made him, at first, register
her as a woman. Yet as he looked at the slim girlishness of her figure
in the bow of the canoe, accentuated by the soft sheen of her partly
unbraided hair, he wondered if she were eighteen or thirty. It would
take the clear light of day to tell him. But whether a girl or a woman,
she had handled him so cleverly that the unpleasantness of his earlier
experience began to give way slowly to an admiration for her capability.

He wondered what the superintendent of "N" Division would say if he
could see Black Roger Audemard's latest trailer propped up here in the
center of the canoe, the prisoner of a velvety-haired but dangerously
efficient bit of feminine loveliness--and a bull-necked,
chimpanzee-armed half-breed!

Bateese had confirmed the suspicion that he was a prisoner, even though
this mysterious pair were bent on saving his life. Why it was their
desire to keep life in him when only a few hours ago one of them had
tried to kill him was a. question which only the future could answer.
He did not bother himself with that problem now. The present was
altogether too interesting, and there was but little doubt that other
developments equally important were close at hand. The attitude of both
Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain and her piratical-looking henchman was
sufficient evidence of that. Bateese had threatened to knock his head
off, and he could have sworn that the girl--or woman--had smiled her
approbation of the threat. Yet he held no grudge against Bateese. An
odd sort of liking for the man began to possess him, just as he found
himself powerless to resist an ingrowing admiration for Marie-Anne. The
existence of Black Roger Audemard became with him a sort of indefinite
reality. Black Roger was a long way off. Marie-Anne and Bateese were
very near. He began thinking of her as Marie-Anne. He liked the name.
It was the Boulain part of it that worked in him with an irritating
insistence.

For the first time since the canoe journey had begun, he looked beyond
the darkly glowing head and the slender figure in the bow. It was a
splendid night. Ahead of him the river was like a rippling sheet of
molten silver. On both sides, a quarter of a mile apart, rose the walls
of the forest, like low-hung, oriental tapestries. The sky seemed near,
loaded with stars, and the moon, rising with almost perceptible
movement toward the zenith, had changed from red to a mellow gold.
Carrigan's soul always rose to thi