for footprints.

They were easily found. The young grass crushed at a touch, and it was
child's work to pick out the moccasin track across the meadow. When
the steps reached the beach they were harder to follow. I lost them
for a while, though there were scattered pebbles that would have led me
straight as a homing pigeon, had I been cool enough in mind to have my
eyes and wits as sharp as usual. As it was, I doubled, and squandered
time, until the sun began to loom red near the horizon. And all the
time I was saying to myself, "It is not true. It is not true."

The windings of the track puzzled me. It would go straight into the
forest for a space, then double sharply, and come back to the beach.
It came to me at last that the wish to hide pulled the steps into the
timber, and that the fear and solitude of the great woods speedily
drove them out again. Then I determined to pay no attention to these
detours, but push along the beach. And doing this, I speedily came
upon the red blanket flung down in the shelter of a rock, and its owner
resting upon it.

When I saw that all was well, I became suddenly exhausted, and went
forward slowly. I reached the red blanket, and looked down. Yes, all
was well. A hunting knife lay in an open bundle. I stooped and seized
it, and hurled it far into the water, and then I asked, rather huskily,
a question that had not been in my mind at all:--

"What is your name?"

"Mary Starling." The woman had risen, and stood with her hands pressed
tight against her throat; the look she gave me was the saddest I had
ever seen. "Monsieur, you wrong me. The knife that you threw away was
for my protection,--for my food."

I stood over her. "You swear this?" I said, breathing hard.

She held her head high. "Monsieur, I am a coward in many ways, but not
in this. Life is bitter, but I will live it as long as the Powers
please. I will take what comes. Even among the Indians I was not
tempted to--to that."

"You would have died. Starved here in the wilderness, if I had not
found you."

"Perhaps, monsieur. Yet I gave myself what chance I could. I took
some food, a fishing line, and that knife."

"Why did you leave me?"

"Monsieur!"

"I say, why did you leave me?"

"Monsieur, what else could I do? I would have discredited you. Those
were your words. 'A woman would discredit our canoes.'"

"Yet you were--you were a woman all the time."

"Not in your eyes, monsieur."