He was not overly pleased with himself for speaking thus.  He had resolved to put mercy from him; and he was taking a serious risk to his own cause by the delay of sending her back for her warmer garments.  She smiled into his eyes, but she came of a breed of women that had learned obedience to men, and she immediately turned.  But Ben had builded better than he thought.  His eyes were no longer on her radiant face.  They had dropped to the pistol, in its holster, that she carried in her hands, preparatory to strapping it about her waist.  It was disconcerting that he had forgotten about her pistol.  It was one of those insignificant trifles that before now have disrupted the mightiest plans of nations and of men.  His mind sped like lightning, and he thanked his stars that he had seen it in time.  This pistol and a small package, the contents of which he did not know, were the only equipment she had.

“It’s going to be a bright day,” the girl said hesitatingly.  “I don’t think I’ll need the fur coat—­”

“Get it, anyway,” Ben advised.  “The wind’s keen on the river.  Leave your pistol and your package here—­and go up and back at top speed.  I’ll be arranging the canoe—­”

She laid down the things, and in a moment the thickets had hidden her.  Swiftly Ben reached for the gun, and for a few speeding seconds his fingers worked at its mechanism.  He was busy about the canoe when the girl returned.

Evidently Beatrice was in wonderful spirits.  The air itself was sparkling, the sun—­beloved with an ardor too deep for words by all northern peoples—­was warm and genial in the sky; the spruce forest was lush with dew, fragrant with hidden blossoms.  It was a Spring Day—­nothing less.  Both of them knew perfectly that miracle was abroad in the forest,—­flowers opening, buds breaking into blossoms, little grass blades stealing, shy as fairies, up through the dead leaves; birds fluttering and gossiping and carrying all manner of building materials for their nests.

Spring is not just a time of year to the forest folk, and particularly to those creatures whose homes are the far spruce forests of the North.  It is a magic and a mystery, a recreation and a renewed lease on life itself.  It is hope come again, the joy of living undreamed of except by such highly strung, nerve-tingling, wild-blooded creatures as these; and in some measure at least it is the escape from Fear.  For there is no other name than Fear for the great, white, merciless winter that had just departed.

High and low, every woods creature knows this dread, this age-old apprehension of the deepening snow.  Perhaps it had its birth in eons past, when the great glaciers brought their curse of gold into the temperate regions, locking land and sea under tons of ice.  Never the frost comes, and the snow deepens on the land, and the rivers and lakes are struck silent as if by a cruel magician’s magic, but that this old fear returns, creeping like poison into the nerves,