Outside, the long Northern twilight with its beautiful shadows of
crimson was descending from the upper regions of the east A light
wind breathed up-river from the bay. The Free Trader drew his
lungs full of the evening air.

"Just the same, I think she will come," said he to himself. "_La
Longue Traverse_, even at once, is a pretty slim chance. But this
second string to my bow is better. I believe I'll get the
rifle--if she comes!"

Chapter Seven

Virginia ran quickly up the narrow stairs to her own room, where
she threw herself on the bed and buried her face in the pillows.

As she had said, she was very much shaken. And, too, she way
afraid.

She could not understand. Heretofore she had moved among the men
around her, pure, lofty, serene. Now at one blow all this
crumbled. The stranger had outraged her finer feelings. He had
insulted her father in her very presence;--for this she was angry.
He had insulted herself;--for this she was afraid. He had demanded
that she meet him again; but this--at least in the manner he had
suggested--should not happen. And yet she confessed to herself a
delicious wonder as to what he would do next, and a vague desire to
see him again in order to find out. That she could not
successfully combat this feeling made her angry at herself. And so
in mingled fear, pride, anger, and longing she remained until
Wishkobun, the Indian woman, glided in to dress her for the dinner
whose formality she and her father consistently maintained. She
fell to talking the soft Ojibway dialect, and in the conversation
forgot some of her emotion and regained some of her calm.

Her surface thoughts, at least, were compelled for the moment to
occupy themselves with other things. The Indian woman had to tell
her of the silver fox brought in by Mu-hi-ken, an Indian of her own
tribe; of the retort Achille Picard had made when MacLane had
taunted him; of the forest fire that had declared itself far to the
east, and of the theories to account for it where no campers had
been. Yet underneath the rambling chatter Virginia was aware of
something new in her consciousness, something delicious but as yet
vague. In the gayest moment of her half-jesting, half-affectionate
gossip with the Indian woman, she felt its uplift catching her
breath from beneath, so that for the tiniest instant she would
pause as though in readiness for some message which nevertheless
delayed. A fresh delight in the