y, emanation of
sheer will, she could not say in what terms it should be described.
Whatever it was, Jack Fyfe had it. It existed, a factor to be reckoned
with when one dealt with him. For within twenty minutes she had packed a
suitcase full of clothes and was embarked in his rowboat.

He sent the lightly built craft easily through the water with regular,
effortless strokes. Stella sat in the stern, facing him. Out past the
north horn of the bay, she broke the silence that had fallen between
them.

"Why did you make a point of coming for me?" she asked bluntly.

Fyfe rested on his oars a moment, looking at her in his direct,
unembarrassed way.

"I wintered once on the Stickine," he said. "My partner pulled out
before Christmas and never came back. It was the first time I'd ever
been alone in my life. I wasn't a much older hand in the country than
you are. Four months without hearing the sound of a human voice. Stark
alone. I got so I talked to myself out loud before spring. So I
thought--well, I thought I'd come and bring you over to see Mrs. Howe."

Stella sat gazing at the slow moving panorama of the lake shore, her
chin in her hand.

"Thank you," she said at last, and very gently.

Fyfe looked at her a minute or more, a queer, half-amused expression
creeping into his eyes.

"Well," he said finally, "I might as well tell the whole truth. I've
been thinking about you quite a lot lately, Miss Stella Benton, or I
wouldn't have thought about you getting lonesome."

He smiled ever so faintly, a mere movement of the corners of his mouth,
at the pink flush which rose quickly in her cheeks, and then resumed his
steady pull at the oars.

Except for a greater number of board shacks and a larger area of stump
and top-littered waste immediately behind it, Fyfe's headquarters,
outwardly, at least, differed little from her brother's camp. Jack led
her to a long, log structure with a shingle roof, which from its more
substantial appearance she judged to be his personal domicile. A plump,
smiling woman of forty greeted her on the threshold. Once within, Stella
perceived that there was in fact considerable difference in Mr. Fyfe's
habitation. There was a great stone fireplace, before which big
easy-chairs invited restful lounging. The floor was overlaid with thick
rugs which deadened her footfalls. With no pretense of ornamental
decoration, the room held an air of homely comfort.

"Come in here and lay off your things,"