men. Quade is the viler of the two. He is like a horrible beast. Culver
Rann makes me think of a sleek and shining serpent. But it is this man
Quade----"

He found it almost impossible to go on with Joanne's blue eyes gazing so
steadily into his.

"--whom we have made our enemy," she finished for him.

"Yes--and more than that," he said, partly turning his head away. "You
cannot go on to Tete Jaune alone, Joanne. You must go nowhere alone. If you
do----"

"What will happen?"

"I don't know. Perhaps nothing would happen. But you cannot go alone. I am
going to take you back to Mrs. Otto now. And to-morrow I shall go on to
Tete Jaune with you. It is fortunate that I have a place up there to which
I can take you, and where you will be safe."

As they were preparing to go, Joanne glanced ruefully at the table.

"I am ashamed to leave the dishes in that mess," she said.

He laughed, and tucked her hand under his arm as they went through the
door. When they had passed through the little clearing, and the darkness of
the spruce and balsam walls shut them in, he took her hand.

"It is dark and you may stumble," he apologized. "This isn't much like the
shell plaza in front of the Cape Verde, is it?"

"No. Did you pick up any of the little red bloodshells? I did, and they
made me shiver. There were strange stories associated with them."

He knew that she was staring ahead into the blank wall of gloom as she
spoke, and that it was not thought of the bloodshells, but of Quade, that
made her fingers close more tightly about his own. His right hand was
gripping the butt of his automatic. Every nerve in him was on the alert,
yet she could detect nothing of caution or preparedness in his careless
voice.

"The bloodstones didn't trouble me," he answered. "I can't remember
anything that upset me more than the snakes. I am a terrible coward when it
comes to anything that crawls without feet. I will run from a snake no
longer than your little finger--in fact, I'm just as scared of a little
grass snake as I am of a python. It's the _thing_, and not its size, that
horrifies me. Once I jumped out of a boat into ten feet of water because my
companion caught an eel on his line, and persisted in the argument that it
was a fish. Thank Heaven we don't have snakes up here. I've seen only three
or four in all my experience in the Northland."

She laughed softly in spite of the uneasy thrill the night held for her.

"It is hard for me