As the sled disappeared among the trees, bearing the queerly bundled figure of the Priest, the Boss unhooked his snowshoes from the wall.  He seemed to have forgotten Crossman’s presence, but as he turned, his smouldering eyes lighted on him.  He straightened with a jerk.  “What did he mean when he say, she have bewitch you?” As always, when excited, his somewhat precise English slipped back into the idiom of the habitant.  “By Gar!  Boss or no Boss, I pack you out if I catch you.  We make no jealousies for any one, not where I am.  You come here for your health—­hein? Well, better you keep this place healthy for you.”

As if further to complicate the situation, the door opened to admit the woman herself.  She closed it, leaned against the wall, looking from one to the other with mocking eyes.

“Well, do I leave?  Am I to pack?  Have you wash the hand of me to please the Cure, yes?”

Jakapa turned on her brutally.  “Get to the cook-house!  Wash your dish!  Did I give orders to Antoine to leave hees work?  By Gar!  I feel like I take you and break you in two!” He moved his knotted hands with a gesture of destruction.  There was something so sinister in the action that, involuntarily, Crossman cried out a startled warning.  Her laugh tinkled across it.

“Bah!” she shrugged.  “If you wish to kill, why do you not kill those who make the interferre?  Are you a man?  What is it, a cassock, that it so protect a man?  But me, because I do not wear a woman’s skirt, you will break me, hey? Me! Nevair mind, I prefer this man.  He at least make no big talk.”  She slipped her arm through Crossman’s, letting her fingers play down from his wrist to his finger-tips—­and the thrill of it left him tongue-tied and helpless.

Jakapa cursed and crouched low.  He seemed about to hurl himself upon the pair before him.  Again she laughed, and her tingling, searching fingers stole slowly over his throbbing pulses.

She released Crossman’s arm with a jerk, and snapped the fingers that had just caressed him in the face of the furious lumberman. “Allons! Must I forever have no better revenge but to knife one paper doll?  Am I to be hounded like a beast, and threatened wherever I go?  I am tired of this dead camp.  I think I go me down the river.”  She paused a moment in her vehemence.  Her next words came almost in a whisper:  “Unless you can cross the trail to Chaumiere Noire—­then, maybe, I stay with you—­I say—­maybe.”  With a single swooping movement of her strong young arm she swept the door open, and came face to face with Antoine Marceau.  “What, thou?” she said airily.

He nodded.  “Shall I go back, or do you want that I go to the other side?” he asked the Foreman.

“Go to the devil!” growled Jakapa, and slinging his snowshoes over his arm, he stamped out.

“Tiens!” said Antoine.  “He is mad, the Boss.”

“I think we are all mad,” said Crossman.