The Mena weekly star., 1917-11-15

low again. Stella found the change welcome, for Vancouver Wearied her. 1t was a little too crude, too much as yet in the transitory stage, in that civ ic hobbledehoy period which overtakes every village that shoots up overswift- ly to city's dimensions.
 So she was quite as well pleased when mild April saw them domiciled at home again. In addition to Sam Foo and Fend Shu, there was nurse for Jack junior. Stella did not sug- gest that; Fyfe insisted on it. He was quite proud of his boy, but he did not want her chained to her baby.
 So apart from voluntary service on behalf of Jack junior she was free as of old to order her days as she pleased. Yet that small morsel of humanity de- manded much of her time, because she released through the maternal food gates a part of that passionate longing to bestow love where her heart willed Sometimes she took issue with herself over that wayward tendency. By all the rules of the game she should have loved her husband. He was like a rock. solid, enduring, patient. kind and generous. He stood to her in the most intimate relation that can exist be- tween a man and q woman. But she never fooled herself. She never had so far as Jack Fyfe was concerned. She liked him, but that was all He was good to her, and she was grateful
 Nevertheless she had recurring peri ods when moodiness and ill stified dis content got hold of her Sometimes she stole out along the cliffs to sit on messy boulder, staring with absent eyes at the distant hills, and sometimes she would slip out in canoe to lie rocking in the lake swell, just dream ing, filled with a passive sort of re- gret. She could not change things now, but she could not help wishing she could
 Fyfe warned her once about getting offshore in the canoe. Roaring lake bent in the shape of a boomerang be- tween two mountain ranges, was sub ject to squalls. Sudden bursts of wind would shoot down it's length like blasts from some monster funnel. Stella knew that. She had seen the glassy surface torn into whitecaps in ten min utes, but she was not afraid of the lake nor the lake winds. She was hard and strong The open, the clean mountain air and a measure of activ- ity had built her up physically. She swan like seal Out in that sixteen foot canoe she could detach her self from her world of reality. lie back on cushion and lose herself staring at the sky She paid little heed to Fyfe's warning beyond smiling as surance that she had no intention of counting a watery end.
 So one day in mid-July she waved a farewell to Jack junior growing in his nurses lap on the bank. padded out past the first point to the north and. .illowing her head on cushioned thwart, gave herself up to dreamy con temptation of the sky. There was scarce a ripple on the lake. A faint breath of an offshofe breeze famed her, drifting the canoe at q snail's pace JuI rom land. Stella luxuriated in the quiet afternoon. A party of camp CTS cruising the lake had tarried at the bungalow till after midnight Jack Fyfe had risen at dawn to depart for some distant logging point. Stella, once wakened, had risen and break lasted with him. She was tired. drowsy, content to lie there in pure physical relaxation. Lying so, before she was aware of it, her eyes closed.
 She wakened with start at cold touch of moisture on her face-rain. great pattering drops. Overhead an ominously black cloud hid the face of the sun. The shore, wheR she looked, lay a mile and half abeam. To the north and between her and the lands rocky line was a darkening of the lakes surface. Stella reached for her paddle. The black cloud let fall long, gray streamers of rain. There was scarcely a stirring of the air, but that ulu not uecelVe her. Inefe was grow ing chill, and there was that broken line sweeping down the lake. Behind that was wind. a summer gale, the black squai dreaded by the Siwashes.
 She had to buck her way to shore through that She drove hard on the paddle. She was not afraid, but there rose in her peculiar tensed up feel ing. Ahead lay ticklish bit of busi- ness. The sixteen foot canoe dwarfed to pitiful dimensions in the face of that snarling line of wind harried wa ter She could hear the distant mur- mur of it presently, and gusty puffs of wind began to strike her.
 (Continued Next Week.