The Cure turned on Crossman.  “What is this woman to you?”

Her eyes defied him.  “Tell him,” she jeered.  “What am I to you?”

“She is here with Antoine Marceau, the log-brander,” Crossman answered unsteadily.  “She takes care of our cabin, Jakapa’s and mine.”

“Is that all?” the Priest demanded.

Her eyes challenged him.  What, indeed, was she to him?  What was she?  From the moment he had followed her into the boreal night, with its streaming lights of mystery and promise, she had held his imagination and his thoughts.

“Is that all?” the Priest insisted.

“You insult both this girl and me,” Crossman retorted, stung to sudden anger.

“Dieu merci!” the Cure made the sign of the cross as he spoke.  “As for this woman, send her away.  She is not the wife of Antoine Marceau; she is not married—­she will not be.”

In spite of himself a savage joy burned in Crossman’s veins.  She was the wife of no man; she was a free being, whatever else she was.

“I do not have to marry,” she jeered.  “That is for the women that only one man desires—­or perhaps two—­like some in your parish, mon pere.”

“She is evil,” the Priest continued, paying no attention to her sneering comment.  “I know not what she is, nor who.  One night, in autumn, in the dark of the hour before morning, she was brought to me by some Indians.  They had found her, a baby, wrapped in furs, in an empty canoe, rocking almost under the Grande Falls.  But I tell you, and to my sorrow, I know, she is evil.  She knows not God, nor God her.  You, whose soul is sick, flee her as you would the devil!  Aurore, the Dawn!  I named her, because she came so near the morning.  Aurore!  Ah, God!  She should be named after the blackest hour of a witch’s Sabbath!”

She laughed.  It was the first time Crossman had heard her laugh—­a deep, slow, far-away sound, more like an eerie echo.

“He has a better name for me,” she said, casting Crossman a look whose intimacy made his blood run hot within him. “’The Black Dawn’—­n’est-ce-pas? Though I have heard him call me in the night—­by another name,” with which equivocal statement she swung the axe into the curve of her arm, turned on her heel, and softly closed the door between them.

The Priest turned on him.  “My son,” his eyes searched Crossman’s, “you have not lied to me?”

“No,” he answered steadily.  “Once I called her the Aurora Borealis—­that is all.  To me she seems mysterious and changing, and coloured, like the Northern Lights.”

“She is mysterious and changing and beautiful, but it is not the lights of the North and of Heaven.  She is the feu follet, the will-o’-the-wisp that hovers over what is rotten, and dead.  Send her away, my son; send her away.  Oh, she has left her trail of blood and hatred and malice in my parish, I know.  She has bred feuds; she has sent strong men to the devil, and broken the hearts of good women.  But you will not believe me.  It is to Jakapa I must talk. Mon Dieu! how is it that he let her come!  You are a stranger, but he——­”