So for three days Nepeese worked hard on her new dress and on her birthday she stood before Pierrot in a fashion that took his breath away.  She had piled her hair in great coils on the crown of her head, as Yvonne, the younger of the Englishwomen, had taught her, and in the rich jet of it had half buried a vivid sprig of the crimson fireflower.  Under this, and the glow in her eyes, and the red flush of her lips and cheeks came the wonderful red dress, fitted to the slim and sinuous beauty of her form—­as the style had been two winters ago at Nelson House.  And below the dress, which reached just below the knees—­Nepeese had quite forgotten the proper length, or else her material had run out—­came the coup de maitre of her toilet, real stockings and the gay shoes with high heels!  She was a vision before which the gods of the forests might have felt their hearts stop beating.  Pierrot turned her round and round without a word, but smiling.  When she left him, however, followed by Baree, and limping a little because of the tightness of her shoes, the smile faded from his face, leaving it cold and bleak.

“Mon Dieu,” he whispered to himself in French, with a thought that was like a sharp stab at his heart, “she is not of her mother’s blood—­non.  It is French.  She is—­yes—­like an angel.”

A change had come over Pierrot.  During the three days she had been engaged in her dressmaking, Nepeese had been quite too excited to notice this change, and Pierrot had tried to keep it from her.  He had been away ten days on the trip to Lac Bain, and he brought back to Nepeese the joyous news that M’sieu McTaggart was very sick with pechipoo—­the blood poison—­news that made the Willow clap her hands and laugh happily.  But he knew that the factor would get well, and that he would come again to their cabin on the Gray Loon.  And when next time he came—­

It was while he was thinking of this that his face grew cold and hard, and his eyes burned.  And he was thinking of it on this her birthday, even as her laughter floated to him like a song. dim, in spite of her seventeen years, she was nothing but a child—­a baby!  She could not guess his horrible visions.  And the dread of awakening her for all time from that beautiful childhood kept him from telling her the whole truth so that she might have understood fully and completely.  Non, it should not be that.  His soul beat with a great and gentle love.  He, Pierrot Du Quesne, would do the watching.  And she should laugh and sing and play—­and have no share in the black forebodings that had come to spoil his life.

On this day there came up from the south MacDonald, the government map maker.  He was gray and grizzled, with a great, free laugh and a clean heart.  Two days he remained with Pierrot.  He told Nepeese of his daughters at home, of their mother, whom he worshiped more than anything else on earth—­and before he went on in his quest of the last timber line of Banksian pine, he took pictures of the Willow as he had first seen her on her birthday:  her hair piled in glossy coils, her red dress, the high-heeled shoes.  He carried the negatives on with him, promising Pierrot that he would get a picture back in some way.  Thus fate works in its strange and apparently innocent ways as it spins its webs of tragedy.