ned the flap to the holster of his
revolver, took a peep to see how long he could leave the water before
it would boil, and stepped cautiously in the direction of the sound. A
dozen paces beyond the bulwark of rocks he came upon a fairly well-worn
moose trail; surveying its direction from the top of a boulder, he made
up his mind that the bear was dining on mountain-ash berries where he
saw one of the huge crimson splashes of the fruit a hundred yards away.

He went on quietly. Under the big ash tree there was no sign of a
feast, recent or old. He proceeded, the trail turning almost at right
angles from the ash tree, as if about to bury itself in the deeper
forest. His exploratory instinct led him on for another hundred yards,
when the trail swung once more to the left. He heard the swift
trickling run of water among rocks, and again a sound. But his mind did
not associate the sound which he heard this time with the one made by
the bear. It was not the breaking of a stick or the snapping of brush.
It was more a part of the musical water-sound itself, a strange key
struck once to interrupt the monotone of a rushing stream.

Over a gray hog-back of limestone Philip climbed to look down into a
little valley of smooth-washed boulders and age-crumbled rock through
which the stream picked its way. He descended to the white margin of
sand and turned sharply to the right, where a little pool had formed at
the base of a huge rock. And there he stopped, his heart in his throat,
every fibre in his body charged with a sudden electrical thrill at what
he beheld. For a moment he was powerless to move. He stood--and stared.

At the edge of the pool twenty steps from him was kneeling a woman. Her
back was toward him, and in that moment she was as motionless as the
rock that towered over her. Along with the rippling drone of the
stream, without reason on his part--without time for thought-there
leaped through his amazed brain the words of Jasper, the factor, and he
knew that he was looking upon the miracle that makes "God's Country"--a
white woman!

The sun shone down upon her bare head. Over her slightly bent shoulders
swept a glory of unbound hair that rippled to the sand. Black tresses,
even velvety as the crow's wing, might have meant Cree or half-breed.
But this at which he stared--all that he saw of her--was the brown and
gold of the autumnal tintings that had painted pictures for him that
day.

Slowly she raised her head, as