They went out the door together, Houston beaming happily downward, the girl close beside him, her arm in his. And it was then that the features of Ba'tiste Renaud lost their gravity and sorrow. He looked after them, his eyes soft and contented. Then his big hands parted slowly. His lips broke into a smile of radiant happiness. And it was with the same glad light in his eyes that three months later Ba'tiste Renaud stood on the shores of Empire Lake, his wolf-dog beside him, looking out over the rippling sheen of the water. The snow was gone from the hills now; the colors were again radiant, the blues and purples and greens and reds vying, it seemed, with one another, in a constantly recurring contest of beauty. Afar off, logs were sliding in swift succession down the skidways, to lose themselves in the waters, then to bob along toward the current that would carry them to the flume. The jays cried and quarreled in the aspens; in a little bay, an old beaver made his first sally of the evening, and by angry slaps of his tail warned the rest of the colony that humans were near. Distantly, from down the bubbling stream which led from the lake, there sounded the snarl of giant saws and the hum of machinery, where, in two great mills, the logs traveled into a manufactured state through a smooth-working process that led from "jacker" to "kicker", thence to the platforms and the shotgun carriages; into the mad rush of the bank saws, while the rumbling rolls caught the offal to cart it away; then surging on, to the edgers and trimmers and kilns. Great trucks rumbled along the roadways. Faintly a locomotive whistled, as the switch engine from Tabernacle clanked to the mills for the make-up of its daily stub-train of lumber cars. But the attention of Ba'tiste Renaud was on none of these. Out in a safe portion of the lake was a boat, and within it sat two persons, a man and a woman, their rods flashing as they made their casts, now drawing slowly backward for another whip of the fly, now bending with the swift leap of a captive trout. And he watched them with the eyes of a father looking upon children who have fulfilled his every hope, children deeply, greatly beloved. As for the man and the woman, they laughed and glanced at each other as they cast, or shouted and shrilled with the excitement of the leaping trout as the fly caught fair and the struggle of the rod and reel began, to end with another flopping form in the creel, another delicacy for the table at camp. But at last the girl leaned back, and her fly trailed disregarded in the water. "Barry," she asked, "what day's to-morrow?" "Wednesday," he said, and cast again in the direction of a dead, jutting tree, the home of more than one three-pounder. She pouted. "Of course it's Wednesday. But what else?" "I don't know. Let me see. Twentieth, isn't it?" This time her rod flipped in mock anger. "Barry," she commanded. "What day is tomorrow?" He looked at her blankly.