“Yes.  And those hundreds of beaver, M’sieu?”

Marc Dupre’s eyes were shining and the red in his cheeks flushing with pleasure.

What more to a man’s liking than the exploitation of knowledge gained first-hand in the pursuit of his life’s work?

“Again the trap,” he said, “set this time at the edge of a stream where the beaver huts peek through the ice, or lift their tops above the open water.  Neatly they are set, cunning as an Indian himself; hidden in the soft slime at the margin if the water runs, waiting with open jaws in the small runway above the dam where the creatures come out from the swim.  A sleek head lifting above the ripples a scrambling foot or two, —­snap! again the price of a pound and a half of powder, a tie of tobacco.  No footmark must the hunter leave, Ma’amselle, unsplashed with water, no tainting touch of a hand ungloved on chain or stake or trap itself.  Ah! one must know the woods and the stream, the cold and the snow and the winds.”

“You know them, M’sieu, I have no doubt,” said Maren, “for you follow the trapping trail.  And those beautiful silver fox, frosty and fine as the sparkle of a winter morning?  The heavy hides of the bear, soft and glossy and thick as a folded blanket?”

“All the trap,—­unless the latter drops through the flimsy roof of some well-hidden dead-fall, covered with brush.”

The girl was not looking at him, her glance being still on the bustling camp below.  The fingers on her knee were laced tight together.

Now she began to speak in a low voice, deep and even.

“Aye!  All you have said is true.  Wealth, indeed, is in those packs, and patience and cunning and utmost skill, defiance of the snows and the crackling cold, long miles on snowshoes and the hardships of the trail, the nights in the bough-tied huts, the pack galling the shoulders.  But what is all this beside that which waits the runner of the trail at every ‘set’ in those many miles?  Here he finds his leaning-pole.  There have been little tracks up its slim roadway, but those were covered by the fall of three days back and the little creature who made them hangs there at the end, three small feet beating the cold air feebly, a tiny head squirming from side to side, two dull black eyes set at the distorted world.  He has caught his marten.  It has not frozen, for the snow was light and the forest still and thick, and three days have passed, M’sieu.  Three days!  Mon Dieu!  How much were those three days worth?  The trapper taps the squirming head and puts the bit of fur in his pack-bag.  On to the next.  The beaver?  Dead, M’sieu, thanks to the good God, drowned in its own sweet water.  The pack is heavy with small bodies ere the Assiniboine reaches the place where he has laid his trap for the silver fox.  And what greets him here?  Only a foot gnawed off in the silence of the day and the night, and some beauty gone staggering away to lie and suffer with starvation in the cold.”