Lapierre was also of the North—­the North as it is tonight; soft air, balmy with the incense of growing things; illusive dark, half concealing, half revealing, blurring distant outlines.  A placid North, whose black waters flowed silent, smooth, deep.  A benign and harmless North, upon its surface; and yet, withal, portentous of things unknown.

The girl shuddered and arose to her feet, and, as she did so, from up the river—­from the direction of the Indian camp—­came the sharp, quick sound of a shot.  Then silence—­a silence that seemed unending to the girl who waited breathlessly, one hand grasping the rough bark of the gnarled tree, and the other shading her eyes as thought to aid them in their effort to pierce the gloom.

A long time she stood thus, peering into the dark, and then, an indistinct form clove the black water of the river, and a long body slipped noiselessly toward her, followed by another, and another.

“The canoes!” she cried, as she watched the sparkling starlight play upon the long Y-shaped ripples that rolled back from their bows.

Once more the sense of loneliness almost overcame her.  Pierre Lapierre was going out of the North.

She could see the figures of the paddlers, now—­blurred, and indistinct, and unrecognizable—­distinguishable more by the spaces that showed between them, than by their own outlines.

They were almost beneath her.  Should she call out?  One last bon voyage?  The sound of a voice floated upward; a hard, rasping voice, unfamiliar, yet strangely familiar.  In the leading canoe the Indians ceased paddling.  The canoe lost momentum and drifted broadside to the current.  The men were lifting something; something long and dark.  There was a muffled splash, and the dark object disappeared.  The canoemen picked up their paddles, and the canoe swung into its course and disappeared around a point.  The other canoes followed; and the river rolled on as before—­black—­oily—­sinister.

A broad cloud, pall-like, threatening, which had mounted unnoticed by the girl, blotted out the light of the stars, as if to hide from alien eyes some unlovely secret of the wilds.

The darkness was real, now; and Chloe, in a sudden panic of terror, dashed wildly for the clearing—­stumbling—­crashing through the bush as she ran; her way lighted at intervals by flashes of distant lightning.  She paused upon the verge of the bank at the point where it entered the clearing; at the point where the wilderness crowded menacingly her little outpost of civilization.  Panting, she stood and stared out over the smooth flowing, immutable river.

A lightning flash, nearer and more vivid than any preceding, lighted for an instant the whole landscape.  Then, the mighty crash of thunder, and the long, hoarse moan of wind, and in the midst of it, that other sound—­the horrible sound that once before had sent her dashing breathless from the night—­the demoniacal, mocking laugh of the great loon.