She was like some young priestess as she stood in the westering light on the green-fringed shore, one hand caught in the buckskin fringe at her throat and her eyes on Mr. Mowbray’s upright face.

“Upon my word, Madame—?” he said when she had finished.

“Ma’amselle, M’sieu,” she corrected simply.

“Ma’amselle,—­your pardon,—­upon my word, have I never seen such appalling courage!  Do you not know that you go upon a quest as hopeless as death?  This tribe,—­I have heard a deal too much about them, and once they came to York two seasons back,—­are unlike any others of the Indians of the country.  Ruled by a peculiar justice which takes ’a skin for a skin’—­not ten or an hundred as do the Blackfeet or the Sioux,—­ they yet surpass all others in the cruelty of that taking.  Have you not heard tales of this surpassing cruelty, Ma’amselle?”

“Aye, we have heard.  It hastens our going.  M’sieu the factor awaits that cruelty in its extremest manner with the reaching of the Pays d’en Haut.”

“Mother of God!” said Mr. Mowbray wonderingly.  “And yet,—­I see!”

“And he is Hudson’s Bay, M’sieu,” said the girl sharply; “a good factor.  Would the Company not make an effort to save such, think you?”

Mr. Mowbray stood a moment, many moments, thinking with a line drawn deep between his eyes.  Out on the burnished water the canoes lay idly, the red kerchiefs of the trappers making bright points of colour against the blue background.

Presently he said slowly

“What yon ask is against all precedent, Ma’amselle, and I may lose my head for tampering with my orders,—­but I will see what can be done.”

The brigade drew in, and when dusk fell upon the wilderness a dozen fires kept company with the lone little spiral from Dupre’s camp.

Sitting upon the shingle with her hands clasped hard on her knees, Maren shook her head when the young trapper brought her the breast of a grouse, roasted brown, along with tea and pemmican from the packs of the H. B. men.

“I thank you, my friend,” she said uncertainly; “but I cannot—­not now.  Not until I know, M’sieu.  Without many hands at the paddles how can we overtake the Nakonkirhirinons?”

Thus she sat, alone among men, staring into the fire, and it seemed as if the heart in her breast would burst with its anxiety.  A woman was at all times a thing of overwhelming interest in the wilderness, and such a woman as this drew every eye in the brigade to feast upon her beauty, each according to the nature of the man, either furtively, with tentative admiration, or openly, with boldness of daring.

And presently, after the meal was over, she saw Mr. Mowbray gather his men in a group.  For a few moments he spoke to them, and a ripple of words, of ejaculations and exclamations, went across the assemblage like a wave.

“Nom de Dieu!  Not alone?”

“To the Pay d’en Haut,—­those two?”