Ben gazed at her with a curious mingling of emotions.  It had not been part of his plan to bring sorrow to this girl.  After all, she was not in the least responsible for her father’s crimes.  He had sworn to have no regrets, no matter what innocent flesh was despoiled in order that he might strike the guilty; yet the sight of that bowed, lovely head went home to him very deeply indeed.  She was the instrument of his vengeance, necessary to his cause, but there was nothing to be gained by afflicting her needlessly.  At least, he could give her his pity.  It would not weaken him, dampen his fiery resolution, to give her that.

As he guided his craft he felt growing compassion for her; yet it was a personal pity only and brought no regrets that he had acted as he did.

“I wish you wouldn’t cry,” he said, rather quietly.

Amazed beyond expression at the words, Beatrice looked up.  For the instant her woe was forgotten in the astounding fact that she had won compassion from this cast-iron man in the stern.

“I’ll try not to,” she told him, her dark eyes ineffably beautiful with their luster of tears.  “I don’t see why I should try—­why I should try to do anything you ask me to—­but yet I will—­”

Further words came to him, and he could not restrain them.  “You’re sort of—­the goat, Beatrice,” he told her soberly.  “It was said, long ago, that the sins of the father must be visited upon the children; and maybe that’s the way it is with you.  I can’t help but feel sorry—­that you had to undergo this—­so that I could reach your father and his men.  If you had seen old Ezram lying there—­the life gone from, his kind, gray old face—­the man who brought me home and gave me my one chance—­maybe you’d understand.”

They were speechless a long time, Beatrice watching the swift leap of the shore line, Ben guiding, with steady hand, the canoe.  Neither of them could guess at what speed they traveled this first wild half-hour; but he knew that the long miles—­so heart-breaking with their ridges and brush thickets to men and horses—­were whipping past them each in a few, little breaths.  Ever they plunged deeper into the secret, hushed heart of the wild—­a land unknown to the tread of white men, a region so still and changeless that it seemed excluded from the reign and law of, time.  The spruce grew here, straight and dark and tall, a stalwart army whose measureless march no human eyes beheld.  Already they had come farther than a pack train could travel, through the same region, in weary days.

Already they were at the border of Back There.  They had cut the last ties with the world of men.  There were no trails here, leading slowly but immutably to the busy centers of civilization; not a blaze on a tree for the eyes of a woodsman riding on some forest venture, not the ashes of a dead camp fire or a charred cooking rack, where an Indian had broiled his caribou flesh.  Except by the slow process of exploration