ous beauty of her, he asked himself if it could be
anything but a dream. And more than once he laughed joyously, and
paused in his swinging of the sweep, and proved that it was real and
true. And Kent thanked God, and worked harder.

Once, a long time ago, Marette told him, she had been through the
Chute. It had horrified her then. She remembered it as a sort of death
monster, roaring for its victims. As they drew nearer to it, Kent told
her more about it. Only now and then was a life lost there now, he
said. At the mouth of the Chute there was a great, knife-like rock,
like a dragon's tooth, that cut the Chute into two roaring channels. If
a scow kept to the left-hand channel it was safe. There would be a
mighty roaring and thundering as it swept on its passage, but that
roaring of the Chute, he told her, was like the barking of a harmless
dog.

Only when a scow became unmanageable, or hit the Dragon's Tooth, or
made the right-hand channel instead of the left, was there tragedy.
There was that delightful little note of laughter in Marette's throat
when Kent told her that.

"You mean, Jeems, that if one of three possible things doesn't happen,
we'll get through safely?"

"None of them is possible--with us," he corrected himself quickly.
"We've a tight little scow, we're not going to hit the rock, and we'll
make the left-hand channel so smoothly you won't know when it happens."
He smiled at her with splendid confidence. "I've been through it a
hundred times," he said.

He listened. Then, suddenly, he drew out his watch. It was a quarter of
four. Marette's ears caught what he heard. In the air was a low,
trembling murmur. It was growing slowly but steadily. He nodded when
she looked at him, the question in her eyes.

"The rapids at the head of the Chute!" he cried, his voice vibrant with
joy. "We've beat them out. _We're safe_!"

They swung around a bend, and the white spume of the rapids lay half a
mile ahead of them. The current began to race with them now. Kent put
his whole weight on the sweep to keep the scow in mid-channel.

"We're safe," he repeated. "Do you understand, Marette? _We're safe_!"

He was speaking the words for which she had waited, was telling her
that at last the hour had come when she could keep her promise to him.
The words, as he gave them voice, thrilled him. He felt like shouting
them. And then all at once he saw the change that had come into her
face. Her wide, startled eyes were not