gently. "You have never yet run foul
of circumstances over which you have no more power than man has over the
run of the tides. But we'll let that pass. I'm trying to help you,
Sophie, not to discourage you. There are some situations in which, and
some natures to whom, half a loaf is worse than no bread. Do you feel,
have you ever for an hour felt that you simply couldn't face an
existence in which Tommy Ashe had no part?"

Sophie put her arm around his neck, and her fingers played a tattoo on
his shoulder.

"No," she said at last. "I can't honestly say that I've ever been
overwhelmed with a feeling like that."

"Well, there you are," Carr observed dryly. "Between the propositions I
think you've answered your own question."

The girl's breast heaved a little and her breath went out in a
fluttering sigh.

"Yes," she said gravely. "I suppose that is so."

They sat silent for an interval. Then something wet and warm dropped on
Carr's hand. He looked up quickly.

"Does it hurt?" he said softly. "I'm sorry."

"So am I," she whispered. "But chiefly, I think, I am sorry for Tommy.
_He'd_ be perfectly happy with me."

"Yes, I suppose so," Carr replied. "But you wouldn't be happy with him,
only for a brief time, Sophie. Tommy's a good boy, but it will take a
good deal of a man to fill your life. You'd outgrow Tommy. And you'd
hurt him worse in the end."

She ran her soft hand over Carr's grizzled hair with a caressing touch.
Then she got up and walked away into the house. Carr turned his gaze
again to the meadow and the green woods beyond. For ten minutes he sat,
his posture one of peculiar tensity, his eyes on the distance
unseeingly--or as if he saw something vague and far-off that troubled
him. Then he gave his shoulders a quick impatient twitch, and taking up
his book began once more to read.

CHAPTER II

THE MAN AND HIS MISSION

At almost the same hour in which Sam Carr and his daughter held that
intimate conversation on the porch of their home a twenty-foot
Peterborough freight canoe was sliding down the left-hand bank of the
Athabasca like some gray river-beast seeking the shade of the birch and
willow growth that overhung the shore. The current beneath and the
thrust of the blades sent it swiftly along the last mile of the river
and shot the gray canoe suddenly beyond the sharp nose of a jutting
point fairly into the bosom of a great, still body of water that spread
away northeastward in a widen