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Even in darkness it was not difficult to follow in the clean-cut wagon path Over their heads the tops of the poplars swished and wailed Under their feet the roadway in places was a running stream or inundated until it became a pool In pitch blackness they struck such a pool, and in spite of the handicap of his packs and rifle Kent stopped suddenly, and picked Marette up in his arround He did not ask permission And Marette, for a minute or two, lay cru instant his face touched her rain-wet cheek

The miracle of their adventure was that neither spoke To Kent the silence between the which he had no desire to break In that silence, excused and abetted by the tu was drawing theht spoil the indescribableWhen he set Marette on her feet again, her hand accidentally fell upon his, and for a ers closed upon it in a soft pressure that ratitude

A quarter of a e of the spruce and cedar timber, and Soon the thick walls of the forest shut the them from the wind, but the blackness was even more like that of a botto were drifting steadily eastward, and now the occasional flashes of electrical fire scarcely illu so fiercely They could hear the wail of the spruce and cedar tops and the slush of their boots in mud and water An interval came, where the spruce-tops met overhead, when it was alreat, deep breath and laughed joyously and exultantly

"Are you wet, little Gray Goose?"

"Only outside, Big Otter My feathers have kept , half-rejoicing note in it It was not the voice of one who had recently killed ato hide behind brave words Her hands clung to the arether, as if she was afraid soloo for a moment, drew from an inner pocket a dry handkerchief Then he found her face, tilted it a bit upward, and wiped it dry HeAfter that he scrubbed his own, and they went on, his arain