It may perhaps have been by chance that the girl’s eyes met those of Morse.  The blood burned beneath the tan of her dusky cheeks, but her proud eyes did not flinch while she told the damning facts about her parentage and life.  She was of the metis, the child of an unknown father.  So far as she knew her mother had never been married.  She had been bought and sold like a negro slave in the South.  Let any one that wanted to despise her make the most of all this.

So far as any expression went Tom Morse looked hard as pig iron.  He did not want to blunder, so he said nothing.  But the girl would have been amazed if she could have read his thoughts.  She seemed to him a rare flower that has blossomed in a foul swamp.

“If Angus McRae took you for his daughter, it was because he loved you,” Beresford said gently.

“Yes.”  The mobile face was suddenly tender with emotion.  “What can any father do more than he has done for me?  I learned to read and write at his knee.  He taught me the old songs of Scotland that he’s so fond of.  He tried to make me good and true.  Afterward he sent me to Winnipeg to school for two years.”

“Good for Angus McRae,” the young soldier said.

She smiled, a little wistfully.  “He wants me to be Scotch, but of course I can’t be that even though I sing ‘Should auld acquaintance’ to him.  I’m what I am.”

Ever since she had learned to think for herself, she had struggled against the sense of racial inferiority.  Even in the Lone Lands men of education had crossed her path.  There was Father Giguere, tall and austere and filled with the wisdom of years, a scholar who had left his dear France to serve on the outposts of civilization.  And there was the old priest’s devoted friend Philip Muir, of whom the story ran that he was heir to a vast estate across the seas.  Others she had seen at Winnipeg.  And now this scarlet-coated soldier Beresford.

Instinctively she recognized the difference between them and the trappers and traders who frequented the North woods.  In her bed at night she had more than once wept herself to sleep because life had built an impassable barrier between what she was and what she wanted to be.

“To the Scot nobody is quite like a Scot,” Beresford admitted with a smile.  “When he wants to make you one, Mr. McRae pays you a great compliment”

The girl flashed a look of gratitude at him and went on with her story.  “Whenever we are near Stokimatis, I go to see her.  She has always been very fond of me.  It wasn’t really for money she sold me, but because she knew Angus McRae could bring me up better than she could.  I was with her to-day when Onistah came in and told us what this West was going to do.  There wasn’t time for me to reach Father.  I couldn’t trust anybody at Whoop-Up, and I was afraid if Onistah came alone, you wouldn’t believe him.  You know how people are about—­about Indians.  So I saddled a horse and rode with him.”