Page:Toilers of the Trails.djvu/89

 steel haft of the knife was a scrap of birch bark on which were written these words:

When Hertel reached the forks the stars were out. Passing the mouths of the Manuan and the Ribbon, he chose the main stream, travelling far into the night. As the moon dipped into the blue-black silhouettes of the Laurentians he went ashore, carried his canoe and outfit into the forest, where he cooked some food and slept. In less than twenty-four hours he had fought his way up forty miles of the St. Maurice, much of it white water and poling current. But little it mattered to François Hertel that he had performed a feat few men in the north could equal, when far down the river, in some lonely backwater, the stricken body of her whom he cherished lay floating by the shore unburied.

One evening, a month later, two men sat in the trade-house of Lost Lake Post discussing a bottle of whiskey with the factor.

"Now, look here, McCready, you don't mean to tell us that Hertel didn't show up here after he murdered Walker?" said one of the strangers.

"I tell you," replied the fur-trader vehemently, "that I haven't seen François Hertel this year; but I warn you now that the luckiest thing that can happen