t Jake,
coolly said:

"I beg your pardon--but have I ever--been introduced to you?"

What unbelievable indifference to danger, what disdain to friendliness,
made Charley act as he did is a matter for speculation. It was throwing
away his one chance; it was foppery on the scaffold--an incorrigible
affectation or a relentless purpose.

Jake Hough strode forward into the crowd, rage in his eye. "Go to the
devil, then, and take care of yourself!" he said roughly.

"Please," said Charley.

They were the last words he uttered that night, for suddenly the other
lantern went out, there was a rush and a struggle, a muffled groan,
a shrill woman's voice, a scramble and hurrying feet, a noise of a
something splashing heavily in the water outside. When the lights were
up again the room was empty, save for Theophile Charlemagne, Jake Hough,
and Suzon, who lay in a faint on the floor with a nasty bruise on her
forehead.

A score of river-drivers were scattering into the country-side, and
somewhere in the black river, alive or dead, was Charley Steele.

CHAPTER IX. OLD DEBTS FOR NEW

Jo Portugtais was breaking the law of the river--he was running a
little raft down the stream at night, instead of tying up at sundown and
camping on the shore, or sitting snugly over cooking-pot by the little
wooden caboose on his raft. But defiance of custom and tradition was a
habit with Jo Portugais. He had lived in his own way many a year, and he
was likely to do so till the end, though he was a young man yet. He had
many professions, or rather many gifts, which he practised as it pleased
him. He was river-driver, woodsman, hunter, carpenter, guide, as whim or
opportunity came to him. On the evening when Charley Steele met with his
mishap he was a river-driver--or so it seemed. He had been up nor'west
a hundred and fifty miles, and he had come down-stream alone with his
raft-which in the usual course should take two men to guide it--through
slides, over rapids, and in strong currents. Defying the code of the
river, with only one small light at the rear of his raft, he voyaged the
swift current towards his home, which, when he arrived opposite the Cote
Dorion, was still a hundred miles below. He had watched the lights in
the river-drivers' camps, had seen the men beside the fires, and had
drifted on, with no temptation to join in the songs floating out over
the dark water, to share the contents of the jugs raised to boisterous
lips, or