es up, was scrubbing the deck of the bateau when
David came over the plank.

"There are moose and caribou in there, but I fear I disturbed your
hunters," said Carrigan, grinning at the half-breed. "They are too
clumsy to hunt well, so clumsy that even the birds give them away. I am
afraid we shall go without fresh meat tomorrow!"

Concombre Bateese stared as if some one had stunned him with a blow,
and he spoke no word as David went on to the forward deck. Marie-Anne
had come out under the awning. She gave a little cry of relief and
pleasure.

"I am glad you have come back, M'sieu David!"

"So am I, madame," he replied. "I think the woods are unhealthful to
travel in!"

Out of the earth he felt that a part of the old strength had returned
to him. Alone they sat at dinner, and Marie-Anne waited on him and
called him David again--and he found it easier now to call her
Marie-Anne and look into her eyes without fear that he was betraying
himself. A part of the afternoon he spent in her company, and it was
not difficult for him to tell her something of his adventuring in the
north, and how, body and soul, the northland had claimed him, and that
he hoped to die in it when his time came. Her eyes glowed at that. She
told him of two years she had spent in Montreal and Quebec, of her
homesickness, her joy when she returned to her forests. It seemed, for
a time, that they had forgotten St. Pierre. They did not speak of him.
Twice they saw Andre, the Broken Man, but the name of Roger Audemard
was not spoken. And a little at a time she told him of the hidden
paradise of the Boulains away up in the unmapped wildernesses of the
Yellowknife beyond the Great Bear, and of the great log chateau that
was her home.

A part of the afternoon he spent on shore. He filled a moosehide bag
full of sand and suspended it from the limb of a tree, and for
three-quarters of an hour pommeled it with his fists, much to the
curiosity and amusement of St. Pierre's men, who could see nothing of
man-fighting in these antics. But the exercise assured David that he
had lost but little of his strength and that he would be in form to
meet Bateese when the time came. Toward evening Marie-Anne joined him,
and they walked for half an hour up and down the beach. It was Bateese
who got supper. And after that Carrigan sat with Marie-Anne on the
foredeck of the barge and smoked another of St. Pierre's cigars.

The camp of the rivermen was two hundred yards b