These last the man and the girl caught in great numbers, and smoked and piled on long-legged scaffolds.  They were intended as winter food for the dogs, and would constitute a great part of what would be taken along when the journey should commence.

Dick began to walk without his crutches, a very little at a time, grimly, all his old objectless anger returned when the extent of his disability was thus brought home to him.  But always with persistence came improvement.  Each attempt brought its reward in strengthened muscles, freer joints, greater confidence.  At last it could be no longer doubted that by the Indian’s Whitefish Moon he would be as good as ever.  The discovery, by some queer contrariness of the man’s disposition, was avoided as long as possible, and finally but grudgingly admitted.  Yet when at last Dick confessed to himself that his complete recovery was come, his mood suddenly changed.  The old necessity for blind, unreasoning patience seemed at an end.  He could perceive light ahead, and so in the absence of any further need for taut spiritual nerves, he relaxed the strain and strode on more easily.  He played more with the dogs—­of which still his favourite was Billy; occasionally he burst into little snatches of song, and the sound of his whistling was merry in the air.  At length he paused abruptly in his work to fix his quizzical, narrow gaze on the Indian girl.

“Come, Little Sister,” said he, “let us lift the nets.”

She looked up at him, a warm glow leaping to her face.  This was the first time he had addressed her by the customary diminutive of friendship since they had both been members of the Indian camp on the Missinaibie.

They lifted the net together, and half-filled the canoe with the shining fish.  Dick bore himself with the careless good humour of his earlier manner.  The greater part of the time he seemed unconscious of his companion’s presence, but genuinely unconscious, not with the deliberate affront of a pretended indifference.  Under even this negative good treatment the girl expanded with an almost luxuriant gratitude.  Her face lost its stoical mask of imperturbability, and much of her former arch beauty returned.  The young man was blind to these things, for he was in reality profoundly indifferent to the girl, and his abrupt change of manner could in no way be ascribed to any change in his feeling for her.  It was merely the reflex of his inner mood, and that sprang solely from joy over the permission he had given himself again to contemplate taking the Long Trail.

But Sam Bolton, returning that very day from his own long journey, saw at once the alteration in May-may-gwan, and was troubled over it.  He came into camp by the river way where the moss and spruce-needles silenced his footsteps, so he approached unnoticed.  The girl bent over the fire.  A strong glow from the flames showed the stronger glow illuminating her face from within.  She hummed softly a song of the Ojibway language: