Once or twice in the first half hour O’Grady glanced back over his shoulder, and it was Jan who now laughed tauntingly at the other.  There was something in that laugh that sent a chill through O’Grady.  It was as hard as steel, a sort of madman’s laugh.

It was seven miles to the first portage, and there were nine in the eighty-mile stretch.  O’Grady and his Chippewayan were a hundred yards ahead when the prow of their canoe touched shore.  They were a hundred and fifty ahead when both canoes were once more in the water on the other side of the portage, and O’Grady sent back a hoarse shout of triumph.  Jan hunched himself a little lower.  He spoke to Jackpine—­and the race began.  Swifter and swifter the canoes cut through the water.  From five miles an hour to six, from six to six and a half—­seven—­seven and a quarter, and then the strain told.  A paddle snapped in O’Grady’s hands with a sound like a pistol shot.  A dozen seconds were lost while he snatched up a new paddle and caught the Chippewayan’s stroke, and Jan swung close into their wake again.  At the end of the fifteenth mile, where the second portage began, O’Grady was two hundred yards in the lead.  He gained another twenty on the portage and with a breath that was coming now in sobbing swiftness Jan put every ounce of strength behind the thrust of his paddle.  Slowly they gained.  Foot by foot, yard by yard, until for a third time they cut into O’Grady’s wake.  A dull pain crept into Jan’s back.  He felt it slowly creeping into his shoulders and to his arms.  He looked at Jackpine and saw that he was swinging his body more and more with the motion of his arms.  And then he saw that the terrific pace set by O’Grady was beginning to tell on the occupants of the canoe ahead.  The speed grew less and less, until it was no more than seventy yards.  In spite of the pains that were eating at his strength like swimmer’s cramp, Jan could not restrain a low cry of exultation.  O’Grady had planned to beat him out in that first twenty-mile spurt.  And he had failed!  His heart leaped with new hope even while his strokes were growing weaker.

Ahead of them, at the far end of the lake, there loomed up the black spruce timber which marked the beginning of the third portage, thirty miles from Porcupine City.  Jan knew that he would win there—­that he would gain an eighth of a mile in the half-mile carry.  He knew of a shorter cut than that of the regular trail.  He had cleared it himself, for he had spent a whole winter on that portage trapping lynx.

Marie lived only twelve miles beyond.  More than once Marie had gone with him over the old trap line.  She had helped him to plan the little log cabin he had built for himself on the edge of the big swamp, hidden away from all but themselves.  It was she who had put the red paper curtains over the windows, and who, one day, had written on the corner of one of them:  “My beloved Jan.”  He forgot O’Grady as he thought of Marie and those