of some happen-chance peril that
she might fancy was threatening her. It was a deeper, bigger thing than
that. And she had confessed to him--not wholly, but enough to make him
know--that this fear was of man. He felt at this thought a little
thrill of joy, of undefinable exultation. He sprang from the rock and
went down to the shore of the lake, scanning its surface with eager,
challenging eyes. In these moments he forgot that civilization was
waiting for him, that for eighteen months he had been struggling
between life and death at the naked and barbarous end of the earth. All
at once, in the space of a few minutes, his world had shrunken until it
held but two things for him--the autumn-tinted forests, and the girl.
Beyond these he thought of nothing except the minutes that were
dragging like thirty weights of lead.

As the hand of his watch marked off the twenty-fifth of the prescribed
thirty he turned his steps in the direction of the pool. He half
expected that she would be there when he came over the ridge of rock.
But she had not returned. He looked up the coulee, end then at the firm
white sand close to the water. The imprints of her feet were
there--small, narrow imprints of a heeled shoe. Unconsciously he
smiled, for no other reason than that each surprise he encountered was
a new delight to him. A forest girl as he had known them would have
worn moccasins--six hundred miles from civilization.

As he was about to leap across the narrow neck of the pool he noticed a
white object almost buried in the dry sand, and picked it up. It was a
handkerchief; and this, too, was a surprise. He had not particularly
noticed her dress, except that it was soft and clinging blue. The
handkerchief he looked at more closely. It was of fine linen with a
border of lace, and so soft that he could have hidden it in the palm of
his hand. From it rose a faint, sweet scent of the wild rock violet. He
knew that it was rock violet, because more than once he had crushed the
blossoms between his hands. He thrust the bit of fabric in the breast
of his flannel shirt, and walked swiftly up the coulee.

A hundred yards above him the stream turned abruptly, and here a strip
of forest meadow grew to the water's edge. He sprang up the low bank,
and stood face to face with the girl.

She had heard his approach, and was waiting for him, a little smile of
welcome on her lips. She had completed her toilet. She had braided her
wonderful hair, and