y. They have my goods--but
I--"

"You?" repeated Virginia, as he hesitated.

"Ah, I don't go back empty-handed!" he cried. Her heart stood still,
then leaped in anticipation of what he would say. Her soul hungered
for the words, the words that should not only comfort her, but should
be to her the excuse for many things. She saw him--shadowy, graceful
against the dim gray of the river and sky--lean ever so slightly
toward her. But then he straightened again to his paddle, and
contented himself with repeating merely: "Quebec--in August, then."

The canoe grated. Ned Trent with an exclamation drove his paddle into
the clay.

"Lucky the bottom is soft here," said he; "I did not realize we were
so close ashore."

He drew the canoe up on the shelving beach, helped Virginia out, took
his rifle, and so stood ready to depart.

"Leave the canoe just where we got in," he advised; "it is around the
point, you see, and that may fool them a little."

"You are going," she said, dully. Then she came close to him and
looked up at him with her wonderful eyes. "Good-by."

"Good-by," said he.

Was this to be all? Had he nothing more to tell her? Was the word to
lack, the word she needed so much? She had given herself unreservedly
into this man's hands, and at parting he had no more to say to her
than "Good-by." Virginia's eyes were tearful, but she would not let
him know that. She felt that her heart would break.

"Well, good-by," he said again after a moment, which he had spent
inspecting the heavens. "Ah, you don't _know_ what it is to be free!
By to-morrow morning I shall be half-way to the Mattagami. I can
hardly wait to see it, for then I am safe! And then next day--why,
next day they won't know which of a dozen ways I've gone!" He was
full of the future, man-fashion.

He took her hands, leaned over, and lightly kissed her on the mouth.
Instantly Virginia became wildly and unreasonably angry. She could not
have told herself why, but it was the lack of the word she had wanted
so much, the pain of feeling that he could go like that, the thwarted
bitterness of a longing that had grown stronger than she had even yet
realized.

Instinctively she leaped into the canoe, sending it spinning from the
bank.

"Ah, you had no _right_ to do that!" she cried. "I gave you no
_right_!"

Then, heedless of what he was saying, she began to paddle straight
from the shore, weeping bitterly, her face upraised, her hair in her
eyes, and