“A black dawn,” he repeated.  Her words unleashed his fancy—­her heavy brows and lashes, her satiny raven hair, her slow voice that seemed made of silence, her eyes that changed in expression so rapidly that they dizzied one with a sense of space.  “Black Dawn!” He stared at her long, which in no wise disconcerted her.

“Will you want, then, Antoine and me?” she asked at length.

He woke from his dream with a savage realization that, most surely, he wanted her.  “Yes.  Of course—­you—­and Antoine.  Wait, attendez, don’t go yet.”

“Why not?” she smiled.  “I have what I came for.”

Her hand was on the door-latch.  The radiance from the opened door of the square, old-fashioned stove shimmered over her fur cap and intensified the broad scarlet stripes of her mackinaw.  In black corduroy trousers, full and bagging as a moujik’s, she stood at ease, her feet small and dainty even in the heavy caribou-hide boots.

“Bon soir, monsieur,” she said.  “In two days we go with you to camp—­me—­and Antoine.”

“Wait!” he cried, but she had opened the door.  He rose with a start, and, ignoring the intense cold, followed her till the stinging breath of the North stabbed him with the recollection of its immutable power.  All about him the night was radiant.  Of a sudden the sky was hung with banners—­banners that rippled and folded and unfolded, banners of rainbows, long, shaking loops of red and silver, ghosts of lost emeralds and sapphires, oriflammes that fluttered in the heavens, swaying across the world in mysterious majesty.  Immensity, Silence, Mystery—­The Northern Lights!  “Aurora!” he called into the night, “Aurora—­Borealis!”

The Cure of Portage Dernier drove up to the log-cabin office and shook himself from his blankets; his soutane was rolled up around his waist and secured with safety-pins; his solid legs were encased in the heaviest of woollen trousers and innumerable long stockings.  His appearance was singularly divided—­clerical above, under the long wool-lined cape, and “lay” below.  Though the thermometer showed a shockingly depressed figure, the stillness and the warmth of the sun, busy at diamond-making in the snow, gave the feeling of spring.

The sky was inconceivably blue.  The hard-frozen world was one immaculate glitter, the giant evergreens standing black against its brightness.  The sonorous ring of axes on wood, the gnawing of saws, the crunching of runners, the crackling crash of distant trees falling to the woodsmen’s onslaughts—­Bijou Falls logging-camp was a vital centre of joyous activity.

The Cure grinned and rubbed his mittened hands.  “H—­Hola!” he called.

At his desk in the north window Crossman heard the hail, and went to the door.  At sight of the singular padded figure his face lifted in a grin.  “Come in, Father,” he exclaimed; “be welcome.”

“Ah,” said the Priest, his pink face shining with benevolence, “I thank you.  Where is my friend, that good Jakapa?  I am on my monthly circuit, and I thought to see what happens at the Falls of the Bijou.”  He stepped inside the cabin and advanced to the stove with outstretched hands.  “I have not the pleasure,” he said tentatively.