She continued to look at him, her cheeks flushed and her face vivid.  “You must like Win a lot.  Not many men would go.”

“We’re good friends,” Morse answered dryly.  “Anyhow, I owe West something on my own account.”

The real reason why he was going he had not given.  During the days she had been lost he had been on the rack of torture.  He did not want her to suffer months of such mental distress while the man she loved was facing alone the peril of his grim work in the white Arctic desert.

They resumed the journey.

Jessie said no more.  She would not mention the subject again probably.  But it would be a great deal in her thoughts.  She lived much of the time inside herself with her own imagination.  This had the generosity and the enthusiasm of youth.  She wanted to believe people fine and good and true.  It warmed her to discover unexpected virtues in them.

Mid-afternoon brought them to Faraway.  They drove down the main street of the village to McRae’s house while the half-breeds cheered from the door of the Morse store.

Jessie burst into the big family room where Matapi-Koma sat bulging out from the only rocking-chair in the North woods.

“Oh, Mother—­Mother!” the girl cried, and hugged the Cree woman with all the ardent young savagery of her nature.

The Indian woman’s fat face crinkled to an expansive smile.  She had stalwart sons of her own, but no daughters except this adopted child.  Jessie was very dear to her.

In a dozen sentences the girl poured out her story, the words tumbling pell-mell over each other in headlong haste.

Matapi-Koma waddled out to the sled.  “Onistah stay here,” she said, and beamed on him.  “Blackfoot all same Cree to Matapi-Koma when he friend Jessie.  Angus send word nurse him till he well again.”

Tom carried the Indian into the house so that his feet would not touch the ground.  Jessie had stayed in to arrange the couch where Fergus usually slept.

She followed Morse to the door when he left.  “We’ll have some things to send back to Father when you go.  I’ll bring them down to the store to-morrow morning,” she said.  “And Mother wants you to come to supper to-night.  Don’t you dare say you’re too busy.”

He smiled at the intimate feminine fierceness of the injunction.  The last few hours had put them on a somewhat different footing.  He would accept such largesse as she was willing to offer.  He recognized the spirit in which it was given.  She wanted to show her appreciation of what he had done for her and was about to do for the man she loved.  Nor would Morse meet her generosity in a churlish spirit.

“I’ll be here when the gong rings,” he told her heartily.

“Let’s see.  It’s nearly three now.  Say five o’clock,” she decided.

“At five I’ll be knockin’ on the door.”

She flashed at him a glance both shy and daring.  “And I’ll open it before you break through and bring it with you.”