still, no doubt a ghastly
half-drowned object, with the blood from the wound the branch made
trickling down my forehead, until stooping further she laid her hand on my
shoulder, and there was more than compassion in the eyes that regarded me
so anxiously.

Then, slowly, power and speech came back together, and covering the
slender fingers with kisses I staggered to my feet.

"Thank God, you are safe!" I said, "and whatever happens, I have saved
you. You will forgive me this last folly, but all the rest was only a
small price to pay for it."

She did not answer, though for a moment the hot blood suffused her cheek,
and I stood erect, still dazed and bewildered--for the quartz reef had
cruelly bruised me--glancing round in search of the canoe. Failing to find
it, I again broke out gratefully:

"Thank heaven, you are safe!"

Grace leaned against a boulder. "Sit down on that ledge. You have not
quite recovered," she said; and I was glad to obey, for my limbs were
shaky, and the power of command was born in her. Then with a sigh she
added very slowly: "I fear you are premature. Still, I think you are a
brave man, and no Carrington was ever a coward. Look around and notice the
level, and remember the daily rise."

Stupidly I blinked about me, trying to collect my scattered wits. The
strip of shingle stood perhaps a foot above the river and was only a few
yards wide. In front, the horrible eddy lapped upon the pebbles at each
revolving swirl, and behind us rose a smooth wall of rock absolutely
unclimbable, even if it had not overhung. That, however, was not the
worst, for a numbing sense of dismay, colder far than the chilly
snow-water, crept over me as I remembered that most mountain streams in
British Columbia rise and fall several feet daily. They are lowest in
early morning, because at night the frost holds fast the drainage of
snow-field and glacier which feeds them on the peaks above; then, as the
sun unchains the waters, they increase in volume, so that many a ford
which a man might pass knee-deep at dawn is swept by roaring flood before
the close of afternoon.

"Watch that stone," said Grace with a stately calmness, though first she
seemed to choke down some obstruction in her throat. "There! the last wash
has buried it, and when we landed the one with the red veins--it is
covered several inches now--was bare."

A sudden fury seized me, and raising a clenched hand aloft I ground my
heels into the shingle, whi