He fell again and again as he tried to make headway in the marsh.  But always he forced himself up and on.  Only too plain he saw that the time was even now upon him when he could no longer keep his feet at all.  But still he plunged on, and with tragically slow encroachments the shore line drew up to him.

But he could not go on.  The fire itself was hardly a quarter of a mile distant, directly across the lake, but to follow the long shore was an insuperable mile.  Already his leg muscles were failing him, refusing to the respond to the impulse of his nerves.  Yet it might be that if he could make himself heard his enemies would leave the girl for a moment, at least—­give her an instant’s respite—­while they came and dispatched his own life.  Whatever they were doing to her, there in that ring of firelight, might be stayed for a moment, at least.

But at that instant he remembered the canoe.  He had always kept it hidden in a little thicket of tall reeds,—­if only the girl had not removed it from its place in his weeks of sickness!  He plunged down into the tall tules.  Yes, the boat was still in place.

It took all the strength of his weakened body to push it out from the reeds into the water.  Then he seized the long pole they had sometimes used to propel themselves over the lake.  Except for his injured arm, the paddle would have been better—­he could have made better time and escaped the danger of being stranded in deep water—­but he doubted that he could handle it with his faltering arm.  He pushed off, putting most of the strain on his uninjured right arm.

The canoe was strongly but lightly made, so that it could be portaged with greatest possible ease; and his strokes, though feeble, propelled it slowly through the water.  The great, white full moon, beloved of long ago, looked down from above the tall, dark heads of the spruce and changed the little water-body into a miracle of burnished silver.  In its light Ben’s face showed pale, but with a curious, calm strength.

The lake seemed untouched by the faint breath of wind that blew from the distant shore.  The waters lay quiet, and the trout beneath saw the black shadow of the canoe as it passed.  A cow moose and her calf sprang up the bank with a splash, frightened by the poling figure in the stern.  And on the far shore, clear where the lake had its outlet in a small river, even more keen wilderness eyes might have beheld the black, moving dot that was the craft.  But the distance was too far and the wind was wrong for the keen mind behind the eyes to make any sort of an interpretation.

It might have been that Fenris the wolf, running with a female and two younger males that he had mastered that long-ago night on the ridge, paused in his hunting to watch and wonder.  But his wild brute thoughts were not under the bondage of memory to-night; his savage heart was thrilled and full; and more than likely he did not even turn his head.