Again he would fancy himself back in De Seviere and always there was De Courtenay with his smiling face and tantalizing beauty.

“Welcome, M’sieu, to our post!  Seldom do we meet so gay a guest!”

Often the wandering words would stumble among his accounts at the factory and he would give directions to the clerks, and then Ridgar’s name would come, only to carry him instantly to the camp of the savages on Deer River.

“Edmonton,—­friend of my heart,—­alone! and you pass me without speech!  Ah,—­that look!  That look!  I’d stake my soul—­”

And once in the cool twilight of an ended day, with the tall trees above and the river lapping below, he cried out her name,

“Maren!” and once again, “Maren!” with a world of change between the two words.

The first plunged the girl’s heart to her throat with its passion, the second chilled her like a cool wind.

And all at once he said, after a pause, “What is it, little one?”

So passed the days of the return.

Hour by hour the bright waters of the lake spoke to the girl with voices of regret and sadness.  The blue sky above seemed to mirror the dark face of Marc Dupre, the wind from the shores to be his low voice, each passing shadow among the trees his slender figure returning from the hunt for her.

Her heart was sore that Fate had willed it so, and yet, looking down at the face of this man at her feet, she knew it had to be and that she would do again all that she had done.

And ever before her passed the scornful face of the fair woman who had set the little undertone to all the world.

It troubled her, and for hours together she sat in silence reasoning it all out, while Mowbray’s men dipped the shining blades and here and there the voyageurs and Indians who wore no feathers sang snatches of song, now a chanson of the trail and rapid, again a wordless monotony of savage notes.

The evening camps were short spaces of blessed quietude and converse when Sheila O’Halloran sat beside her and they talked of many things,—­ chiefly the dear little Island whose green sod would soon again receive the feet of “herself an’ Terence.”

“’Tis thankful I am, me dear, to be out av this forsaken land alive wid me hair on me head instid av on a hoop painted green wid little red arrows on th’ stretched shkin inside!  ‘Tis a sorry counthry an’ fit f’r no woman, but whin Terence must come on some mysterious business av th’ government,—­an’ niver, till this minute, accushla, do I know whut it is,—­a cryin’ shame ’tis, too, wid me, his devoted wife!—­I must come along or die.  Wurra!  Many’s th’ time I thought I’d do th’ thrick here!  But now are th’ dangers passin’ wid ivery mile,—­hark to th’ men singin’!  ‘Tis bad business whin men do not sing at th’ day’s work.  ’Tis glad I am f’r safe deliverance from that counthry av nightmares wid its outlandish name,—­Athabasca,—­where Terence must moon from post to post av th’ Hudson’s Bay—­”