“It is St. Pierre!” he cried then.  “He has come with the great raft, and you must hurry if you would reach the bateau before he lands!”

In that moment it seemed to David that Marie-Anne forgot he was alive.  A little cry came to her lips, and then she left him, running swiftly, saying no word to him, flying with the speed of a fawn to St. Pierre Boulain!  And when David turned to the man who had come up behind them, there was a strange smile on the lips of the lithe-limbed forest-runner as his eyes followed the hurrying figure of St. Pierre’s wife.

Until she was out of sight he stood in silence and then he said: 

“Come, m’sieu.  We, also, must meet St. Pierre!”

XIV

David moved slowly behind the brigade man.  He had no desire to hurry.  He did not wish to see what happened when Marie-Anne met St. Pierre Boulain.  Only a moment ago she had been in his arms; her hair had smothered his face; her hands had clung to his shoulders; her flushed cheeks and long lashes had for an instant lain close against his breast.  And now, swiftly, without a word of apology, she was running away from him to meet her husband.

He almost spoke that word aloud as he saw the last of her slim figure among the silver birches.  She was going to the man to whom she belonged, and there was no hesitation in the manner of her going.  She was glad.  And she was entirely forgetful of him, Dave Carrigan, in that gladness.

He quickened his steps, narrowing the distance between him and the hurrying brigade man.  Only the diseased thoughts in his brain had made the happening in the creek anything but an accident.  It was all an accident, he told himself.  Marie-Anne had asked him to carry her across just as she would have asked any one of her rivermen.  It was his fault, and not hers, that he had slipped in mid-stream, and that his arms had closed tighter about her, and that her hair had brushed his face.  He remembered she had laughed, when it seemed for a moment that they were going to fall into the stream together.  Probably she would tell St. Pierre all about it.  Surely she would never guess it had been nearer tragedy than comedy for him.

Once more he was convinced he had proved himself a weakling and a fool.  His business now was with St. Pierre, and the hour was at hand when the game had ceased to be a woman’s game.  He had looked ahead to this hour.  He had prepared himself for it and had promised himself action that would be both quick and decisive.  And yet, as he went on, his heart was still thumping unsteadily, and in his arms and against his face remained still the sweet, warm thrill of his contact with Marie-Anne.  He could not drive that from him.  It would never completely go.  As long as he lived, what had happened in the creek would live with him.  He did not deny that crying voice inside him.  It was easy for his mouth to make words.  He could