Ralph wished to leave the valley by himself. After what had happened, to be with Nahnya night and day without ever meeting her eyes, or exchanging a word beyond what the business of camp made necessary, seemed like the very refinement of torture. But there was no help for it. It was too hard to go back upstream, Nahnya said; they must go out a different way, and she must show him.

She took Charley, which made it easier. They set off next morning. In his instinct to conceal pain, Ralph was as much an Indian as any of them. No one could have guessed from his composed face what had happened. Such natures consume themselves inwardly. He was scarcely conscious of what was taking place outside him.

Charley was nothing loath at the prospect of another journey. Little by little the Indian boy had come to be at his ease with Ralph. His stolidity, it appeared, was largely an affectation for the purpose of impressing white strangers. He now talked freely to Ralph in a queer jargon of English and Cree of what interested him, hunting and animals and making trips. St. Jean Bateese, too, who accompanied them to the mouth of the cave, stuck close to Ralph's side, and betrayed an unaffected regret at his going away.

"I can win them all but her," thought Ralph bitterly.

Before the cave swallowed him, Ralph looked for the last time at the lake with its sheen like a peacock's breast; at the kingly mountains drenched with sunshine, and at the mad, green meadows with their white-stemmed birches. "I leave myself here," he thought. He grimly clenched the stem of his pipe between his teeth.

During the long traverse under the mountain, Ralph spoke but once. Passing the scarecrow, he asked why it had been set up there. Charley explained that it was to keep the animals out. The man-smell which clung to his clothes was sufficient.

On the site of their last camp in the great forest they spelled for a meal. Afterward Nahnya brought the handkerchief to Ralph with a deprecating air.

"That's ridiculous now," cried Ralph, turning red. "I won't be carried down like a cripple!"

Nahnya, not looking at him, asked quietly: "You promise never to come this way again?"

"No!" said Ralph instantly. He could not have told why the word sprang from his lips. Perhaps it was that hope cannot be killed dead in a lover's heart while it beats.

The bandage was put on. Upon Ralph's promise not to disturb it, they refrained from binding his arms. And so after all he was carried down, chafing all the way. An instinct of caution kept him from telling them he knew he could find his way back anyway if he chose.

Carrying him downhill was comparatively easy. When they halted at last and the bandage was removed, Ralph found they were still immured in the forest, but from a murmur of the rapids that reached his ears, he knew they had come almost to the river.

"We will travel all night," Nahnya said, "so you not have your eyes blinded. Better sleep now."

He did sleep. He had had none the night before.

They awoke him to eat. Once more the bandage was put on, and he was carried, but only for a little way. They came out beside the river, and he was laid on the flat rock. He heard them launch the boat, and stow their baggage. Then he was laid on the blankets and they pushed off.

Ralph had supposed they would go back at least part of the way they had come. His surprise was therefore great when he heard the roar of the rapids growing closer, and realized they were going on down. His hand instinctively shot to the bandage over his eyes. Remembering in time that he had given his word, he clenched it instead, and ground his teeth.

Nahnya, understanding something of what was passing through his mind, said: "This is an easy rapid. I know all the rocks in it."

There was the same breathless pause while the whole firmament was filled with the roaring of the waters; the startling plunge and mad leaping below; the same sudden subsidence into an unnatural calm. It was like dreaming of falling over a precipice. From the quickness with which the roar dulled to a murmur behind them Ralph realized they were carried down at an astonishing speed. He wondered grimly if ever before a blind man had been taken down great rapids in a crazy dugout.

Some time later Nahnya leaned over and took the bandage from around his head. It was dark, or nearly so. At first he saw only towering mountain masses on either hand, and overhead the stars beginning to come out. Sitting up, he was amazed at the metamorphosis of the river. It was the ragged, violent Rice River when he had seen it last. Here was a volume and majesty that stream had never suggested. In mere size it was trebled, and its banks were flung up to the stars. The overwhelming shadow mountains seemed to be drawing back courteously to allow the mighty stream to pass. To see such a place for the first at night, added to its majesty. Ralph was dimly conscious that he was beholding one of the great sights of earth.

His subconscious mind never ceased to register every detail by the way that might help him to learn where he was, and to find his way back if need be. Looking over his shoulder he could see a faint glow in the sky up-river. So it was true, as he had supposed, they were travelling east. What river this was, or what mountains, he did not know; though he guessed that in North America there was but one such mountain chain. He tried to calculate the speed at which they were travelling by current and paddle. The river made no sound except here and there where it snarled over an obstruction alongshore, but he knew from the way the points on shore marched past that their speed was considerable. Finally passing close beside an exposed bar he had something to measure by, and he was astonished. Ten miles an hour he would have said, did it not seem incredible.

By and by Charley with a word to Nahnya put his paddle aboard, and stretched himself in the bottom of the dugout. Soon his deepened breathing gave notice that he slept. Nahnya, too, took in her paddle, and sat still, letting the current carry them. The eddies waltzed them slowly around and back, and the stars circled over their heads.

This was the hardest part of Ralph's ordeal. To be alone with her under the stars, and not to be able to touch her, nor to speak of what was cracking his heart, seemed more than a man ought to be called upon to bear. His streak of stubborn manliness would not allow him to reopen the discussion of the night before. "I have my answer," he said to himself. "It is enough! I will not whine!"

And so he sat in silence thinking his painful thoughts, and she in silence thinking hers—but whether they were painful he could not guess. The question tormented him, and finally sprang from his lips:

"What are you thinking of, Nahnya?"

"Nothing," she said quickly, with a suggestion of sullenness in her voice.

It hurt him shrewdly. "Can't we be friends?" he burst out. "Can't I speak to you?"

She made no answer, and he sat fuming and nourishing his grievance. After a long time, when he had given up hope of hearing her speak, she said softly:

"I sorry, Ralph. You take me by surprise. I not know what to say. I want to be friends. I cannot tell my thoughts."

At the unexpected touch of gentleness, remorse and renewed tenderness melted him like wax. "Oh, Nahnya," he said brokenly, "I'm sorry! Why can't you tell me?"

"I not know how to give them words," she said simply. "Maybe they are not thoughts, but feelings."

"What are the feelings?" he asked.

"Please!" she said imploringly. "I cannot talk. I have say everything before."

"There's something I want to tell you," Ralph said haltingly, grateful for the darkness that covered him. "Words don't come any too easy to me, either. I want you to know that I'm not sore like a spoiled child that can't have what he wants. I don't seem to matter to myself as much as I did. It goes deeper. I want to tell you I'll never change, Nahnya, not in fifty years, if I live so long. No matter what may happen in between, if I could ever help you—— Oh! I talk like a fool! but I've got to say it! If I could ever help you, I'd come from across the world. Expecting nothing, you know, but just to help you! Oh, damn! If I could feel that you would let me help you it—it wouldn't hurt so much!"

"I would let you help me if you could," she murmured.

"Your hand on that!" he said.

She gave him her hand over his shoulder. Gripping it, he pressed it hard to his cheek, and a single cry was wrung from him:

"Oh, Nahnya, my dear love!"

Gritting his teeth, he forced the rest back. "I will not whine!" he mu............