A hundred yards above him the stream turned abruptly, and here a strip of forest meadow grew to the water’s edge.  He sprang up the low bank, and stood face to face with the girl.

She had heard his approach, and was waiting for him, a little smile of welcome on her lips.  She had completed her toilet.  She had braided her wonderful hair, and it was gathered in a heavy, shimmering coronet about her head.  There was a flutter of lace at her throat, and little fluffs of it at her wrists.  She was more beautiful, more than ever like the queen of a kingdom as she stood before him now.  And she was alone.  He saw that in his first swift glance.

“You didn’t eat the prunes?” she asked, and for the first time he saw a bit of laughter in her eyes.

“No—­I—­I kicked the fire from under them,” he said.

He caught the significance of her words, and her sudden sidewise gesture.  A short distance from them was a small tent, and on the grass in front of the tent was spread a white cloth, on which was a meal such as he had not looked upon for two years.

“I am glad,” she said, and again her eyes met his with their glow of friendly humour.  “They might have spoiled your appetite, and I have made up my mind that I want you to have dinner with me.  I can’t offer you pie or doughnuts.  But I have a home-made fruit cake, and a pot of jam that I made myself.  Will you join me?”

They sat down, with the feast between them, and the girl leaned over to turn him a cup of tea from a pot that was already made and waiting.  Her lovely head was near him, and he stared with hungry adoration at the thick, shining braids, and the soft white contour of her cheek and neck.  She leaned back suddenly, and caught him.  The words that were on her lips remained unspoken.  The laughter went from her eyes.  In a hot wave the blood flushed his own face.

“Forgive me if I do anything you don’t understand,” he begged.  “For weeks past I have been wondering how I would act when I met white people again.  Perhaps you can’t understand.  But eighteen months up there—­eighteen months without the sound of a white woman’s voice, without a glimpse of her face, with only dreams to live on—­will make me queer for a time.  Can’t you understand—­a little?”

“A great deal,” she replied so quickly that she put him at ease again.  “Back there I couldn’t quite believe you.  I am beginning to now.  You are honest.  But let us not talk of ourselves until after dinner.  Do you like the cake?”

She had given him a piece as large as his fist, and he bit off the end of it.

“Delicious!” he cried instantly.  “Think of it—­nothing but bannock, bannock, bannock for two years, and only six ounces of that a day for the last six months!  Do you care if I eat the whole of it—­the cake, I mean?”

Seriously she began cutting the remainder of the cake into quarters.

“It would be one of the biggest compliments you could pay me,” she said.  “But won’t you have some boiled tongue with it, a little canned lobster, a pickle—­”