the hand of Suzon's father; then a rush, a darkness, and his own fierce
plunge towards the door, beyond which were the stars and the cool night
and the dark river. Curses, hands that battered and tore at him, the
doorway reached, and then a blow on the head and--falling, falling,
falling, and distant noises growing more distant, and suddenly and
sweetly--absolute silence.

Again he shuddered. Why? He remembered that scene in his office
yesterday with Kathleen, and the one later with Billy. A sensitive chill
swept all over him, making his flesh creep, and a flush sped over his
face from chin to brow. To-day he must pick up all these threads again,
must make things right for Billy, must replace the money he had stolen,
must face Kathleen again he shuddered. Was he at the Cote Dorion still?
He looked round him. No, this was not the sort of house to be found at
the Cote Dorion. Clearly this was the hut of a hunter. Probably he had
been fished out of the river by this woodsman and brought here. He felt
his head. The wound was fresh and very sore. He had played for death,
with an insulting disdain, yet here he was alive.

Certainly he was not intended to be drowned or knifed--he remembered the
knives he saw unsheathed--or kicked or pummelled into the hereafter. It
was about ten o'clock when he had had his "accident"--he affected a
smile, yet somehow he did not smile easily--it must be now about five,
for here was the morning creeping in behind the deer-skin blind at the
window.

Strange that he felt none the worse for his mishap, and his tongue was as
clean and fresh as if he had been drinking milk last night, and not very
doubtful brandy at the Cote Dorion. No fever in his hands, no headache,
only the sore skull, so well and tightly bandaged but a wonderful thirst,