t her.

"It's you!" murmured Miss Mackall. "I had lost myself!"

Sam endeavoured to sidle around the gate. She laid a restraining hand
upon it.

"Wait a minute," she said. "I want to speak to you. Oh, it's nothing
at all, but I was sorry I had no chance the other day. It seemed to me
as I looked at you standing there alone, that you needed a friend!"

"A friend!"--the word released a spring in Sam's overwrought breast.
For the first time he looked full at her with warm eyes. God knew he
needed a friend if ever a young man did.

Miss Mackall, observing the effect of her word, repeated it. "Such a
humiliating position for a manly man to be placed in!" she went on.

Sam's heart expanded with gratitude. "That was kind of you," he
murmured.

It did not occur to him that her position against the gatepost was
carefully studied; that the smile was cloying, and that behind the
inviting friendliness of her eyes lay the anxiety of a woman growing
old. It was enough that she offered him kindness. Both the gift and
the giver seemed beautiful.

"There is a bond between us!" she went on, half coquettish, half
serious. "I felt it from the first moment I saw you. Arriving together
as we did, in a strange and savage country. Ugh!"--a delicate shudder
here. "You and I are not like these people. We must be friends!"

A humiliated and sore-hearted youth will swallow more than this. Sam
lingered by the gate. At the same time, somewhere within, was a dim
consciousness that it was not very nutritious food.

But it went to the right spot. It renewed his faith in himself a
little. It gave him courage to face the night that he knew awaited him
in the dormitory.

* * * * *

Events still followed fast at the settlement. Next morning a native
came in to Stiffy and Mahooley's with the information that two York
boats were coming up the lake in company. One was enough to make a
gala day. Later came word that they had landed at Grier's Point. This
was two miles east.

Owing to low water in the lake, laden boats could not come closer in.
The first was the police boat, with supplies for the post and for the
Indian agent. The second carried the Government surveyors, six strong,
and forty hundredweight of implements and grub.

Presently the surveyors themselves arrived at the store, making a
larger party of white men than had ever before gathered on Caribou
Lake. The natives were in force also. Seeming to spr