“Hush!” said Maren, catching the hand at her knee, a shaking hand more slender than her own; “hush, my friend!  You break my heart anew.  I know the inmost grace of you, the glory of the love you tell, and be it of heaven or earth, of angel or man, I would to the Good God there was yet life enough within me to buy it with my own!  I have seen naught so holy, so worth all price, in the years of my life.  It is dear to my heart as that life itself.  Dear as yourself, my more than friend.”

In all tenderness she stooped from her fair height and laid her arm around the shoulders of the youth, drew his head against the beadwork of McElroy’s gift, and kissed him upon the lips,—­once, twice, yearningly, as a mother kisses a weakling child.

At that moment there came, borne on a waking breeze of the night, the sound of the tom-toms, the yapping of many throats.

“The gods beckon,” she said sadly; “this life and love is all awry and we who are bound against our will must but abide the end.”

“Aye,” whispered young Dupre, from the warm depths of her shoulder, and his voice was like gold for joy; “aye,—­the end.”

He rose swiftly.

“Forgive the passion that could forget the great business of the night,” he said, and they went forward, though Maren’s fingers still rested in his clasp.

Through the thinning wood which neared the stream presently there came a glow and then the shine of a great fire ahead, with massed figures that leaped and sprang, fantastic as a witch’s carnival, and a roar of frightful voices.

“Stay now, Ma’amselle!” begged Dupre, at last, for he had caught a sight that shook him through and through; “stay you here in the wood while I go forward!”

But his protest was lost on the maid.  Eagerly she was pushing on, hid by the shadows,—­nearer and nearer, until suddenly she stopped and stared upon the scene, the fingers in his clasp gripping Dupre’s hand like steel.

“God!  God!  God!” breathed Maren Le Moyne at the forest’s edge as she looked once more upon the face of the factor of Fort de Seviere.

Unspeakable was that scene.  All reason had fled from the North savages.

What small veneer of docility had been spread over them by their three years’ dealing with the Hudson’s Bays and their intercourse with the quiet and tractable Assiniboines, had vanished.  They were themselves as nature made them, cruel to the point of art.

The work of the day was visible upon the captives tied to their stakes on either side the fire.  Half-clothed, for they had been thrown into a lodge to recuperate for the night’s festivities, they stood in weariness, that from time to time drooped one head or the other, only to lift again with taunt and jeer.

De Courtenay, his thin face between the curls thinner, was still facing the mob with the smile that would not down.  McElroy was as Maren had ever known him, patient and strong, and from time to time he tossed up the light hair falling in his eyes.