the night before I was awake
and heard, and yet again the night before."

And thereat, out of her great happiness and out of the fear that it might
be taken from her, she launched into an original and glowing address upon
the status and rights of woman--the first new-woman lecture delivered
north of Fifty-three.

But it fell on unheeding ears. Snettishane was still in the dark ages.
As she paused for breath, he said threateningly, "To-night I shall call
again like the raven."

At this moment the Factor entered the room and again helped Snettishane
on his way to the heavenly antipodes.

That night the raven croaked more persistently than ever. Lit-lit, who
was a light sleeper, heard and smiled. John Fox tossed restlessly. Then
he awoke and tossed about with greater restlessness. He grumbled and
snorted, swore under his breath and over his breath, and finally flung
out of bed. He groped his way to the great living-room, and from the
rack took down a loaded shot-gun--loaded with bird-shot, left therein by
the careless McTavish.

The Factor crept carefully out of the Fort and down to the river. The
croaking had ceased, but he stretched out in the long grass and waited.
The air seemed a chilly balm, and the earth, after the heat of the day,
now and again breathed soothingly against him. The Factor, gathered into
the rhythm of it all, dozed off, with his head upon his arm, and slept.

Fifty yards away, head resting on knees, and with his back to John Fox,
Snettishane likewise slept, gently conquered by the quietude of the
night. An hour slipped by and then he awoke, and, without lifting his
head, set the night vibrating with the hoarse gutturals of the raven
call.

The Factor roused, not with the abrupt start of civilized man, but with
the swift and comprehensive glide from sleep to waking of the savage. In
the night-light he made out a dark object in the midst of the grass and
brought his gun to bear upon it. A second croak began to rise, and he
pulled the trigger. The crickets ceased from their sing-song chant, the
wildfowl from their squabbling, and the raven croak broke midmost and
died away in gasping silence.

John Fox ran to the spot and reached for the thing he had killed, but his
fingers closed on a coarse mop of hair and he turned Snettishane's face
upward to the starlight. He knew how a shotgun scattered at fifty yards,
and he knew that he had peppered Snettishane across the shoulders and in