miles south into Lake Superior. It drains a wild and rugged country
whose forests cling to bowlder hills, whose streams issue from
deep-riven gorges, where for many years the big gray wolves had
gathered in unusual abundance. She knew by heart the winter posts,
although she had never seen them. She could imagine the isolation of
such a place, and the intense loneliness of the solitary man condemned
to live through the dark Northern winters, seeing no one but the rare
Indians who might come in to trade with him for their pelts. She could
appreciate the wild joy of a return for a brief season to the company
of fellow-men.

When her glance fell upon the last of the canoes, it rested with a
flash of surprise. The craft was still floating idly, its bow barely
caught against the bank. The crew had deserted, but amidships, among
the packages of pelts and duffel, sat a stranger. The canoe was that
of the post at Kettle Portage.

She saw the stranger to be a young man with a clean-cut face, a trim
athletic figure dressed in the complete costume of the _voyageurs_,
and thin brown and muscular hands. When the canoe touched the bank he
had taken no part in the scramble to shore, and so had sat forgotten
and unnoticed save by the girl, his figure erect with something of the
Indian's stoical indifference. Then when, for a moment, he imagined
himself free from observation, his expression abruptly changed. His
hands clenched tense between his buckskin knees, his eyes glanced here
and there restlessly, and an indefinable shadow of something which
Virginia felt herself obtuse in labelling desperation, and yet to
which she discovered it impossible to fit a name, descended on his
features, darkening them. Twice he glanced away to the south. Twice he
ran his eye over the vociferating crowd on the narrow beach.