iced comment took the place of louder delight.

The stranger, finding himself generally observed, rose slowly to
his feet, picked his way with a certain exaggerated deliberation of
movement over the duffel lying in the bottom of the canoe, until he
reached the bow, where he paused, one foot lifted to the gunwale
just above the emblem of the painted star. Immediately a dead
silence fell. Groups shifted, drew apart, and together again, like
the slow agglomeration of sawdust on the surface of water, until at
last they formed in a semicircle of staring, whose centre was the
bow of the canoe and the stranger from Kettle Portage. The men
scowled, the women regarded him with a half-fearful curiosity.

Virginia Albret shivered in the shock of this sudden electric
polarity. The man seemed alone against a sullen, unexplained
hostility. The desperation she had thought to read but a moment
before had vanished utterly, leaving in its place a scornful
indifference and perhaps more than a trace of recklessness. He was
ripe for an outbreak. She did not in the least understand, but she
knew it from the depths of her woman's instinct, and unconsciously
her sympathies flowed out to this man, alone without a greeting
where all others came to their own.

For perhaps a full sixty seconds the newcomer stood uncertain what
he should do, or perhaps waiting for some word or act to tip the
balance of his decision. One after another those on shore felt the
insolence of his stare, and shifted uneasily. Then his deliberate
scrutiny rose to the group by the cannon. Virginia caught her
breath sharply. In spite of herself she could not turn away. The
stranger's eye crossed her own. She saw the hard look fade into
pleased surprise. Instantly his hat swept the gunwale of the
canoe. He stepped magnificently ashore. The crisis was over. Not
a word had been spoken.

Chapter Three

Galen Albret sat in his rough-hewn armchair at the head of the
table, receiving the reports of his captains. The long, narrow
room opened before him, heavy raftered, massive, white, with a
cavernous fireplace at either end. Above him frowned Sir George's
portrait, at his right hand and his left stretched the row of
home-made heavy chairs, finished smooth and dull by two centuries
of use.

His arms were laid along the arms of his seat; his shaggy head was
sunk forward until his beard swept the curve of his big chest; the
heavy tufts of hair above h