Had he taken his fiddle along with him?  Yes—­always that.  Next to herself he loved his violin.  Oo-oo—­no, no—­she was not jealous of the violin!  Blake laughed—­such a big, healthy, happy laugh, with an odd tremble in it.  He stroked her hair again, and his fingers lay for an instant against her warm cheek.

And then, quite casually, he played his second big card.

“A man was found dead on the trail yesterday,” he said.  “Some one killed him.  He had a bullet through his lung.  He was the mail-runner, Francois Breault.”

It was then, when he said that Breault had been murdered, that Blake’s hand touched Marie’s cheek and fell to her shoulder.  It was too dark in the cabin to see.  But under his hand he felt her grow suddenly rigid, and for a moment or two she seemed to stop breathing.  In the gloom Blake’s lips were smiling.  He had struck, and he needed no light to see the effect.

“Francois—­Breault!” he heard her breathe at last, as if she was fighting to keep something from choking her.  “Francois Breault—­dead—­killed by someone—­”

She rose slowly.  His eyes followed her, a shadow in the gloom as she moved toward the stove.  He heard her strike a match, and when she turned toward him again in the light of the oil-lamp, her face was pale and her eyes were big and staring.  He swung himself to the edge of the cot, his pulse beating with the savage thrill of the inquisitor.  Yet he knew that it was not quite time for him to disclose himself—­not quite.  He did not dread the moment when he would rise and tell her that he was not injured, and that he was not M’sieu Duval, but Corporal Blake of the Royal Mounted Police.  He was eager for that moment.  But he waited—­discreetly.  When the trap was sprung there would be no escape.

“You are sure—­it was Francois Breault?” she said at last.

He nodded.

“Yes, the mail-runner.  You knew him?”

She had moved to the table, and her hand was gripping the edge of it.  For a space she did not answer him, but seemed to be looking somewhere through the cabin walls—­a long way off.  Ferret-like, he was watching her, and saw his opportunity.  How splendidly fate was playing his way!

He rose to his feet and hobbled painfully to her, a splendid hypocrite, a magnificent dissembler.  He seized her hand and held it in both his own.  It was small and soft, but strangely cold.

“Ma cheri—­my dear child—­what makes you look like that?  What has the death of Francois Breault to do with you—­you and Jan?”

It was the voice of a friend, a brother, low, sympathetic, filled just enough with anxiety.  Only last winter, in just that way, it had won the confidence and roused the hope of Pierrot’s wife, over on the Athabasca.  In the summer that followed they hanged Pierrot.  Gently Blake spoke the words again.  Marie’s lips trembled.  Her great eyes were looking at him—­straight into his soul, it seemed.