One day he came back—­and he found Clarry O’Grady at the Cummins’ cabin.  He had been there for a month with a broken leg.  Perhaps it was the dangerous knowledge of the power of her beauty—­the woman’s instinct in her to tease with her prettiness, that led to Marie’s flirtation with O’Grady.  But Jan could not understand, and she played with fire—­the fire of two hearts instead of one.  The world went to pieces under Jan after that.  There came the day when, in fair fight, he choked the taunting sneer from O’Grady’s face back in the woods.  He fought like a tiger, a mad demon.  No one ever knew of that fight.  And with the demon still raging in his breast he faced the girl.  He could never quite remember what he had said.  But it was terrible—­and came straight from his soul.  Then he went out, leaving Marie standing there white and silent.  He did not go back.  He had sworn never to do that, and during the weeks that followed it spread about that Marie Cummins had turned down Jan Larose, and that Clarry O’Grady was now the lucky man.  It was one of the unexplained tricks of fate that had brought them together, and had set their discovery stakes side by side on Pelican Creek.

To-day, in spite of his smiling coolness, Jan’s heart rankled with a bitterness that seemed to be concentrated of all the dregs that had ever entered into his life.  It poisoned him, heart and soul.  He was not a coward.  He was not afraid of O’Grady.

And yet he knew that fate had already played the cards against him.  He would lose.  He was almost confident of that, even while he nerved himself to fight.  There was the drop of savage superstition in him, and he told himself that something would happen to beat him out.  O’Grady had gone into the home that was almost his own and had robbed him of Marie.  In that fight in the forest he should have killed him.  That would have been justice, as he knew it.  But he had relented, half for Marie’s sake, and half because he hated to take a human life, even though it were O’Grady’s.  But this time there would be no relenting.  He had come alone to the top of the ridge to settle the last doubts with himself.  Whoever won out, there would be a fight.  It would be a magnificent fight, like that which his grandfather had fought and won for the honor of a woman years and years ago.  He was even glad that O’Grady was trying to rob him of what he had searched for and found.  There would be twice the justice in killing him now.  And it would be done fairly, as his grandfather had done it.

Suddenly there came a piercing shout from the direction of the river, followed by a wild call for him through Jackpine’s moose-horn.  He answered the Cree’s signal with a yell and tore down through the bush.  When he reached the foot of the ridge at the edge of the clearing he saw the men, women and children of Porcupine City running to the river.  In front of the recorder’s office stood Jackpine, bellowing through his horn.  O’Grady and his Indian were already shoving their canoe out into the stream, and even as he looked there came a break in the line of excited spectators, and through it hurried the agent toward the recorder’s cabin.