nd
disfigured by some recent misadventure. Noticed, too, the really fine
features of him--the dark, deep-set eyes that seemed to smoulder in
their depths, the thin, aquiline nose, the shapely lips, the clean-cut
lines of cheek and jaw.

"You have been hurt!" she cried. "You have met with an accident!"

The man smiled, a smile in which cynicism blended with amusement.

"Hardly an accident, I think, Miss Elliston, and, in any event, of
small consequence." He shrugged a dismissal of the subject, and his
voice assumed a light gaiety of tone.

"May we not become better acquainted, we two, who meet in this far
place, where travellers are few and worth the knowing?" There was no
cynicism in his smile now, and without waiting for a reply he
continued: "My name you already know. I have only to add that I am an
adventurer in the wilds--explorer of _hinterlands_, free-trader,
freighter, sometime prospector--casual cavalier." He rose, swept the
Stetson from his head, and bowed with mock solemnity.

"And now, fair lady, may I presume to inquire your mission in this land
of magnificent wastes?" Chloe's laughter was genuine as it was
spontaneous.

Lapierre's light banter acted as a tonic to the girl's nerves, harassed
as they were by a month's travel through the fly-bitten wilderness.
More--he interested her. He was different. As different from the
half-breeds and Indian canoemen with whom she had been thrown as his
speech was from the throaty guttural by means of which they exchanged
their primitive ideas.

"Pray pause, Sir Cavalier," she smiled, falling easily into the gaiety
of the man's mood. "I have ventured into your wilderness upon a most
unpoetic mission. Merely the establishment of a school for the
education and betterment of the Indians of the North."

A moment of silence followed the girl's words--a moment in which she
was sure a hard, hostile gleam leaped into the man's eyes. A trick of
fancy doubtless, she thought, for the next instant it had vanished.
When he spoke, his air of light raillery was gone, but his lips
smiled--a smile that seemed to the girl a trifle forced.

"Ah, yes, Miss Elliston. May I ask at whose instigation this school is
to be established--and where?" He was not looking at her now, his eyes
sought the river, and his face showed only a rather finely moulded
chin, smooth-shaven--and the lips, with their smile that almost sneered.

Instantly Chloe felt that a barrier had sprung