at evening of a day early in august a raft landed on the beach below fort cheever. it bore a middle-aged man, a girl, and a young man. the last named ceaselessly tossed and muttered in a fever; he was strapped to the raft to keep him from rolling off.

the older man carried him up the bank. the girl followed, tottering a little with fatigue. there were dark circles under her eyes and her lips were white. at the top they met david cranston the trader, in whose grim face surprise struggled with a welcoming courtesy. seeing into the sick man's face he started.

"is it ralph cowdray?" he asked.

the other man nodded.

"the poor lad!" exclaimed cranston. "he stopped here six weeks ago. he is much changed."

"i am taking him to a doctor," the other said. "i am jim sholto from milburn gulch. this is my daughter."

cranston bade her welcome with clumsy, old-fashioned deference. at fort cheever a white girl was like a creature from another world. looking at her, his grim face softened with commiseration.

to jim he said: "there's no doctor nearer than the crossing. i expect the steamboat on her last trip within a week. will you wait here for her?"

jim shook his head. "too uncertain," he said. "he might die on our hands. we will raft it down."

"ye do well," said cranston. "it is two hundred miles, but you can do it easy in three days by travelling nights, too. the river is smooth all the way. there's a kind of hotel at the crossing where you can make him comfortable, and the police doctor is there."

"we will go on as soon as we eat," said jim.

"i will send the little boys to cut spruce boughs to make you comfortable beds on the raft," said cranston.

"have you any remedies?" asked jim. "we came without medicines."

"i will ask my wife," said cranston. "she knows the simples of the country."

"much obliged to ye," said jim.

"the poor lad!" said david, looking into the flushed face and the sightless eyes. "i took a great liking to him. he had an honest way with him." glancing sideways at kitty, he said: "i wondered what brought him into the country. how did this happen?"

jim looked at his daughter and bit his lip. the quiet tears were rolling down kitty's face. "he capsized in the stanley rapids and hit his shoulder on a rock," he said grimly. "he came to our shack much the same as you see him now."

"was that the first you saw of him?" asked david, in surprise.

"it was the first."

"he was in the country before. there is some strange tale behind this," said david, wagging his head.

"i believe you," said jim grimly.

two months later in time, and in distance five hundred miles from fort cheever, the little steamboat northern belle was making her way blithely down on the current of the miwasa river on her last trip of the season. on the upper deck ralph, a shadow of the blooming youth that had first set forth from fort edward, lay sleeping in an invalid chair that the "boys" at the crossing had made him for the journey. beside him sat kitty, almost as pale and wasted as her patient, but with a soft triumph in her eyes; he was safely on the mend.

he stirred and murmured her name.

"yes?" she answered, in her quick hushed voice.

"nothing. i just wanted to make sure you were there."

"lazy!" she said. "why didn't you open your eyes and look?"

"my eyelids weigh pounds!" he said. "i can sleep twenty-three and a half hours a day!"

he lay musing for a while. "kitty?" he said again.

"well?" one could see "dear!" on her lips, but it was not uttered.

"i was thinking—i'm glad i didn't hop the twig after all!"

she did not answer.

"it's just beginning to come back—the will to live, i mean."

made curious by her continued silence, he raised his lids at last, and saw that her eyes were big with tears. "what's the matter?" he asked quickly.

"nothing!" she said. "i can't help thinking—all the time you lay there, you wished to die. in your delirium you prayed to die."

"that's funny!" he said, with an air of calm interest. "i remember that. it was as if some force stronger than i kept me from passing peacefully out. how it hurt!"

"don't think about it," she said.

"it's over," he said. "the sun feels good. i feel like a new-born babe, with everything to learn and everything to experience all over again!"

"you've talked enough."

"where are we?" he asked, defying her with a lazy smile.

"we will get to miwasa landing before supper. we will stay there until you are a little stronger. then we'll drive the hundred miles to town in a democrat. father made the arrangements on his way out."

"how good you've both been to me!" murmured ralph.

kitty let this pass with a private smile. "i got a letter from father at silver landing this morning," she said. "it was posted as they were leaving fort edward. they are all back at milburn gulch by now."

"what will they do without you?"

"they have taken a man cook in with them."

"are you going in later?" he asked.

she shook her head. "dad says after all it's no country for a woman."

"what will you do?"

"i shall go to live with my aunt in winnipeg, and study something, so that i can earn my own living. a teacher, perhaps."

"that's a lonely life!" said ralph.

she looked away. "better than being idle," she said.

"i must begin to think what i am going to do," said ralph.

"plenty of time."

"i shall go home for a while, of course. the mater will luxuriate in a convalescent son! then i must build up a practice in some growing city. a doctor goes to seed in the wilds; there is not enough to do. i begin to feel a need of work!"

"work!" said kitty, looking at his transparent hands with a smile of affectionate scorn.

"doctoring's a great job!" said ralph. "where would you advise me to establish myself?"

"how should i know?" murmured kitty, head averted.

"what kind of a place is winnipeg?"

a slow crimson tide crept up from her neck to her forehead. fortunately ralph's eyes were closed. "a busy, ugly town," she said. "but it's growing very fast. they say it has a great future."

"as soon as i am on my feet i'll come up and look it over," he said.

he soon fell asleep again. kitty leaned her arms on the rail, and gazed dreamily at the brown flood with its squadrons of foam vessels sailing demurely under the steamboat's counter; and at the shore with its endless procession of pine trees wrapped in the delicate veils of october. she chid herself for the little spring of happiness that welled in her breast, and sought to choke it with common sense, but it continually found new ways out.

downstream she saw a canoe lying on a point, and behind it a thread of smoke ascending among the trees. they had seen no sign of humanity since they had left silver landing sixty miles upstream, and she waited curiously to see what manner of people these were. presently she distinguished two figures, a man lying on the ground and a woman bending over the fire. the steamboat was travelling fast with the current and she had no sooner made them out than she was upon them. it was a point of rock, and they passed close enough to toss a biscuit ashore.

the woman straightened, and kitty instantly recognized the firm round figure and the graceful, proudly poised head. as the steamboat swept by they looked directly into each other's faces. a wild agitation shook kitty; it was as if the terrible past had been fished up and suddenly placed before her. the other woman's hands went to her breast in the old quick way. she glanced quickly from kitty to the sleeping form in the chair and back again. then she smiled—a wonderful smile irradiating her sad face from within. kitty experienced a quick revulsion. the tears sprang to her eyes. she stood up, and leaning over the rail, kissed her hand to the rapidly lessening figure on shore, a bend in the river intervened.