“I heard who it was, anyhow,” he said significantly.  “I’ll have a word to say to some of them to-morrow.”

“Oh,” cried the girl, “now everyone will know—­and we can’t even get out now.”

“Don’t be afraid, dear.  If one way’s barred, I’ll soon find another.”

He walked to the window, and pressed hard against the frame.  The nails gave way, and the woodwork hung loose.

“There!  We can get out that way now.  I’ll take care of the flowers—­and I’ll see those fellows hold their tongues—­never fear.”

Self-possessed and smiling, he came back to the bedside.  “You poor little thing, so easily scared!  Not afraid now, are you?”

“No—­not now you’re here again.”

“Why,” said he gaily, “don’t you see?  It had to come like this—­or else—­it would have been just like—­any of the others!”

They both laughed, and the girl looked up at him through her tears.  A faint light of dawn showed through from without.

“And you haven’t heard it all yet.  I’ll tell you—­it’s all different from anything else—­right from the beginning.  I came here a way you’d never dream—­by way of the river, and past the jaws of death.”

“What—­what do you mean?”

And he told her what had passed among the rapids that night, when the floating timber jammed against the Whirlstone Rock.

“And then we get locked in here, to make it unlike anything else all through.  And that’s how I love you, Pansy—­so that I have to come to you through the rapids at night, and stay with you behind barred doors.  But are you mine, my own?  You haven’t said so yet.”

“Am I?  Oh, Olof, how can you ask!” And she twined her arms lovingly round his neck.

* * * * *

The growing flush of dawn stole through the curtains, spreading a faint gleam of rose on the girl’s white arms.

“Red—­red is all that is beautiful in the world,” nodded the fuchsia to the balsamine.

The sun rose over the far-curving slopes on either side of the river, filled his lungs with the freshening coolness of the night, and drank his morning cup of glistening dew.  A light mist still hung over the riverbed.

Olof strode down the slope with easy step, his heart swelling with joy.

Down on the shore below the rapids stood a group of men, young fellows from the village, who came down at times to earn a little extra by keeping watch over the timber at night.

Olof cast his eyes over the group, and his pleasant feeling of contentment vanished.  He felt himself weighed down as by a burden.  But a little while since, he had lifted the heavy beam they had set against the door of a girl’s room, and carried it back to the barn, the weight seeming as nothing to him in his gladness.  But now....

“A single word, a look, would be enough.  But if they just go on as if nothing had happened—­what can I do?”