of this
day O'Grady had refused to drink. He was stripped to the waist. His
laugh was louder. Hatred as well as triumph glittered in his eyes, for
to-day Jan Larose looked him coolly and squarely in the face, and
nodded whenever he passed. It was almost noon when Jan spoke a few low
words to his watchful Indian and walked to the top of the cedar-capped
ridge that sheltered Porcupine City from the north winds.

From this ridge he could look straight into the north--the north where
he was born. Only the Cree knew that for five nights he had slept, or
sat awake, on the top of this ridge, with his face turned toward the
polar star, and his heart breaking with loneliness and grief. Up there,
far beyond where the green-topped forests and the sky seemed to meet,
he could see a little cabin nestling under the stars--and Marie. Always
his mind traveled back to the beginning of things, no matter how hard
he tried to forget--even to the old days of years and years ago when he
had toted the little Marie around on his back, and had crumpled her
brown curls, and had revealed to her one by one the marvelous mysteries
of the wilderness, with never a thought of the wonderful love that was
to come. A half frozen little outcast brought in from the deep snows
one day by Marie's father, he became first her playmate and
brother--and after that lived in a few swift years of paradise and
dreams. For Marie he had made of himself what he was. He had gone to
Montreal. He had learned to read and write, he worked for the Company,
he came to know the outside world, and at last the Government employed
him. This was a triumph. He could still see the glow of pride and love
in Marie's beautiful eyes when he came home after those two years in
the great city. The Government sent for him each autumn after that.
Deep into the wilderness he led the men who made the red and black
lined maps. It was he who blazed out the northern limit of Banksian
pine, and his name was in Government reports down in black and
white--so that Marie and all the world could read.

One day he came back--and he found Clarry O'Grady at the Cummins'
cabin. He had been there for a month with a broken leg. Perhaps it was
the dangerous knowledge of the power of her beauty--the woman's
instinct in her to tease with her prettiness, that led to Marie's
flirtation with O'Grady. But Jan could not understand, and she played
with fire--the fire of two hearts instead of one. The world went to