time."

"You say that only to encourage me I fear."

"I certainly don't say it to discourage you," she confessed. "Going
around like a faded lily isn't going to help you a mite--and so I have
already told you."

"Huh! How's a fellow going to register joy when he feels anything but?"

"You'd make a poor screen actor," she told him. "See Mr. Grand to-day. He
has an ulcerated tooth and is going to the Bay to-night to have it
treated. Yet, as the French voyageur, he had to make love to Wonota and
Miss Keith, both. Some job!"

"That fellow makes love as easy as falling off a log," grumbled Chess. "I
never saw such a fellow."

"But the girls flock to see him in any picture. If he were my brother--or
husband--I would never know when he was really making love or just
registering love. Still actors live in a world of their own. They are not
like other people--if they are really good actors."

Copley's _Lauriette_ shot them half way across the broad St. Lawrence
before sunset, and from that point they watched the sun sink in the west
and the twilight gather along the Canadian shore and among the islands on
the American side.

When Chessleigh was about to start the engine again and head for the
camp--and dinner--they suddenly spied a powerful speed boat coming out
from the Canadian side. It cleaved the water like the blade of a knife,
throwing up a silver wave on either side. And as it passed the
_Lauriette_ Ruth and her companion could see several men in her cockpit.

"There are those fellows again," Chess remarked. "Wonder what they are up
to? That boat passed our island yesterday evening and the crowd in her
then acted to me as though they were drunk."

"I should think----Why!" exclaimed Ruth suddenly breaking off in what she
was first going to say, "one of those men is a Chinaman."

"So he is," agreed Chessleigh Copley.

"And that little fat man--see him? Why, Chess! it looks like----"

"Who is it?" asked the young fellow, in surprise at Ruth's excitement.

"It's Bilby!" gasped Ruth. "That horrid man! I I hoped we had seen the
last of him. And now he's right here where we are working with Wonota."

She had said so much that she had to explain fully about Bilby, while
they sat and watched the speed boat disappear up the river. Ruth was sure
she had made no mistake in her identification of the rival picture
producer who had made her so much trouble back at the Red Mill.

"I must tell Mr. Hammond at once," she c