Jacques Repentigny’s canoe had kept the lead, but a dozen light-bodied Chippewas sprung on shore and rushed past him into the bushes.

The woman had disappeared in underbrush, but, surrounded by hunters in full chase, she came running out, and fell on her hands, making a hoarse noise in her throat.  As she looked up, all the marks in her aged aboriginal face were distinct to Jacques Repentigny.  The sutures in her temples were parted.  She rolled herself around in a ball, and hid her head in her dirty red blanket.  Any wild beast was in harmony with the wilderness, but this sick human being was a blot upon it.  Jacques felt the compassion of a god for her.  Her pursuers were after her, and the thud of stones they threw made him heartsick, as if the thing were done to the woman he loved.

“Let her alone!” he commanded fiercely.

“Kill her!” shouted the hunters.  “Hit the windigo on the head!”

All that world of northern air could not sweeten her, but Jacques picked her up without a thought of her offensiveness and ran to his canoe.  The bones resisted him; the claws scratched at him through her blanket.  Jean Boucher lifted a paddle to hit the creature as soon as she was down.

“If you strike her, I will kill you!” warned Jacques, and he sprung into the boat.

The superstitious Chippewas threw themselves madly into their canoes to follow.  It would go hard, but they would get the windigo and take the young seignior out of her spell.  The Frenchmen, with man’s instinct for the chase, were in full cry with them.

Jean Boucher laid down his paddle sulkily, and his son did the same.  Jacques took a long pistol from his belt and pointed it at the old Indian.

“If you don’t paddle for life, I will shoot you.”  And his eyes were eyes which Jean respected as he never had respected anything before.  The young man was a beautiful fellow.  If he wanted to save a windigo, why, the saints let him.  The priest might say a good word about it when you came to think, also.

“Where shall I paddle to?” inquired Jean Boucher, drawing in his breath.  The canoe leaped ahead, grazing hands stretched out to seize it.

“To the other side of the river.”

“Down the rapids?”

“Yes.”

“Go down rough or go down smooth?”

“Rough—­rough—­where they cannot catch you.”

The old canoeman snorted.  He would like to see any of them catch him.  They were straining after him, and half a dozen canoes shot down that glassy slide which leads to the rocks.

It takes three minutes for a skillful paddler to run that dangerous race of three quarters of a mile.  Jean Boucher stood at the prow, and the waves boiled as high as his waist.  Jacques dreaded only that the windigo might move and destroy the delicate poise of the boat; but she lay very still.  The little craft quivered from rock to rock without grazing one, rearing itself over a great breaker or sinking under