The last feeling of security died in Norval’s heart as he read. He had been flung into space when his wife had first spoken. He was not angry now. He was not really grieving, but he felt as a man might who, in falling, had been clutching to what he thought was a sturdy sapling only to find it a reed. He had been falling ever since Katherine had shown him the "Awakened Soul," but he had reached out on the descent for anything that might stop him, even the partial relinquishing of his ambition. And here he was with nothing! Falling, falling. Then, as one notices some trivial thing when one is most tense and shocked, Norval thought of that little girl of Alice Lindsay’s fiddling away in Canada! "I’ll get down to Chicoutimi and take to the river; Point of Pines is on the way and I can do this for old Andy. It’s about the only thing for me to do anyway, just now." There were forest fires all along the route and travel was retarded. When Point of Pines was seen in the distance, its location marked by a twinkling lantern swung from a pole on the dock, the captain of the _River Queen_ was surly because one lone traveller was determined to be put ashore. "Why not go on to Lentwell?" he argued; "we’re late anyway. You could get a rig to bring you back to this God-forsaken hole to-morrow. It’s only six miles from Lentwell." But Norval insisted upon his rights. "What in thunder do you want to go for?" the captain grew humorously fierce. "No one ever goes to Point of Pines." "I’m going to surprise them," Norval rejoined. "Give them a shock, make history for them." "Your luggage is at the bottom of the pile," this seemed a final argument, "you didn’t say you were going to get off." "I didn’t know just where the place was; but chuck the trunks at Lentwell, I’ll send for them." So the _River Queen_ chugged disgustedly up to the wharf and in the gloom of the early evening Norval, with a couple of bags, was deposited on it. A man took in the lantern that had made known to the captain of the departing boat that Point of Pines was doing its duty. Then a voice, not belonging to the hand, called from a short distance back of the wharf: "Jean Duval, did a box come for us?" "No, Mam’selle." "Didn’t anything come?" "Nothing, Mam’selle." "Why, then, did the boat stop?" "To make trouble, Mam’selle, for honest people." With this the unseen man departed, grumbling. He had either not seen Norval or had decided not to court further trouble. Norval laughed. The sound brought a young girl into evidence. She was a tall, slight thing, so fair that she seemed luminous in the dim shadow caused by the hill which rose sharply behind her. "Well!" she said, coming close to Norval. "Well! How did you get here?" "The _River Queen_ left me," Norval explained, "probably instead of the box you expected." "Why?" asked the girl.