tell my wife you may
be in later; and look here, could you spare Phil to go to Ochre
Lake swan-shooting this evening? My two lads and I are going, and
it is always fun for a boy. I've got an old duck rifle he can use,
and we'll send him down river in time to make himself useful
to-morrow morning."

One glance at Phil's face was sufficient to make Katherine decide
she could do quite well without him when she got back over the
second portage, and so it was arranged.

The journey that day was got through sooner than usual, owing
chiefly to Phil's tendency to "hustle" in order to be back in good
time for the swan-shooting. He helped Katherine over the second
portage, and tumbled bundles of pelts and packages of dried fish
into the boat. Then, uttering a wild whoop of delight, he turned
head over heels in the dried grass on the bank, and started back
along the portage path to the boatbuilder's house at a run.

Being in good time, Katherine did not trouble to row herself down
river, but, pushing the boat out in midstream, let it drift on the
current. It was a great luxury to be alone--to let her face take
on the saddest expression it could assume, to let her hands drop
idly on her lap, while for a brief space she let her grief have
sway. She was thinking of the day when Jervis had come over the
portage to meet her, and she had been so late that he was obliged
to go back before she came. What had he come to say to her that
day?

This was the question which had ceaselessly tortured Katherine
through the days and nights since Oily Dave had brought the bad
news about the _Mary_. Her heart whispered that he might have come
that day to ask her to marry him, but she was not sure. If she
could have been certain of this, then it seemed to her the worst of
her suffering would have been removed, because then she would have
had some shadow of a right to mourn for him.

But there was the portage looming in sight, and she could hear the
water rushing round the bend in the river and over the falls. Then
she turned round in the boat, and, taking up the oars, prepared to
row in to the boathouse.

A figure, partly hidden by the cottonwood and the alders, stepped
forward at this moment and prepared to moor the boat for her.

Was it instinct that made her turn her head then, or was she merely
looking to see how much farther she had to row in? A frightened
cry escaped her at what she saw, and the colour ebbed from her
face,