fecting not to notice the trader's annoyance.

Gaviller had put a big boat's whistle on his darling _Spirit River_, and
the mellow boom of it brought them on a run out of the store before she
hove in sight around the islands in front of Grampierre's. Gaviller had
his binoculars. He could no longer keep up his pretence of calmness.

"Three twenty-eight!" he cried, excitedly. "Didn't I tell you! Who says
we can't keep time up here! She'll run her plank ashore at three
forty-five to the dot!"

"There she is!" they cried, as she poked her nose around the islands.

"Good old tub!"

"By God! she's a pretty sight--white as a swan!"

"And floats like one!"

"Some class to that craft, sir!"

Meanwhile Gaviller was nervously focussing his binoculars. "By Golly!
there's a big crowd on deck!" he cried. "Must be ten or twelve beside
the crew!"

"Can you see the petticoat?" asked Doc Giddings. "Gee! I hope she can
cook!"

"Wait a minute! Yes--there she is!--Hello! By God, boys, there's two of
them!"

"Two!"

"Go on, you're stringing us!"

"The other must be a breed."

"No, sir, she's got a white woman's hat on, a stylish hat. And now I can
see her white face!"

"John, for the lova Mike let me look!"

But the trader held him off obdurately. "I believe she's young. She's a
little woman beside the other. I believe she's good-looking! All the men
are crowding around her."

Stonor's heart set up an unaccountable beating. "Ah, it'll be the wife
of one of the surveyors," he said, with the instinct of guarding against
a disappointment.

"No, sir! If her husband was aboard the other men wouldn't be crowding
around like that."

"No single woman under forty would dare venture up here. She'd be
mobbed."

"Might be a pleasant sort of experience for her."

Doc Giddings had at last secured possession of the glasses. "She _is_
good-looking!" he cried. "Glory be, she's a peach! I can see her smile!"

The boat was soon close enough for the binoculars to be dispensed with.
To Stonor the whole picture was blurred, save for the one slender,
fragile figure clad in the well-considered dress of a lady, perfect in
detail. Of her features he was aware at first only of a beaming, wistful
smile that plucked at his heartstrings with a strange sharpness. Even at
that distance she gave out something that changed him for ever, and he
knew it. He gazed, entirely self-forgetful, with rapt eyes and parted
lips that would have caused the