d had followed it up by act and word which
he now felt to be dishonourable. And yet, after all, would he have
recalled what had happened if he could? He asked himself that question
as he returned to help Jean. And he found no answer to it until they
were in their canoes again and headed up the lake, Josephine sitting
with her back to him, her thick silken braid falling in a sinuous and
sunlit rope of red gold over her shoulders. Then he knew that he would
not.

Jean gave little rest that day, and by noon they had covered twenty
miles of the lake-way. An hour for dinner, and they went on. At times
Josephine used her paddle, and not once during the day did she sit with
her face to Philip. Late in the afternoon they camped on a portage
fifty miles from Adare House.

There were no stars or moon in the sky this night. The wind had
changed, and came from the north. In it was the biting chill of the
Arctic, and overhead was a gray-dun mass of racing cloud. A dozen times
Jean turned his face anxiously from the fire into the north, and held
wet fingers high over his head to see if in the air was that peculiar
sting by which the forest man forecasts the approach of snow.

At last he said to Philip: "The wind will grow, M'sieur," and picked up
his axe.

Philip followed with his own, and they piled about Josephine's tent a
thick protection of spruce and cedar boughs. Then together they brought
three or four big logs to the fire. After that Philip went into their
own tent, stripped off his outer garments, and buried himself in his
sleeping bag. For a long time he lay awake and listened to the
increasing wail of the wind in the tall spruce tops. It was not new to
him. For months he had fallen asleep with the thunderous crash of ice
and the screaming fury of storm in his ears. But to-night there was
something in the sound which sunk him still deeper into the gloom which
he had found it impossible to throw off. At last he fell asleep.

When he awoke he struck a match and looked at his watch. It was four
o'clock, and he dressed and went outside. The wind had died down. Jean
was already busy over the cook-fire, and in Josephine's tent he saw the
light of a candle. She appeared a little later, wrapped close in a
thick red Hudson's Bay coat, and with a marten-skin cap on her head.
Something in her first appearance, the picturesqueness of her dress,
the jauntiness of the little cap, and the first flush of the fire in
her face filled h