caressing, but he could not understand her words. The man lifted his
head, and he recognized the swarthy, clear-cut features of a French
half-breed. He moved away as quietly as he had come.

The girl's voice stopped him.

"And that is Churchill, Pierre--the Churchill you have told me of,
where the ships come in?"

"Yes, that is Churchill, Jeanne."

For a moment there was silence. Then, clear and low, with a wild,
sobbing note in her voice that thrilled Philip, the girl cried:

"And I hate it, Pierre. I hate it--hate it--hate it!"

Philip stepped out boldly from the rock.

"And I hate it, too," he said.

VI

Scarce had he spoken when he would have given much to have recalled his
words, wrung from his lips by that sobbing note of loneliness, of
defiance, of half pain in the girl's voice. It was the same note, the
same spirit crying out against his world that he had listened to in the
moaning of the surf as it labored to carry away the dead, and in the
wind that sighed in the spruce-tops below the mountain, only now it was
the spirit speaking through a human voice. Every fiber in his body
vibrated in response to it, and he stood with bared head, filled with a
wild desire to make these people understand, and yet startled at the
effect which his appearance had produced.

The girl faced him, her eyes shining with sudden fear. Quicker than her
own was the movement of the half-breed. In a flash he was upon his
feet, his dark face tense with action, his right hand gripping at
something in his belt as he bent toward the figure in the center of the
rock. His posture was that of an animal ready to spring. Close beside
him gleamed the white fangs of the wolf-dog. The girl leaned over and
twisted her fingers in the tawny hair that bristled on the dog's neck.
Philip heard her speak, but she did not move her eyes from his face. It
was the tableau of a moment, tense, breathless. The only thing that
moved was the shimmer of steel. Philip caught the gleam of it under the
half-breed's hand.

"Don't do that, M'sieur," he said, pointing at the other's belt. "I am
sorry that I disturbed you. Sometimes I come up here--alone--to smoke
my pipe and listen to the sea down there. I heard you say that you hate
Churchill, and I hate it. That is why I spoke."

He turned to the girl.

"I am sorry. I beg your pardon."

He looked at her with new wonderment. She had tossed back her loose
hair, and stood tall and straight in the m