her side, and look into the face whose image
had spurred him to almost super-human effort, throughout the days and
the nights of the long river trail.

Lightly she answered him, and Lapierre's heart bounded at the warmth of
her welcome. He turned with a word to his canoemen, and Chloe noted
with admiration, how one and all they sprang to do his bidding. She
marvelled at his authority. Why did these men leap to obey his
slightest command, when LeFroy, to obtain even the half-hearted
obedience she required of her Indians, was forced to brow-beat and
bully them? Her heart warmed to the man as she thought of the slovenly
progress of her school. Here was one who could help her. One who
could point with the finger of a master of men to the weak spots in her
system.

Suddenly her brow clouded. For, as she looked upon Lapierre, the words
of MacNair flashed through her mind, as he stood weak from his wounds,
in the dimness of her fire-lit room. Her eyes hardened, and
unconsciously her chin thrust outward, as she realized that before she
could ask this man's aid, there were things he must explain.

Darkness settled, and at a word from Lapierre, fires flared out on the
beach and in the clearing, and by their light the long line of canoemen
conveyed the pieces upon their heads into the wide door of the
storehouse. It was a weird, fantastic scene. The long line of
pack-laden men, toiling up the bank between the rows of flaring fires,
to disappear in the storehouse; and the long line returning
empty-handed to toil again, to the storehouse. After a time Lapierre
called LeFroy to his side and uttered a few terse commands. The man
nodded, and took Lapierre's place at the head of the steep slope to the
river. The quarter-breed turned to the girl.

"Come," he said, smiling, "LeFroy can handle them now. May we not go
to your cottage? I would hear of your progress--the progress of your
school. And also," he bowed, "is it not possible that the great, what
do you call her, Lena, has prepared supper? I've eaten nothing since
morning."

"Forgive me!" cried the girl. "I had completely forgotten supper.
But, the men? Have they not eaten since morning?"

Lapierre smiled. "They will eat," he answered, "when their work is
done."

Supper over, the two seated themselves upon the little veranda. Along
the beach the fires still flared, and still the men, like a huge,
slow-moving endless chain, carried the supplies to the st