flying duck set his blood flying and the reek of burned powder on the air of a frosty morning was the most delicious scent he knew. He loved wood smoke under trees and the click of an iron-shod canoe pole on pebbles, and the tracks of wild animals in mud and snow. The prospect of a visit to French River was far from unwelcome to him.

That was an unusually warm night, without a breath of air on O’Dell’s Point. Ben went to bed at ten o’clock and somehow let three mosquitoes into his room with him. He undressed, extinguished his lamp and lay sweltering in his pajamas on the outside of his bed. Then the mosquitoes tuned their horns and sounded the charge. They lasted nearly half an hour; by the time they were dead Ben was wider awake than he had been at any time during the day. He went to the window and looked out at the sky of faint stars and the vague dark of the curving river. His glance was straight ahead at first, then eastward downstream.

Ben saw a light, a red light, drifting on the black river. His first thought was that it might be some one with a lantern, but in a moment he saw that the light could not be that of a lantern, for it grew and sparks began to fly from it. A torch, perhaps. The torch of a salmon spearer? Not likely! For years it had been unlawful to kill salmon or bass with the spear and there was no lawbreaker on the river possessed of sufficient hardihood to light his torch within sight of O’Dell’s Point. More than this, the light was running with the current; and it was increasing every moment in height and length far beyond the dimensions of any torch.

Ben groped for his shoes and picked them up, felt his way cautiously out of the room and down the back stairs. In the woodshed he put on his shoes and equipped himself with paddle and pole. Then he ran for the river, ducking under the boughs of the old apple trees and descending the bank in a jump and a slide. Dim as the light was he saw that the big pirogue was gone before he reached the edge of the water. The sixteen-footer was there but nothing was to be seen of the giant from French River. He looked downstream and saw the light which had attracted him from his window vanishing behind the head of the island, out in the channel. It was like a floating camp fire by this time.

Ben threw pole and paddle into the sixteen-footer, ran her into the water and leaped aboard. He shot her straight across the current for a distance of several hundred yards, until he was clear of the head of the island, then swung down on the track of the drifting fire. He paddled hard, urged by a very natural 

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