e less dizzy.

"Listen to me," said Marianson. "If I give you my boat, you must do
exactly as I bid you."

"I promise."

"You must stay here until I bring it to you. I am going at once."

"But you cannot go alone in the dark. You are a woman--you will be
afraid."

"Never in my life have I been afraid."

"But there are Indians on the war-path now."

"They will be in camp or drunk at the post. Your Sioux has left this
part of the island. He may come back by morning, but he would not camp
away from so much plunder. Sioux cannot be unlike our Chippewas. Do you
think," demanded Marianson, "that you will be quite, quite safe in the
cave?"

Her companion laughed.

"If I find the cave unsafe I can leave it; but you in the dark
alone--you must let me go with you."

"No; the risk is too great. It is better for me to go alone. I know
every rock, every bend of the shore. The pull back around the island
will be hardest, if there is not enough wind."

"I go with you," decided the boy.

"But you gave me your promise to do exactly as I bade you. I am older
than you," said Marianson.

"I know what is best, and that is that you remain here until I come.
Swear to me that you will."

He was silent, beseeching her with his eyes to relent. Then, owning her
right to dominate, he pledged her by the name of his saint to do as she
required.

Their forced companionship, begun at daylight, was ending as darkness
crept through the cavern's mouth. They waited, and those last moments of
silence, while they leaned to look closely at each other with the night
growing between them, were a benediction on the day.

Marianson stooped to creep through the cavern's mouth, but once more she
turned and looked at him, and it was she herself who stretched appealing
arms. The boy's shyness and the woman's aversion to men vanished as in
fire. They stood together in the hollow of the cave in one long embrace.
He sought her mouth and kissed her, and, suffocating with joy, she
escaped through the low door.

Indifferent to the Indian who might be dogging her, she drew her strip
of home-spun around her face and ran, moccasined and deft-footed, over
the stones, warm, palpitating, and laughing, full of physical hardihood.
In the woods, on her left, she knew there were rocks splashed with stain
black as ink and crusted with old lichens. On her right white-caps were
running before the west wind and diving like ducks on the strait. She
crossed the th