hours I sat
staring, watching the banks go by, and wondering how long it would be
before I was missed; and then, I suppose I must have fallen asleep,
because I remember nothing more until just before I was thrown into the
water."

"It was a very fortunate thing you struck those rocks," said Stane
meditatively.

"Fortunate, Mr. Stane? Why?"

"Because in all probability I should not have seen you if you had not;
and a few miles below here, there are some bad rapids, and below them
the river makes a leap downwards of nearly a hundred feet."

"A fall?" cried the girl, her face blanching a little, as she flashed a
glance downstream. "Oh, that would have been terrible! It was fortunate
that you were here."

"Very," he agreed earnestly, "and I am beginning to think that it was
providential; though all day I have been cursing my luck that I should
have been in this neighbourhood at all. I have no business here."

"Then why----" she began, and stopped as if a little afraid that her
question was too frankly curious.

It was so that Stane understood the interrupted utterance. He laughed a
little, and then answered:

"You need not mind asking, Miss Yardely; because the truth is that my
presence in this neighbourhood is due to a mystery that is almost as
insoluble as the one that brought you drifting downstream. On the night
after you arrived at Fort Malsun, I was waiting at my tent door
for--er--a man whom I expected a visit from, when I was knocked on the
head by an Indian, and when I came to, I found I was a prisoner, under
sentence of deportation. We travelled some days, rather a roundabout
journey, as I have since guessed, and one morning I awoke to find my
captors had disappeared, leaving me with my canoe and stores and arms
absolutely untouched."

"That was a strange adventure, Mr. Stane."

"So I think," answered Stane with conviction.

"What do you think was the reason for your deportation?"

"I do not know," answered Stane thoughtfully. "My chief captor said it
was an order, but that may have been a lie; and such wildly possible
reasons that I can think of are so inherently improbable that it is
difficult to entertain any of them. And yet----"

He broke off, and an absent look came in his eyes. The girl waited,
hoping that he would continue, and whilst she did so for one moment
visioned Miskodeed in all her wild barbaric beauty and her mind,
recalling Ainley's words upon the matter of the girl's relation t