murmuring voice of it tonight there was a gladness, a welcome, an exultation in his return.  He looked out on its silvery bars shimmering in the moonlight, and a flood of memories swept upon him.  Thirty years was not so long ago that he could not remember the beautiful mother who had told him stories as the sun went down and bedtime drew near.  And vividly there stood out the wonderful tales of Kistachiwun, the river; how it was born away over in the mystery of the western mountains, away from the eyes and feet of men; how it came down from the mountains into the hills, and through the hills into the plains, broadening and deepening and growing mightier with every mile, until at last it swept past their door, bearing with it the golden grains of sand that made men rich.  His father had pointed out the deep-beaten trails of buffalo to him and had told him stories of the Indians and of the land before white men came, so that between father and mother the river became his book of fables, his wonderland, the never-ending source of his treasured tales of childhood.  And tonight the river was the one thing left to him.  It was the one friend he could claim again, the one comrade he could open his arms to without fear of betrayal.  And with the grief for things that once had lived and were now dead, there came over him a strange sort of happiness, the spirit of the great river itself giving him consolation.

Stretching out his arms, he cried:  “My old river—­it’s me—­Johnny Keith!  I’ve come back!”

And the river, whispering, seemed to answer him:  “It’s Johnny Keith!  And he’s come back!  He’s come back!”

IV

For a week John Keith followed up the shores of the Saskatchewan.  It was a hundred and forty miles from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post of Cumberland House to Prince Albert as the crow would fly, but Keith did not travel a homing line.  Only now and then did he take advantage of a portage trail.  Clinging to the river, his journey was lengthened by some sixty miles.  Now that the hour for which Conniston had prepared him was so close at hand, he felt the need of this mighty, tongueless friend that had played such an intimate part in his life.  It gave to him both courage and confidence, and in its company he could think more clearly.  Nights he camped on its golden-yellow bars with the open stars over his head when he slept; his ears drank in the familiar sounds of long ago, for which he had yearned to the point of madness in his exile—­the soft cries of the birds that hunted and mated in the glow of the moon, the friendly twit, twit, twit of the low-flying sand-pipers, the hoot of the owls, and the splash and sleepy voice of wildfowl already on their way up from the south.  Out of that south, where in places the plains swept the forest back almost to the river’s edge, he heard now and then the doglike barking of his little yellow friends of many an exciting horseback chase, the coyotes, and on the