Barney laughed — the laugh Valancy did not like — the little, bitter, cynical laugh.

“I never change my mind,” he said shortly. They went back through Deerwood. Up the Muskoka road. Past Roaring Abel’s. Over the rocky, daisied lane. The dark pine woods swallowed them up. Through the pine woods, where the air was sweet with the incense of the unseen, fragile bells of the linnaeas that carpeted the banks of the trail. Out to the shore of Mistawis. Lady Jane must be left here. They got out. Barney led the way down a little path to the edge of the lake.

“There’s our island,” he said gloatingly.

Valancy looked — and looked — and looked again. There was a diaphanous, lilac mist on the lake, shrouding