peltries, which amounted to three hundred odd; and the
scaffold, on which the dried venison hung out of reach of the wolves,
was a sight to gladden the heart. Only the women grumbled when
Menehwehna gave order to strike camp, for theirs were the heaviest
loads.

Azoka did not grumble. She could count now on Ononwe to help her
with her burden, since, like a sensible girl, she had long since made
up her quarrel with him and they were to be married in the spring on
their return to the village. She had quite forgiven Netawis.
Hers was that delicious stage of love when the heart, itself so
happy, wants all the world to be happy too. Once or twice John
caught her looking at him with eyes a little wistful in their
gladness; he never guessed that she had overheard his secret and
pitied him, but dared not betray herself. Ononwe, possessed with his
new felicity, delighted to talk of it whenever he and John hunted
together.

Did it hurt? Not often; and at the moment not much. But at night,
when sleep would not come, when John lay staring at the chink in the
doorway beyond which the northern lights flickered, then the wound
would revive and ache with the aching silence. Once, only once, he
had started out of sleep to feel his whole body flooded with
happiness; in his dream the curtains of the lodge had parted and
through them Diane had come to him. Standing over his head she had
shaken the snow from her cloak and from her hair, and the scattered
flakes had changed into raindrops, and the raindrops into singing
birds, and the lodge into a roof of sunlit boughs, breaking into
leaf with a scent of English hawthorn, as she stretched out her hands
and knelt and he drew her to his heart. Her cheek was cold from her
long journey; but a warm breeze played beneath the boughs, and under
her falling hair against his shoulder her small hand stole up and
touched his silver armlets. Nay, surely that touch was too real for
any dream. . . .

He had sprung up and pulled aside the curtain; but she was gone.
His eyes searched across a waste where only the snow-wraiths danced,
and far to the north the Aurora flickered with ribbons of ghostly
violet.

Would she come again? Yes, surely, under the stars and across the
folds and hollows of the snow, that vision would return, disturbing
no huddled wild creature, waking no sleeper in the lodge; would lift
the curtain and stretch out both hands and be gathered to him.
Though it came but onc