Before darkness came again they would be through the Death Chute, where Follette and Ladouceur swam their mad race for the love of a girl.  And not many miles below the Chute was a swampy country where he could hide the scow.  Then they would start overland, west and north.  Given until another sunset, and they would be safe.  This was what he expected.  But if it came to fighting—­he would fight.

The rain had slackened to a thin drizzle by the time he finished his bailing.  The aroma of cedar and balsam came to him more clearly, and he heard more distinctly the murmuring surge of the river.  He tapped again at the door of the cabin, and Marette answered him.

The fire had burned down to a bed of glowing coals when he entered.  Again he fell on his knees, and took off his dripping slicker.

The girl greeted him from the berth.  “You look like a great bear, Jeems.”  There was a glad, welcoming note in her voice.

He laughed, and drew the stool beside her, and managed to sit on it, the roof compelling him to bend his head over a little.  “I feel like an elephant in a birdcage,” he replied.  “Are you comfortable, little Gray Goose?”

“Yes.  But you, Jeems?  You are wet!”

“But so happy that I don’t feel it, Gray Goose.”

He could make her out only dimly there in the darkness of the berth.  Her face was a pale shadow, and she had loosened her damp hair so that the warmth and dry air might reach it more easily.  Kent wondered if she could hear the beating of his heart.  He forgot the fire, and the darkness grew thicker.  He could no longer see the pale outline of her face, and he drew back a little, possessed by the thought that it was sacrilegious to bend nearer to her, like a thief, in that gloom.  She sensed his movement, and her hand reached to him and lay lightly with its fingertips touching his arm.

“Jeems,” she said softly.  “I’m not sorry—­now—­that I came up to Cardigan’s place that day—­when you thought you were dying.  I wasn’t wrong.  You are different.  And I made fun of you then, and laughed at you, because I knew that you were not going to die.  Will you forgive me?”

He laughed happily.  “It’s funny how little things work out, sometimes,” he said.  “Wasn’t a kingdom lost once upon a time because some fellow didn’t have a horseshoe?  Anyway, I knew of a man whose life was saved because of a broken pipe-stem.  And you came to me, and I’m here with you now, because—­”

“Of what?” she whispered.

“Because of something that happened a long time ago,” he said.  “Something you wouldn’t dream could have anything to do with you or with me.  Shall I tell you about it, Marette?”

Her fingers pressed slightly upon his arm.  “Yes.”