ork cut
out warding off from drifting ice cakes and the thrashing branches of
uprooted trees.

Time and again they came within a hair's-breadth of destruction. The
eddying, seething surface of the swift rushing river seemed to hurl its
debris toward their little craft in fiendish malevolence. Ice cakes
crashed together on every hand, water-logged tree-butts snagged them
bow and stern, and the low-hanging limbs of "sweepers" clawed and tore
at them like the teeth of a giant rake as they swept beneath, lying
flat upon the bottom of the boat.

Bill grinned at the thought of a canoe. In the suck and swirl of the
current the odds were heavily against even the stout flat boat's
winning through.

He estimated their speed to be about eight miles an hour and devoted
his whole attention to preventing the boat from fouling the drift. They
were riding the "run out," and he knew that Moncrossen would wait for
the river to become comparatively free of drift before breaking out his
rollways.

The rain ceased, but the sky remained heavily overcast and darkness
overtook them while yet some distance above the log camp and skirting
the opposite shore.

Eager as he was to meet Moncrossen, Bill decided not to risk crossing
the river in the fast gathering darkness. Gradually the boat was worked
toward shore and poled into the backwater of submerged beaver meadow.

Landing upon a slope a couple of hundred yards back from the river,
they tilted the boat on edge, and, inclining it forward, rested it upon
the tops of stakes thrust into the ground. The blanket was spread, and
with the roaring fire directly in front the uptilted boat made an
excellent shelter.

An awkward constraint, broken only by necessary monosyllables, had
settled upon the two. On the river each had been too busy with the
workin hand to give the other more than a passing thought, but now, in
the intimacy of the campfire, each felt uneasily self-conscious.

Supper over, Bill lighted his pipe and stared moodily into the flames
with set face and brooding eye. From her position at his side Jeanne
covertly watched the silent man.

Of what was he thinking? Surely not of the girl--his wife! She winced
at the word--but the tense, almost fierce expression of his face, the
occasional spasmodic clenching of the great fists, could scarcely
accompany a man's thoughts of his wife of an hour.

Of Moncrossen? she wondered. Of the shooting of Jacques? Of the attack
upon her? Of W