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Rh survived in some way which he never took the trouble to account for.

"Be easy," he said, and detached another clip from a melting lump of cobbler's wax. "I will get through my work as well as the next man."

He kept his word unconcernedly and to the letter. But it hurt Tempest more than he had believed he could be hurt now to watch those limping feet on the many portages that linked up lake after lake until the long waters of Artillery Lake stretched before them, gleaming delicate mauve and silver under the dying day. Dick had been this way before on a lone patrol, filled only with the cheerful exultance of a hunter who keeps a difficult trail. Now he dropped his pack on the camping-ground; straightened with an effort; rubbed his hot hands over his hotter face, and looked out across the peaceful water. At his side Depache said gently:

"Mary Mother! But it is like w'en de bells of San Michel do call us to pray at home."

Dick heard, but he did not speak. The great spreading calm of the water; the pure air, warm and soothing where it blew in his face; the quiet, bare hill-spaces dimming to dusk, and the one grove of trees about him where the dark thickened, brought more rest into his fretted weary mind than he had known for long. Unmoving he stood, with his face changing and softening. Then he turned, loosed the straps round his pack, and went back over the hundred-yard portage for a second load.

That night the real keepers of the Silences waked and walked about the two little tents along the lake-shore. Dick, hearing the faint familiar call and the soft clicking of hoofed feet saw them first. Then he crawled to the tent-opening and lay there, watching. In twos and threes and in dozens they passed and repassed him; the full-grown caribou bull standing mightily with his antlers clear-cut on the pallor of the lake; the slender does, stepping lightly and turning their dappled necks to left and right, and the young bulls halting now and again to butt each other with their sprouting horns and then rushing off with exaggerated snorts of fear. All along the lake-lip they drank and clustered; parted and came again. The smell of