nother woman in the doorway. But the woman
who sat shook about her great masses of dark, wet hair which yielded
up its dampness to the warm caresses of the sun.

For an instant Li Wan stood transfixed. Then she was aware of a
blinding flash, and a snap, as though something gave way; and the
woman before the cabin vanished, and the cabin and the tall spruce
timber, and the jagged sky-line, and Li Wan saw another woman, in the
shine of another sun, brushing great masses of black hair, and
singing as she brushed. And Li Wan heard the words of the song, and
understood, and was a child again. She was smitten with a vision,
wherein all the troublesome dreams merged and became one, and shapes
and shadows took up their accustomed round, and all was clear and
plain and real. Many pictures jostled past, strange scenes, and trees,
and flowers, and people; and she saw them and knew them all.

"When you were a little bird, a little moose-bird," Canim said, his
eyes upon her and burning into her.

"When I was a little moose-bird," she whispered, so faint and low he
scarcely heard. And she knew she lied, as she bent her head to the
strap and took the swing of the trail.

And such was the strangeness of it, the real now became unreal. The
mile tramp and the pitching of camp by the edge of the stream seemed
like a passage in a nightmare. She cooked the meat, fed the dogs, and
unlashed the packs as in a dream, and it was not until Canim began to
sketch his next wandering that she became herself again.

"The Klondike runs into the Yukon," he was saying; "a mighty river,
mightier than the Mackenzie, of which you know. So we go, you and I,
down to Fort o' Yukon. With dogs, in time of winter, it is twenty
sleeps. Then we follow the Yukon away into the west--one hundred
sleeps, two hundred--I have never heard. It is very far. And then we
come to the sea. You know nothing of the sea, so let me tell you. As
the lake is to the island, so the sea is to the land; all the rivers
run to it, and it is without end. I have seen it at Hudson Bay; I have
yet to see it in Alaska. And then we may take a great canoe upon the
sea, you and I, Li Wan, or we may follow the land into the south many
a hundred sleeps. And after that I do not know, save that I am Canim,
the Canoe, wanderer and far-journeyer over the earth!"

She sat and listened, and fear ate into her heart as she pondered over
this plunge into the illimitable wilderness. "It is a weary way,"