the paddle, and Carroll shook his head whimsically as he watched him.

"Anybody except myself would conclude that he's waking up at last," he
commented.

A minute or two later Vane swung himself up onto the wharf and strode
into the wooden settlement. There were one or two hydraulic mines and a
pulp mill in the vicinity, and, though the place was by no means
populous, a company of third-rate entertainers had arrived there a few
days earlier. On reaching the rude wooden building in which they had
given their performance and finding it closed, he accosted a lounger.

"What's become of the show?" he asked.

"Busted. Didn't take the boys' fancy. The crowd went out with the stage
this afternoon; though I heard that two of the women stayed behind.
Somebody said the hotel-keeper had trouble about his bill."

Vane turned away with a slight sense of compassion. More than once during
his first year or two in Canada he had limped footsore and weary into a
wooden town where nobody seemed willing to employ him. An experience of
the kind was unpleasant to a vigorous man, but he reflected that it must
be much more so in the case of a woman, who probably had nothing to fall
back upon. However, he dismissed the matter from his mind. Having been
kneeling in a cramped position in the canoe most of the day, he decided
to stroll along the waterside before going back to the sloop.

Great firs stretched out their somber branches over the smooth shingle,
and now that the sun had gone their clean resinous smell was heavy in the
dew-cooled air. Here and there brushwood grew among outcropping rock and