was chary of putting into concrete form.  It hadn’t meant much more than that for her, so far.  She was only beginning to recognize the flinty facts of existence.  She saw now that for her there lay open only two paths to food and clothing:  one in which, lacking all training, she must earn her bread by daily toil, the other leading to marriage.  That, she would have admitted, was a woman’s natural destiny, but one didn’t pick a husband or lover as one chose a gown or a hat.  One went along living, and the thing happened.  Chance ruled there, she believed.  The morality of her class prevented her from prying into this question of mating with anything like critical consideration.  It was only to be thought about sentimentally, and it was easy for her to so think.  Within her sound and vigorous body all the heritage of natural human impulses bubbled warmly, but she recognized neither their source nor their ultimate fruits.

Often when Charlie was holding forth in his accustomed vein, she wondered what Jack Fyfe thought about it, what he masked behind his brief sentences or slow smile.  Latterly her feeling about him, that involuntary bracing and stiffening of herself against his personality, left her.  Fyfe seemed to be more or less self-conscious of her presence as a guest in his house.  His manner toward her remained always casual, as if she were a man, and there was no question of sex attraction or masculine reaction to it between them.  She liked him better for that; and she did admire his wonderful strength, the tremendous power invested in his magnificent body, just as she would have admired a tiger, without caring to fondle the beast.

Altogether she spent a tolerably pleasant three weeks.  Autumn’s gorgeous paintbrush laid wonderful coloring upon the maple and alder and birch that lined the lake shore.  The fall run of the salmon was on, and every stream was packed with the silver horde, threshing through shoal and rapid to reach the spawning ground before they died.  Off every creek mouth and all along the lake the seal followed to prey on the salmon, and sea-trout and lakers alike swarmed to the spawning beds to feed upon the roe.  The days shortened.  Sometimes a fine rain would drizzle for hours on end, and when it would clear, the saw-toothed ranges flanking the lake would stand out all freshly robed in white,—­a mantle that crept lower on the fir-clad slopes after each storm.  The winds that whistled off those heights nipped sharply.

Early in October Charlie Benton had squared his neighborly account with Jack Fyfe.  With crew and equipment he moved home, to begin work anew on his own limit.

Katy John and her people came back from the salmon fishing.  Jim Renfrew, still walking with a pronounced limp, returned from the hospital.  Charlie wheedled Stella into taking up the cookhouse burden again.  Stella consented; in truth she could do nothing else.  Charlie spent a little of his contract profits in piping water to the kitchen, in a few things to brighten up and make more comfortable their own quarters.