"The papers were full of it at the time. Prevanche--"

"Prevanche!" Fairfax sat up, suddenly alert. "He was lost in the Smoke
Mountains."

"Yes, but he pulled through and came out."

Fairfax settled back again and resumed his smoke-spirals. "I am glad
to hear it," he remarked reflectively. "Prevanche was a bully fellow
if he _did_ have ideas about head-straps, the beggar. And he pulled
through? Well, I'm glad."

Five years ... the phrase drifted recurrently through Van Brunt's
thought, and somehow the face of Emily Southwaithe seemed to rise up
and take form before him. Five years ... A wedge of wild-fowl honked
low overhead and at sight of the encampment veered swiftly to the
north into the smouldering sun. Van Brunt could not follow them. He
pulled out his watch. It was an hour past midnight. The northward
clouds flushed bloodily, and rays of sombre-red shot southward, firing
the gloomy woods with a lurid radiance. The air was in breathless
calm, not a needle quivered, and the least sounds of the camp were
distinct and clear as trumpet calls. The Crees and _voyageurs_ felt
the spirit of it and mumbled in dreamy undertones, and the cook
unconsciously subdued the clatter of pot and pan. Somewhere a child
was crying, and from the depths of the forest, like a silver
thread, rose a woman's voice in mournful chant:

"O-o-o-o-o-o-a-haa-ha-a-ha-aa-a-a, O-o-o-o-o-o-a-ha-a-ha-a."