sence outside.

He heard no further sound from her tent.

After a while, because it was impossible for him not to say it, he
softly asked: "Are you asleep?"

There was no answer.

He sat down by the fire listening and brooding--humming a little tune
meanwhile to assure her of the blitheness of his spirits.

By and by a small voice issued from under her tent: "Please go back to
bed,"--and he knew at once that she saw through his poor shift to
deceive her.

"Honest, I don't feel like sleeping," he said cheerfully.

"Did I wake you?"

"No," he lied. "Were you up?"

"You were worrying about me," she said.

"Nothing to speak of. I thought perhaps the silence and the solitude had
got on your nerves a little. It's that kind of a night."

"I don't mind it," she said; "with you near--and Mary," she quickly
added. "Please go back to bed."

He crept to her tent. It was purely an involuntary act. He was on his
knees, but he did not think of that. "Ah, Clare, if I could only take
your trouble from you!" he murmured.

"Hush!" she whispered. "Put me and my troubles out of your head. It is
nothing. It is like the rapids; one loses one's nerve when they loom up
ahead. I shall be all right when I am in them."

"Clare, let me sit here on the ground beside you--not touching you."

"No--please! Go back to your tent. It will be easier for me."

* * * * *

In the morning they arose heavily, and set about the business of
breakfasting and breaking camp with little speech. Indeed, there was
nothing to say. Neither Stonor nor Clare could make believe now to be
otherwise than full of dread of what the day had in store. Embarking,
Clare took a paddle too, and all three laboured doggedly, careless alike
of rough water and smooth.

In the middle of the day they heard, for some minutes before the place
itself hove in view, the roar of a rapid greater than any they had
passed.

"This will be something!" said Stonor.

But as they swept around the bend above they never saw the rapid, for
among the trees on the bank at the beginning of the swift water there
stood a little new log shack. That sight struck them like a blow. There
was no one visible outside the shack, but the door stood open.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LOG SHACK

It struck them as odd that no one appeared out of the shack. For a man
living beside a river generally has his eye unconsciously on the stream,
just as a man who dwells b