for Natalie, she waited
breathlessly for his first word; mightily desiring his approval, but
too proud to ask it. Finally she could stand the suspense no longer
and pride succumbed. It took her a long time to get the question out.

"Are you--are you sorry you volunteered to take me?" she faltered.

"No!" cried Garth in a great voice.

She found his hand in the darkness; and gave it a swift, grateful
squeeze. "Good night!" she whispered; and ran to her stateroom.

Garth, with his pipe and the mighty stillness to bear him company,
remained on deck until dawn. In the spirit of the North he discovered
something akin to his own soul; the solitude and the stillness braced
him to deny himself manfully what was not manfully his to have. In the
act of relinquishing Natalie, he felt, what he would not have supposed
possible, a great, added tenderness for her. Before he went in, his
sober cheerfulness had returned; but in the morning he was somehow
more mature.

VII

MARY CO-QUE-WASA'S ERRAND

At noon next day the little _Aurora Borealis_ was reclining drunkenly
on a shoal in the river at the foot of Caliper island, sixty miles above
the Landing, and fifteen below the Warehouse. This had been the place of
Captain Jack's gloomy forebodings all the way up. The river spread wide,
shallow and swift on either side the island, and neither one channel nor
the other would permit their ascent. The _Aurora_ was having a little
breathing space on the shoal, while Captain Jack and St. Paul, the big
half-breed pilot, debated below on what to do.

The three passengers looked on from the upper deck. Natalie and Garth
tacitly ignored any change in their relation to-day; and no reference
was made to Natalie's story. They seemed, if anything, more friendly
with each other; nevertheless Constraint, like a spectre standing
between them, intercepted all their communications.

The third passenger was a half-breed woman nearing middle age, clad in a
decent black print dress, and a black straw hat, under the brim of which
depended a circlet of attenuated, grizzled curls. Her face, like that
of all the natives in the presence of whites, expressed a blank, in her
case a mysterious blank. She was silent and ubiquitous; whichever way
they looked, there she was. Captain Jack had mentioned to Garth that
her name was Mary Co-que-wasa. The off-hand shrug that accompanied the
information, between men, was significant. Garth resented it; and his