honest hair in his head.  It’s the one criminal rendezvous I know of in all this North country.  Bad Indians who have lost credit at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s posts go to Thoreau’s.  Whites and half-breeds who have broken the laws are harboured there.  A dozen trappers are murdered each winter for their furs, and the assassins are among Thoreau’s men.  One of these days there is going to be a big clean-up.  Meanwhile, they are unpleasant company.  There is a deep swamp between our house and Thoreau’s, so that during the open water seasons it means we are a hundred miles away from them by canoe.  When winter comes we are only thirty-five miles, as the sledge-dogs run.  I don’t like it.  You can snow-shoe the distance in a few hours.”

“I know of such a place far to the west,” replied Philip.  “Both the Hudson’s Bay Company and Reveillon Freres have threatened to put it out of business, but it still remains.  Perhaps that is owned by Lang, too.”

He had joined Adare at the window.  The next moment both men were staring at the same object in a mutual surprise.  Into the white snow space between the house and the forest there had walked swiftly the slim, red-clad figure of Josephine, her face turned to the forest, her hair falling in a long braid down her back.

The master of Adare chuckled exultantly.

“There goes our little Red Riding Hood!” he rumbled.  “She beat us after all, Philip.  She is going after the dogs!”

Philip’s heart was beating wildly.  A better opportunity for seeing Josephine alone could not have come to him.  He feared that his voice might betray him as he laid a hand on Adare’s arm.

“If you will excuse me I will join her,” he said.  “I know it doesn’t seem just right to tear off in this way, but—­you see—­”

Adare interrupted him with one of his booming laughs.

“Go, my lad.  I understand.  If it was Miriam instead of Mignonne running away like that, John Adare wouldn’t be waiting this long.”

Philip turned and left the room, every pulse in his body throbbing with an excitement roused by the knowledge that the hour had come when Josephine would give herself to him forever, or doom him to that hopelessness for which Jean Croisset had told him to prepare himself.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In his eagerness to join Josephine Philip had reached the outer door before it occurred to him that he was without hat or coat and had on only a pair of indoor moccasin slippers.  He would still have gone on, regardless of this utter incongruity of dress, had he not known that John Adare would see him through the window.  He partly opened the hall door and looked out.  Josephine was halfway to the forest.  He turned swiftly back to his room, threw on a coat, put his moccasins on over the soft caribou skin slippers, caught up his cap, and hurried back to the door.  Josephine had disappeared into the edge of the forest.  He held himself to a walk until he reached the cover of the spruce, but no sooner was he beyond Adare’s vision than he began to run.  Three or four hundred yards in the forest he overtook Josephine.