likely to do so till the end, though he was a young man yet. He had many
professions, or rather many gifts, which he practised as it pleased him.
He was river-driver, woodsman, hunter, carpenter, guide, as whim or
opportunity came to him. On the evening when Charley Steele met with his
mishap he was a river-driver--or so it seemed. He had been up nor'west a
hundred and fifty miles, and he had come down-stream alone with his raft-
which in the usual course should take two men to guide it--through
slides, over rapids, and in strong currents. Defying the code of the
river, with only one small light at the rear of his raft, he voyaged the
swift current towards his home, which, when he arrived opposite the Cote
Dorion, was still a hundred miles below. He had watched the lights in
the river-drivers' camps, had seen the men beside the fires, and had
drifted on, with no temptation to join in the songs floating out over the
dark water, to share the contents of the jugs raised to boisterous lips,
or to thrust his hand into the greasy cooking-pot for a succulent bone.

He drifted on until he came opposite Charlemagne's tavern. Here the
current carried him inshore. He saw the dim light, he saw dark figures
in the bar-room, he even got a glimpse of Suzon Charlemagne. He dropped
the house behind quickly, but looked back, leaning on the oar and
thinking how swift was the rush of the current past the tavern. His eyes
were on the tavern door and the light shining through it. Suddenly the
light disappeared, and the door vanished into darkness. He heard a
scuffle, and then a heavy splash.

"There's trouble there," said Jo Portugais, straining his eyes through
the night, for a kind of low roar, dwindling to a loud whispering, and
then a noise of hurrying feet, came down the stream, and he could dimly
see dark figures running away into the night by different paths.