They were almost beneath her. Should she call out? One last _bon
voyage_? The sound of a voice floated upward; a hard, rasping voice,
unfamiliar, yet strangely familiar. In the leading canoe the Indians
ceased paddling. The canoe lost momentum and drifted broadside to the
current. The men were lifting something; something long and dark.
There was a muffled splash, and the dark object disappeared. The
canoemen picked up their paddles, and the canoe swung into its course
and disappeared around a point. The other canoes followed; and the
river r