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 last rays of the June sun flashed from the dripping paddle of one who drove his birch-bark up the wild reaches of the wilderness river as though life itself were at stake. And it was.

All day and half the preceding night François Hertel had poled and paddled and portaged, putting mile after mile of the racing St. Maurice between his canoe and the railroad camp at Coocoocache. The long hours of pull and drag and thrust which his will forced upon the wire cables that were the muscles of his back and arms had long since left them numb to all sensation. Still, automatically, they drove pole and paddle.

On he crept up the river as the day died, now rising to thrust viciously through quick-water, again dropping to his knees to push stubbornly through the slower stretches. Once or twice, as the twilight slowly masked the stream behind him, the voyageur threw a quick look backward. But well he knew that with the six hours' start he had on his pursuers no crew from the railroad camp at Coocoocache could overhaul François Hertel, famed from Timiskaming to the Roberval as a canoeman. When once he reached the forks where the Manuan and the Ribbon met the main stream he could laugh at those behind. For there