"Hey! You! Le Goire! You mak'm soft more better," Pierre commanded.
"Plenty bearskin; plenty blanket. Dam!"

But the nest was soon after disrupted, and the major portion tossed up to
the crest of the shore, where Mrs. Sayther lay down to wait in comfort.

Reclining on her side, she looked out and over the wide-stretching Yukon.
Above the mountains which lay beyond the further shore, the sky was murky
with the smoke of unseen forest fires, and through this the afternoon sun
broke feebly, throwing a vague radiance to earth, and unreal shadows. To
the sky-line of the four quarters--spruce-shrouded islands, dark waters,
and ice-scarred rocky ridges--stretched the immaculate wilderness. No
sign of human existence broke the solitude; no sound the stillness. The
land seemed bound under the unreality of the unknown, wrapped in the
brooding mystery of great spaces.

Perhaps it was this which made Mrs. Sayther nervous; for she changed her
position constantly, now to look up the river, now down, or to scan the
gloomy shores for the half-hidden mouths of back channels. After an hour
or so the boatmen were sent ashore to pitch camp for the night, but
Pierre remained with his mistress to watch.

"Ah! him come thees tam," he whispered, after a long silence, his gaze
bent up the river to the head of the island.

A canoe, with a paddle flashing on either side, was slipping down the
current. In the stern a man's form, and in the bow a woman's, swung
rhythmically to the work. Mrs. Sayther had no eyes for the woman till
the canoe drove in closer and her bizarre beauty peremptorily demanded
notice. A close-fitting blouse of moose-skin, fantastically beaded,