Viewed from the deck of a great lakes steamer travelling the commercial lane that runs less than two miles south of it, Amethyst Island is but a black speck among a hundred other foam-rimmed islets that dot Superior’s rugged north shore, an infinitesimal bit of rock and dry land before a frowning background of deep-riven hills, where range upon range breasts out from Nannabijou Point and disappears into the purple of the northern horizon. Time and evolution work few changes on those hills of desolation which rear their black, fantastic peaks above hostile, spruce-bearded flanks like age-chained monsters scorning in lofty nudity the might of man to efface or reclaim their barrenness. Everywhere they whisper of dark potentialities; of secret places where awful stillness reigns, of skulking grey wolves and gleaming white bones.

To the right of the clifflike point and seemingly rising just back of the skirting woods opposite Amethyst Island is the Cup of Nannabijou, a castlelike circle of black cliffs, whose base is really a stiff walk from the shoreline. It is territory to this day shunned by wandering Indian tribes, believed to be the prison in which Nannabijou, the Indian demi-god, attempted to wall up Animikee, the Thunder Devil; and this belief is strengthened in poor Lo’s mind by the magnetic flashes which play up from the hills on nights preceding electrical storms. Along a depression at the base of the cliffs flows Solomon Creek on its way to join the mighty, amber-coloured Nannabijou River before the latter empties into the bay. Solomon Creek tumbles out in a foaming white cascade from a great fissure in the cliffs, being the outlet for a limpid mountain lake confined by the walls of the Cup, a gleaming pool of gold by day and a mystic black mirror of the stars by night. In the rocks the Indians see the images of the men and beasts of their pagan worship; from a distance out on the lake the whole resembles the form of a recumbent giant lying on his back on the face of the waters.

But Amethyst Island itself, on closer inspection, proves of happier mien than its forbidding surroundings and of dimensions somewhat more significant than one would guess from the steamboat routes. Its area would equal half a city block and its shoreline is groved by patches of picturesque birch gleaming white among the mountain ash and spruce, while here and there a lofty, isolated white pine rears its whispering crest above the lower foliage with an air of patriarchal guardianship. A half dozen log cabins of substantial size and dove-tailed construction stand in the cleared centre, relics of a bygone silver mining boom, later renovated by wealthy city families into summer resort cottages.

In the most easterly of these cottages, Josephine Stone, of Calgary, had taken up her temporary residence. On this particular morning, which had broken in crisp autumnal loveliness, she had been astir from an early hour, and with her Indian maid and her companion, Mrs. Johnson, had set in order the appointments of the little front room with exacting care. No detail had been overlooked to make the best of such furnishings as the building boasted; even the blinds Miss Stone had herself accurately adjusted so that the softest light illumined the room. In the broad fireplace, built of native amethyst-encrusted boulders, a birch fire crackled in subdued cheeriness. On the table which centred the room stood a vase of fresh-gathered ferns, a bit of dull green colour that toned with the dignified quiet all about.

But Josephine Stone needed no artificial setting. A dream of fresh young womanly loveliness she was; a gentle presence that would brighten and glorify the most monotonous surroundings. Men wherever she had appeared had been swayed by this girl’s rare beauty, by the charm of her voice and her every gesture.

She had long since learned her power over men; this morning she was minded to test it impelled as she was by that resistless motive that has been called a woman’s curiosity—the motive that first brought mortal man to grief.

She moved about the room as one who is suppressing by will the tensest inward anxiety. Her Indian woman dismissed, she had tried to interest herself in a book, but her gaze most of the time was centred through the eastern window on a jutting point of the lake’s shoreline.

Josephine Stone dropped the book and caught at her breath. Round the point there suddenly flashed the slender red hull of a racing motor boat, bow reared in air above a creamy wavelet that widened V-like in its wake. The boat swept down the shoreline and the muffled staccato of its engines ceased abruptly as it dived from view under the shrubbery that fringed the island.

II

The girl watched with bated breath. From an opening in the shrubbery there almost immediately burst into view the figure of a man who seemed the incarnation of this wild place. Spare was he, but of height, build and movement that bespoke physical strength of lightninglike potentialities. The exotic pallor of his masterful face accentuated the blackness of his alert, flashing eyes.

The Indian man-of-all-work, splitting firewood to the side of the cottage, looked up, gasped and scuttled from view. His wolf-dog sank back on his haunches, tilted his grey snout in air and sent forth a long, dolorous howl that brought mocking echoes from the cliffs of the mainland.

The visitor, quite unconcerned by the seeming panic his appearance provoked, strode easily to the front door.

Josephine Stone rose all a-tremble. A fear unaccountable had suddenly swept over her, but when she opened the door for him there was no longer outward trace of it.

“Oh, Mr. Smith,” she voiced, “I know I have put you to a lot of trouble to come over here this morning. It is really too good of you simply to accommodate a stranger.”

“I will not have you mention it, Miss Stone,” he waived with a courtly smile. “It is I rather who should offer apologies.”

“You?”

“I’m late. Delayed by the discovery of a defective boom on my way here. Had to go back and notify one of the boom-tenders.”

“You have heavy responsibilities.”

There was the faintest of inflections on the last word. It brought a momentary gleam of hard alertness to the face of Acey Smith. But he as quickly hid it in a light laugh. “It all came about through my weakness for travelling by water,” he went on. “You see, there is a shorter cut by the land trail here, though I would have had to signal for one of your boats to get over to the island.”

“Won’t you be seated?” She indicated the easy chair by the window and herself sank gracefully to the nearby couch.

“Mr. Smith,” she opened in a nervous confusion that brought the faintest of pink to her delicate throat and cheeks, “I fear I am asking of you too great a favour—that I am about to request too much.”

“If you had not asked me to come here and offer what little service I may,” he replied, “I would consider I had been robbed of one of the most wonderful opportunities of my lifetime.”

“But have you considered the full nature of my request?”

The spell of those wonder eyes under the high-arched brows was upon him. “Name it,” he urged. “I must obey.”

“You must not compromise yourself before you know it all.”

“I have already compromised myself. I have promised to do anything within my power.”

She stirred on the couch, came ever so little nearer to him. “I have feared my request might be an impossible one.”

“An impossible one?”

“Yes—yet—I had hoped almost that you might—”

“Please,” he encouraged. “Tell me what it is.”

“I want to meet the man you call J.C.X.”

Had she plunged ice-cold water upon him the effect on Acey Smith could not have been more startling. His face went ashen at the name, his long hands gripping convulsively at the arms of the chair. He glanced apprehensively about the room, even behind him, then sprang bolt upright.

“J.C.X.” He breathed it hoarsely. “There are no others within hearing?”

“Not a soul.” It was she who was calmer now. She too had risen, was standing with a thrilling nearness to him, so close as to be within the province of his arms had he obeyed an almost irresistible impulse that was upon him to sweep her to him. She looked up at him, a steadiness in the appeal of her eyes.

Under the sway of those eyes decision within him wavered. When he spoke it was in a tone of solemn pronouncement: “Miss Stone, you have asked of me what should be impossible.”

“But you can make it a possibility?”

“The ultimate decision lies with—J.C.X.” Again that furtive glance about the room as he pronounced the name in a whispered undertone. “It were better—perhaps—that you should not meet J.C.X.”

“Is he so terrible?”

“No, it is not that. If I could in some way act as intermediary, for instance?”

But the girl was in no wise willing to let slip by her hard-won concession. “It would not do,” she negatived. “I am sorry, for I know I could trust you as such, but I feel it is imperative that I should meet J.C.X. personally if that which I was sent for is to be properly explained.”

His eyes searched her face. “What do you know of J.C.X.?” he asked.

“Nothing—positively nothing. Oh, I wish I could explain. I hate being mysterious, but for the present I must ask you to accept my statement that it appeals to me as vital to meet him. Can you accept such a statement?”

Under stress of her anxiety she had unconsciously placed an ivory-white little hand upon his sleeve. He thrilled at the pressure.

“I can and do accept it,” he returned. “What is more, when the time is opportune, you shall meet the one you desire to. But you must be patient; for a little while there will be obstacles which are insurmountable.”

“Oh, how can I thank you, Mr. Smith?” Impulsively she seized his hand in both her own, artlessly as a child might do it.

Not even saint might have resisted that delicate, desirable presence so near. Acey Smith was far from saint. His long, powerful hands closed over hers, a devil of gleaming black triumph leaping to the eyes that feasted on her face.

But even as she drew away, trembling like a captured bird, he released her abruptly. His head shot forward and he whirled with his back toward her, his hands cupping at his face in the convulsive fashion of one who is strangling.

She was standing mute in stupefied fright when he faced her again, quite his former self, a trace of a shamed smile on his lips. “I am sorry,” he offered in a contrite tone.

“It was perhaps my fault—” She started to say that before its significance struck her.

“It was not!” he declared. “I had forgotten for the moment that—that I am merely a means to an end. It will not happen again.”

The girl did her best to hide her mystification. Before he left Acey Smith informed her the tugs plying daily between the pulp camp and the city were at her service. He had made arrangements not only for her passage back and forth, but for the carrying of such supplies out as she needed from time to time. This would be much more satisfactory than depending on the motor-boat, he told her, as from now on the weather on the northern reaches of Superior was not dependable.

As for the unexplained purpose for which she had been brought to the island, he hoped she would be tolerant of a delay in bringing things about that would not only take time but patience and foresight on the part of others. He did not mention J.C.X. again nor the meeting he had promised to arrange for Miss Stone. But intuitively the latter knew two things; the one was that he would be as good as his word and the other that he almost dreaded mention of J.C.X.

Besides, Josephine Stone was but two generations removed from Canadian pioneer stock, and, like the women of her race, was not prone to question the moods and whimsicalities of men of the forests.

III

When Acey Smith left Amethyst Island he did not immediately head back for the pulp camp, but crossed over to the mainland opposite, where he beached the bow of his long, slender racer at the foot of a narrow trail that wound up into the densely wooded hills. Snubbing the boat to the shrubbery, he struck off up the trail and was gone for almost an hour.

Shortly after his form had been swallowed up in the bush, there appeared at the foot of the trail a tall, dark-bearded man in the garb of a preacher. He peered at the island from the screen of the bush, and there, concealed from view, squatted in the foliage with eyes upon the cottage, silent, immovable as a statue.

Josephine Stone came out upon the cottage steps and opened a book in her lap. If the figure in the woods noticed her he gave no sign.

After a long interval there came from out of the depths of the forest, far away, a low reverberating intonation as of some deep soft gong being struck. A few moments elapsed and the mellow note again swooned mystically over the wastes.The faintest traces of a smile broke over the face of the man hidden in the bushes as the girl on the steps started to her feet and looked about her in bewilderment. She picked up her book and disappeared into the cottage.

Twice again with a short interval between there came a gonglike alarm from far up in the silent wastes. The black-bearded man rose at the sound of the last stroke of the gong. With patient caution he drew from the shrubbery a cached canoe, launched it and with silent strokes skimmed westward along the shoreline.

Twenty minutes later Acey Smith came striding down the trail, carrying on his back a partially filled woodsman’s packsack. At the foot of the trail he paused as though reading some sign in the sands of the beach. He swung the packsack from his shoulders into the cockpit of the boat, pushed off the craft and headed it toward the pulp camp docks.

There was a scowl on his face as black as a thunder cloud.