In that stifled cry Jan Thoreau’s wife heard the supplication of a dying man.  She did not catch, back of it, the note of a startled beast.  She was herself startled, frightened for a moment by the unexpectedness of it all.

And Blake stared.  This—­the fiddler’s wife!  She was clutching in her hand a brush with which she had been arranging her hair.  The hair, jet black, was wonderful.  Her eyes were still more wonderful to Blake.  She was not an Indian—­not a half-breed—­and beautiful.  The loveliest face he had ever visioned, sleeping or awake, was looking down at him.

With a second gasp, he remembered himself, and his body sagged, and the amazed stare went out of his eyes as he allowed his head to fall a little.  In this movement his cap fell off.  In another moment she was at his side, kneeling in the snow and bending over him.

“You are hurt, m’sieu!”

Her hair fell upon him, smothering his neck and shoulders.  The perfume of it was like the delicate scent of a rare flower in his nostrils.  A strange thrill swept through him.  He did not try to analyze it in those few astonishing moments.  It was beyond his comprehension, even had he tried.  He was ignorant of the finer fundamentals of life, and of the great truth that the case-hardened nature of a man, like the body of an athlete, crumbles fastest under sudden and unexpected change and strain.

He regained his feet slowly and stupidly, assisted by Marie.  They climbed the one step to the door.  As he sank back heavily on the cot, in the room they entered, a thick tress of her hair fell softly upon his face.  He closed his eyes for a space.  When he opened them, Marie was bending over the stove.

And she was Thoreau’s wife!  The instant he had looked up into her face, he had forgotten the fiddler; but he remembered him now as he watched the woman, who stood with her back toward him.  She was as slim as a reed.  Her hair fell to her hips.  He drew a deep breath.  Unconsciously he clenched his hands.  She—­the fiddler’s wife!  The thought repeated itself again and again.  Jan Thoreau, murderer, and this woman—­his wife.

She returned in a moment with hot tea, and he drank with subtle hypocrisy from the cup she held to his lips.

“Sprained my leg,” he said then, remembering his old part, and replying to the questioning anxiety in her eyes.  “Dogs ran away and left me, and I got here just by chance.  A little more and—­”

He smiled grimly, and as he sank back he gave a sharp cry.  He had practised that cry in more than one cabin, and along with it a convulsion of his features to emphasize the impression he labored to make.

“I’m afraid—­I’ll be a trouble to you,” he apologized.  “It’s not broken; but it’s bad, and I won’t be able to move—­soon.  Is Jan at home?”

“No, m’sieu; he is away.”

“Away,” repeated Blake disappointedly.  “Perhaps sometime he has told you about me,” he added with sudden hopefulness.  “I am John Duval.”