“Then we’ll take you,” said Agatha, with a deprecatory glance at Thirlwell.

“You’re not going to be sorry about it,” Drummond declared, and when he went away Agatha turned to Father Lucien.

“It’s your business to judge men’s character:  do you think I have done well?”

“I imagine the lad will make good.  He has two incentives:  he likes you, and hates your adversary.”

“Ah,” said Agatha, smiling, “I wonder which is the stronger!”

Father Lucien spread out his hands and his eyes twinkled.  “I am a priest, Miss Strange, and must admit that I cannot tell.  You have won the young man’s confidence; but his is a primitive nature, and hate counts for much.”

“You are an honest man,” said Agatha.  “After all, the truth is better than compliments.”

The party broke up soon afterwards, and early next morning Agatha left the mine with Thirlwell, Drummond, and a white rock-borer as well as the half-breed packers.  They poled up the Shadow for some distance, and then followed a small creek, tracking the canoes, which were heavily loaded.  Indeed, when they carried the freight by relays across the portages, Agatha was surprised to note the quantity of tools and stores.  Since the cost of transport made such things dear, it looked as if Thirlwell had made her money go a long way.

As they pushed on the country got wilder.  The rocks were more numerous, the trees smaller, and in places they crossed wide belts where fires had raged.  The flames had burned off the branches, but left the trunks, and the long rows of rampikes sprang from the new brush, shining a curious silver-gray where they caught the light.  The mode of travel, however, did not change.  Sometimes they paddled up sparkling lakes, and sometimes dragged the canoes over ledges and gravel-beds in shallow creeks until the water shrunk and they made a laborious portage across a rocky height.

The journey was made as much by land as water, and at first Agatha wondered that the men were capable of such toil, but by degrees she found that she could carry more than she had thought, and laughing at Thirlwell’s protests, often struggled through the brush with a heavy load.  The hot sunshine that lasted so long, and the freshness that followed when the shadows deepened, calmed and strengthened her.  She felt braced in mind and body; her doubts and impatience had gone.  She was quietly confident that they would find the ore.

But they did not find it, and at length the time Agatha had allowed herself came to an end.  It was possible that she had already lost her post at the school, but if not and she wanted to keep it, she must return at once.

She did not, however, mean to give up the search while their food held out and there was no shortage yet, perhaps because the half-breeds often went fishing and gathered wild berries.  Then one hot day, when they nooned beside a shining lake and she sat in the shade of a boulder, she heard the men talking.