d drive his canoe. From the appearance of the tracks on
the beach they already had a good start and it would take two days for
him to pack to the Ghost what meat and outfit he needed for the trip,
besides his furs. The rest he could cache.

CHAPTER XXI

THE BLIND CLUTCH OF CIRCUMSTANCE

Three days later, he had run the strong-water of the Ghost to Conjuror's
Falls, where he exchanged Beaulieu's canoe for his own, cached the
previous fall, and continued on to the Whale until the moon set, when he
camped.

Then next morning, long before the rising sun, reaching the smoking
surface in his path, rolled the river mists back to fade on the
ridges, Marcel, with Fleur in the bow, was well started on his
three-hundred-mile journey. Travel as he might, he could not hope to
overtake the canoe bearing the tale of the tragedy to Whale River; but
each day when once the news had reached the post, the story, passed
from mouth to mouth among the Crees, would gather size and distortion
with Marcel not present to refute it. There was great need for speed,
so he drove his canoe to the limit of his strength, running all rapids
which skill and daring could outwit.

Different, far, from the home-coming he had pictured through the last
weeks, would be his return to Whale River. True, there would have been
no long June days with Julie Breton, as in previous summers, no walks
up the river shore when the low sun turned the Bay to burnished copper,
and later, the twilight held deep into the night. If she were not
already married her days would be too full to spare much time to her old
friend Jean Marcel. But there would have been rest and ease, after the
months of toil and famine--long talks with Jules and Angus, with worry
behind him in the hills. Instead he was returning to his friends branded
as a criminal by the evidence of the cache on the Ghost.

At times, when the magic of the young spring, in the air, the forest,
the hills, for a space swept clean his troubled brain of dark memory, he
dreamed that the water-thrushes in the river willows called to him:
"Sweet, sweet, sweet, Julie Breton!" That yellow warblers and friendly
chickadees, from the spruces of the shore, hailed him as one of the
elect, for was he not also a lover? That the kingfishers which scurried
ahead of his boat gossiped to him of hidden nests. Deeply, as he
paddled, he inhaled the scent of the flowering forest world, the
fragrance of the northern spring, while