wolves howled across barren wastes.

Just now the girl stood ankle-deep in green grasses, a bath of
sunlight falling about her, a tingle of salt wind humming up the
river from the bay's offing. She was clad in gray wool, and wore
no hat. Her soft hair, the color of ripe wheat, blew about her
temples, shadowing eyes of fathomless black. The wind had brought
to the light and delicate brown of her complexion a trace of color
to match her lips whose scarlet did not fade after the ordinary and
imperceptible manner into the tinge of her skin, but continued
vivid to the very edge; her eyes were wide and unseeing. One hand
rested idly on the breech of an ornamented bronze field-gun.

McDonald, the chief trader, passed from the house to the store
where his bartering with the Indians was daily carried on; the
other Scotchman in the Post, Galen Albret, her father, and the head
Factor of all this region, paced back and forth across the veranda
of the factory, caressing his white beard; up by the stockade,
young Achille Picard tuned his whistle to the note of the curlew;
across the meadow from the church wandered Crane, the little Church
of England missionary, peering from short-sighted pale blue eyes;
beyond the coulee, Sarnier and his Indians _chock-chock-chocked_
away at the seams of the long coast-trading bateau. The girl saw
nothing, heard nothing. She was dreaming, she was trying to
remember.

In the lines of her slight figure, in its pose there by the old gun
over the old, old river, was the grace of gentle blood, the pride
of caste. Of all this region her father was the absolute lord,
feared, loved, obeyed by all its human creatures. When he went
abroad, he travelled in a state almost mediaeval in its
magnificence; when he stopped at home, men came to him from the
Albany, the Kenogami, the Missinaibe, the Mattagami, the
Abitibi--from all the rivers of the North--to receive his commands.
Way was made for him, his lightest word was attended. In his house
dwelt ceremony, and of his house she was the princess.
Unconsciously she bad taken the gracious habit of command. She had
come to value her smile, her word; to value herself. The lady of a
realm greater than the countries of Europe, she moved serene, pure,
lofty amid dependants.

And as the lady of this realm she did honor to her father's
guests--sitting stately behind the beautiful silver service, below
the portrait of the Company's greatest explorer, Sir Geor