il he disappeared beyond
the clump of torrent-scarred trees.

The man from the city was alone. He sat there listening and watching
as eager as a boy. An hour passed. Time and again since he had taken
up his vigil he had started up excitedly, glancing here and there,
confident he heard the baying notes of a hound above the roar of
Big Shanty. Voices, too, rang in his ears from out of that deceptive
torrent as it boiled and eddied past him in the sunlight. Again, it
seemed as if quarrelling had broken out among the boulders--quarrels
that changed to girlish laughter and distant choruses. Once his mind
reverted to the note he had sent by Blakeman; he wondered what effect
the news had had upon Alice. When he faced her again would he have to
go through what he had gone through before? or would she come to her
senses, and be once more the loyal, loving wife she had always been
until--No; he would not go into that. Then Margaret's eyes looked into
his. Again he felt her arms about his neck; the coo and gurgle of her
voice, and laughter in his ears. Here she, at least, would be happy,
and here, too, they could have those long days together which he
had always promised himself, and which his life in the Street made
impossible.

He rose to stretch his legs. As he did so the strange fascination of
the mountain torrent--fascination that grew into a stranger feeling of
isolation, almost of fear, took possession of him. He knew the trapper
was somewhere, but half a mile above him. He was glad of this unseen
companionship, and yet he realized that he was helpless to find his
way back to the shanty. Big Shanty Brook had lost men before, and
could again.

Suddenly the hoarse bellowing of a hound brought him again to his
feet.

"Oo--oo--wah!" it rang over the roar; then the baying grew fainter
from far up under the black slides as the dog turned in his course.

At this instant he became conscious of a presence which he could not
at first make out--but something alive--something that moved--stood
still--still as the tree behind which it slunk--and moved again. He
grasped his Winchester and peered ahead, straining his eyes. Before
him, barely thirty yards away, stood a man, the like of whom he had
never seen before. Gaunt, hollow-eyed, unshorn, his matted beard and
hair covered by a ragged slouch hat. Resting in the hollow of his arm
was a rifle, and around his waist a belt of cartridges. That he had
not seen Thayor was evident from