ously he reached out his arms, and
a strange happiness entered Into him to battle with grief and
loneliness. His eyes shone with a new glow as they looked at her little
belongings on the sunlit rock. It was as if they were flesh and blood
of her, a part of her heart and soul. They were the voice of her faith
in him, her promise that she would be with him always. For the first
time in many days Kent felt a new force within him, and he knew that
she was not quite gone, that he had something of her left to fight for.

That night he made his bed for a last time in the crevice between the
rocks, and his treasure was gathered within the protecting circle of
his arms as he slept.

The next day he struck out north and east. On the fifth day after he
left the country of Andre Boileau he traded his watch to a half-breed
for a cheap gun, ammunition, a blanket, flour, and a cooking outfit.
After that he had no hesitation in burying himself still deeper into
the forests.

A month later no one would have recognized Kent as the one-time crack
man of N Division. Bearded, ragged, long-haired, he wandered with no
other purpose than to be alone and to get still farther away from the
river. Occasionally he talked with an Indian or a half-breed. Each
night, though the weather was very warm, he made himself a small
camp-fire, for it was always in these hours, with the fire-light about
him, that he felt Marette was very near. It was then that he took out
one by one the precious things that were in Marette's little pack. He
worshipped these things. The dress and each of the little shoes he had
wrapped in the velvety inner bark of the birch tree. He protected them
from wet and storm. Had emergency called for it, he would have fought
for them. They became, after a time, more precious than his own life,
and in a vague sort of way at first he began to thank God that the
river had not robbed him of everything.

Kent's inclination was not to fight himself into forgetfulness. He
wanted to remember every act, every word, every treasured caress that
chained him for all time to the love he had lost. Marette became more a
part of him every day. Dead in the flesh, she was always at his side,
nestling close in the shelter of his arms at night, walking with her
hand in his during the day. And in this belief his grief was softened
by the sweet and merciful comfort of a possession of which neither man
nor fate could rob him--a beloved Presence always with