Over the handsome features of the youth there spread a deep red flush.

“Forgive me, Ma’amselle,” he said, “my speech was foolish as my heart.  They are both sobered.”

“Then,” said the girl, drawing aside the folds of her dress, “you may sit beside me.”

With a sudden diffidence he sank upon the stone, this handsome boy whose tongue was ever ready and whose heart of a light o’ love had taken toll from every maid in the settlement, and for the first time in his life he had no sprightly word, no quip for his careless tongue.

They sat in silence, and presently he saw that her eyes were again half-closed and the dreaming look had settled back in them.  She had forgotten his presence.

Never before in his experience had a woman sat thus unmoved beside him when he longed to make her speak, and it stilled him with silent wonder.

He thought of the words of Pierre Garcon that day on the river bank when this maid was new to the post, “if there is, I would not be the one to waken it and not be found its master,” and they sent a thrill to his inmost being.

Who would awaken her; he wondered, as he watched the cheek beside him from the tail of his eye, a round womanly cheek, sweet and full and rich as a damask rose with the thick lashes above shining like jet.

Obedient to her silence, he sat still while she dreamed her dream out to its conclusion, and presently she straightened with a little breath like a sigh, unclasped her hands from her knees and turned her glance upon him as if she saw him for the first time.

His head whirled suddenly and he sought for some common word to cover his rare confusion.

“See, Ma’amselle,” he said, pointing, “the well-lashed packs of the fat winter beaver.  Truly they come well laden, these Assiniboines, and we may well thank le bon Dieu for the wealth of skins.  Is it not a heartening sight?”

The eyes of Maren Le Moyne left his face and swept swiftly down the gentle slope to where the Indians had piled their bales of furs.  At the sight they darkened like the waters of a lake when a little wind runs over its surface.

“A heartening sight?  Nay, M’sieu,” she said, shaking her head, “I can find no joy in it.”

“What?”

The trapper was aghast.

“No pleasure in the fruits of a fat season?”

“See the packs of marten, the dark streaks showing a bit at the edges where the fur rounds over the dried skin.  How were those pelts taken, M’sieu?”

“How?  Why, most cunningly, Ma’amselle,—­in traps of the H. B. Company, set with utmost skill, perhaps on a stump above the line of the heavy snows, or balanced nicely at the far end of a slender pole set leaning in the ground.  The delicate hand of a seasoned player must match itself with the forest instinct of these small creatures.  The little pole holds little snow and the scent of the bait calls the marten up, when, snap! it is fast and waiting for the trapper and the lodge of the Assiniboines, the women and the drying.”