The first burst of greeting was over. Here and there one or
another of the _brigade_ members jerked their heads in the
stranger's direction, explaining low-voiced to their companions.
Soon all eyes turned curiously toward the canoe. A hum of
low-voiced comment took the place of louder delight.

The stranger, finding himself generally observed, rose slowly to
his feet, picked his way with a certain exaggerated deliberation of
movement over the duffel lying in the bottom of the canoe, until he
reached the bow, where he paused, one foot lifted to the gunwale
just above the emblem of the painted star. Immediately a dead
silence fell. Groups shifted, drew apart, and together again, like
the slow agglomeration of sawdust on the surface of water, until at
last they formed in a semicircle of staring, whose centre was the
bow of the canoe and the stranger from Kettle Portage. The men
scowled, the women regarded him with a half-fearful curiosity.

Virginia Albret shivered in the shock of this sudden electric
polarity. The man seemed alone against a sullen, unexplained
hostility. The desperation she had thought to read but a moment
before had vanished utterly, leaving in its place a scornful
indifference and perhaps more than a trace of recklessness. He was
ripe for an outbreak. She did not in the least understand, but she
knew it from the depths of her woman's instinct, and unconsciously
her sympathies flowed out to this man, alone without a greeting
where all others came to their own.

For perhaps a full sixty seconds the newcomer stood uncertain what
he should do, or perhaps waiting for some word or act to tip the