ng it; the suspicion that Ainley was the man who had
issued the order for his forcible deportation grew until it became
almost a conviction.

"I will find out about this--and the other thing," he said aloud. "I
can't go back now, but sooner or later my chance will come. The cur!"

That evening he camped at the foot of a fall, which he had heard of,
but never before seen, and spent the whole of the next day in portaging
his belongings to navigable water, and on the following evening well
beyond the rocky ramparts, where the river ran so swiftly, made his
camp, happily conscious that now the river presented no barrier for two
hundred miles.

As he sat smoking outside his little tent, an absent, thoughtful look
upon his face, his eyes fixed dreamily on the river, his mind reverted
once more to the problem of recent happenings, and as he considered it,
there came to him the picture of Miskodeed as he had seen her running
towards him between the willows just before the blow which had knocked
him unconscious. She had cried to him to put him on his guard, and the
apprehension in her face as he remembered it told him that she knew of
the ill that was to befall him. His mind dwelt on her for a moment as
he visioned her face with its bronze beauty, her dark, wild eyes
flashing with apprehension for him, and as he did so his own eyes
softened a little. He recalled the directness of her speech in their
first conversation and smiled at the naivete of her estimate of
himself. Then the smile died, leaving the absent, thoughtful look more
pronounced, and in the same moment the vision of Miskodeed was
obliterated by the vision of Helen Yardely--the woman of his own race,
fair and softly-strong, and as different as well as could be from the
daughter of the wilds.

Again, as he recalled the steady scrutinizing glance of her grey eyes,
he felt the blood rioting in his heart, and for a moment his eyes were
alight with dreams. Then he laughed in sudden bitterness.

"What a confounded fool I am!" he said. "A discharged convict----"

The utterance was suddenly checked; and an interested look came on his
face. There was something coming down the river. He rose quickly to his
feet in order to get a better view of the object which had suddenly
floated into his line of vision. It was a canoe. It appeared to be
empty, and thinking it was a derelict drifting from some camp up river,
he threw himself down again, for even if he salved it, it cou