It was evident that Pierre was vastly taken with his partner.  He rolled his eyes about in a languishing and alarming fashion; he twisted and wriggled like a contortionist, and occasionally varied the lightning-like shuffle of his own feet by kicking a good deal higher than his own head.  He called upon his partner to “stay with it” in almost inarticulate gasps.  “Whoop her up!” he yelled.  “Git thar, Jean!  Bravo, ma belle!  Whoo-sh!”

It was a very nightmare of grotesqueness to Dorothy.  The moonlight night, the black houses and pines looming up against the snowy landscape, the red glare in the immediate foreground caused by the burning buildings, the gesticulating figure of her half-breed partner, the excited, picturesque onlookers, the vagaries of the fiddler and the never-ceasing sound of the Indian drum, all tinged with an air of unreality and a sense of the danger that menaced, made up a situation that could not easily be eclipsed.  And she was dancing and trying to make herself believe she was enjoying it, opposite a crazy half-breed rebel!  She recognised him now as the dandy Pierre, the admiration of the fair sex in his own particular world on the Saskatchewan.  If only any of her people could see her now, what would they think of her?

But was this wild dance to go on for ever?  Already she was becoming warm in her fur coat, despite the lowness of the temperature.  There was a limit to her powers of endurance, albeit she was stronger than the average girl.  The onlookers, charmed with the grace of this unknown dancer, were noisy in their applause.  She must feign fatigue and drop out, letting some one else take her place.

With an inclination of her head to her partner she did so, but he, doubtless captivated by the dark, laughing eyes he saw gazing at him above the deep fur collar, did not care to continue the dance with some one whose eyes might not be so bewitching, and dropped out also.  The half-breed girl, his former partner, who up till now had contented herself by gazing sulkily from lowering brows upon this strange rival, was at last stirred by still deeper feeling.  She came close up to Dorothy, and gazed searchingly into her face.  At the same moment they recognised each other, for often had Dorothy admired the full, wildflower beauty, the delicate olive skin, and the dark, soulful eyes of this part descendant of a noble Gallic race and a barbaric people, and spoken kindly to her.  The half-savage Katie had looked upon her white sister as a superior being from another world, and had almost made up her mind that she loved her, but she loved Pierre La Chene in a different way, and when that sort of love comes into one’s life, all else has to give place to it With a quick movement she drew down Dorothy’s fur collar, exposing her face.

“Voila!” she cried; “one of the enemy—­the daughter of Douglas!”