This continued brooding was not without its effect upon the girl, and slowly but surely destroyed her sense of proportion.  No longer was the education and civilization of the Indians the uppermost thought in her mind.  With Lapierre, she came to regard the crushing of MacNair’s power as the most important and altogether desirable undertaking that could possibly be consummated.

While in this frame of mind, just at sunset of a keen October day, the cry of “la brigade! la brigade!” reached her ears as she sat alone in her room in the cottage, and rushing to the river bank she joined the Indians who swarmed to the water’s edge to welcome the huge freight canoe that had rounded the point below the clearing.  Chloe clapped her hands in sheer joy and relief, for there, proud and erect, in the bow of the canoe stood Lapierre, and behind him from bank to bank the Yellow Knife fairly swarmed with other full-freighted canoes.  The supplies had arrived!

Even as the bow of his canoe scraped the bank, Lapierre was at her side.  Chloe felt her hand pressed between his—­felt the grip of his strong fingers, and flushed deeply as she realized that not alone because of the supplies was she glad that he had come.  And then, his voice was in her ears, and she was listening as he told her how good it was to stand once more at her side, and look into the face whose image had spurred him to almost super-human effort, throughout the days and the nights of the long river trail.

Lightly she answered him, and Lapierre’s heart bounded at the warmth of her welcome.  He turned with a word to his canoemen, and Chloe noted with admiration, how one and all they sprang to do his bidding.  She marvelled at his authority.  Why did these men leap to obey his slightest command, when LeFroy, to obtain even the half-hearted obedience she required of her Indians, was forced to brow-beat and bully them?  Her heart warmed to the man as she thought of the slovenly progress of her school.  Here was one who could help her.  One who could point with the finger of a master of men to the weak spots in her system.

Suddenly her brow clouded.  For, as she looked upon Lapierre, the words of MacNair flashed through her mind, as he stood weak from his wounds, in the dimness of her fire-lit room.  Her eyes hardened, and unconsciously her chin thrust outward, as she realized that before she could ask this man’s aid, there were things he must explain.

Darkness settled, and at a word from Lapierre, fires flared out on the beach and in the clearing, and by their light the long line of canoemen conveyed the pieces upon their heads into the wide door of the storehouse.  It was a weird, fantastic scene.  The long line of pack-laden men, toiling up the bank between the rows of flaring fires, to disappear in the storehouse; and the long line returning empty-handed to toil again, to the storehouse.  After a time Lapierre called LeFroy to his side and uttered a few terse commands.  The man nodded, and took Lapierre’s place at the head of the steep slope to the river.  The quarter-breed turned to the girl.