the four quarters--spruce-shrouded islands, dark waters,
and ice-scarred rocky ridges--stretched the immaculate wilderness. No
sign of human existence broke the solitude; no sound the stillness. The
land seemed bound under the unreality of the unknown, wrapped in the
brooding mystery of great spaces.

Perhaps it was this which made Mrs. Sayther nervous; for she changed her
position constantly, now to look up the river, now down, or to scan the
gloomy shores for the half-hidden mouths of back channels. After an hour
or so the boatmen were sent ashore to pitch camp for the night, but
Pierre remained with his mistress to watch.

"Ah! him come thees tam," he whispered, after a long silence, his gaze
bent up the river to the head of the island.

A canoe, with a paddle flashing on either side, was slipping down the
current. In the stern a man's form, and in the bow a woman's, swung
rhythmically to the work. Mrs. Sayther had no eyes for the woman till
the canoe drove in closer and her bizarre beauty peremptorily demanded
notice. A close-fitting blouse of moose-skin, fantastically beaded,
outlined faithfully the well-rounded lines of her body, while a silken
kerchief, gay of color and picturesquely draped, partly covered great
masses of blue-black hair. But it was the face, cast belike in copper
bronze, which caught and held Mrs. Sayther's fleeting glance. Eyes,
piercing and black and large, with a traditionary hint of obliqueness,
looked forth from under clear-stencilled, clean-arching brows. Without
suggesting cadaverousness, though high-boned and prominent, the cheeks
fell away and met in a mouth, thin-lipped and softly strong. It was a
face which advertised the dimmest trace of ancient Mongol blood, a
reversion, after long centuries of wandering, to the parent stem. This
effect was heightened by the delicately aquiline nose with its thin
trembling nostrils, and by the general air of eagle wildness which seemed
to characterize not only the face but the creature herself. She was, in
fact, the Tartar type modified to idealization, and the tribe of Red
Indian is lucky that breeds such a unique body once in a score of
generations.

Dipping long strokes and strong, the girl, in concert with the man,
suddenly whirled the tiny craft about against the current and brought it
gently to the shore. Another instant and she stood at the top of the
bank, heaving up by rope, hand under hand, a quarter of fresh-killed
moose