“He is gone,” Chloe answered.  “Two days ago he left for the——­” She hesitated as there flashed through her brain the moment on Snare Lake when, once before, she had answered MacNair’s question in almost the same words. “He said he was going to the southward,” she corrected.

MacNair smiled.  “I think, this time, he has gone.  But why he left without killing me I cannot understand.  Lapierre has made a mistake.”

“You do him an injustice!  Mr. Lapierre does not want to kill you.  He is sorry he was forced to shoot; but, as he said, it was your life or his.  And now please do be quiet, or I must leave you to yourself.”

MacNair closed his eyes, and, seating herself by the table, Chloe stared silently into the face of the portrait until the man’s deep, regular breathing told her that he slept.

Slowly the moments passed, and the girl’s gaze roved from the face of the portrait along the walls of the little room.  Suddenly her eyes dilated in horror; for there, tight pressed against an upper pane of the window, whose lower sash was daintily curtained with chintz, appeared a dark, scowling face—­the face of an Indian, which she instantly recognized as one of the two who had accompanied MacNair upon his first visit to her clearing.

Even as she looked the face vanished, leaving the girl staring wide-eyed at the black square of the window.  Curbing her impulse to awake MacNair, she stole softly from the room and, unlocking the outer door, sped swiftly through the darkness toward the little square of light that glowed from the window of the store.

The distance was not great from the door of the cottage to the soft square of radiance that showed distinctly in the darkness.  But even as Chloe ran, the light was suddenly extinguished, and the outlines of the big storehouse loomed vague and huge and indistinct against the black background of the encircling scrub.  The girl stopped abruptly and stared uncertainly into the darkness.  Her heart beat wildly.  A strange sense of terror came over her as she stood alone, surrounded by the blackness of the clearing.  Why had LeFroy extinguished his light?  And why was the night so still?

She strained to catch the familiar sounds of the wilderness—­the little night sounds to which she had grown accustomed:  the bellowing of frogs in the sedges, the chirp of tree-toads, and the harsh squawk of startled night-fowls.  Even the air seemed unnaturally still, and the ceaseless drone of the mosquitoes served but to intensify the unnatural silence.  The mosquitoes broke the spell of the nameless terror, and she slapped viciously at her face and neck.

“I’m a fool,” she muttered; “a perfect fool!  LeFroy puts out his light every night and—­and what if there are no sounds?  I’m just listening for something to be afraid of.”