in
general, flamed out in a determination to take her with him if possible.
It would conclusively define, state, his attitude toward "men herding
like cattle." He did not stop to consider what it might define for Fanny
Gilkan. In the stir of his rebellious self there was no pause for
vicarious approximations. If he thought of her at all it was in the
indirect opinion that she was better without such a noodle as Dan Hesa
threatened to become.

"I'd get two horses from the Forge," he continued, apparently to his
mildly speculative self; "a few things, not much would be necessary.
That gun you carry," he addressed Fanny indirectly, "is too heavy. I'll
get you a lighter, bound in brass."

She repeated sombrely, leaning with elbows on the table, her chin in her
hands, "And afterwards--"

"I thought you were free of that," he observed; "it sounds like the
town women, the barnyard crowd. I thought you were an independent
person. Certainly," he went on coldly, "you can't mistake my attitude. I
like you, but I am not in the least interested in any way that--that
jour mother might appreciate. I am neither a seducer nor the type that
marries."

"I understand that, Howat," she assured him; "and I think, I'm not sure
but I think, that what you mean wouldn't bother me either. Anyhow it
shouldn't spoil the fun of our trip. But no one else in the world would
believe that simple truth. If you could stay there, in those splendid
woods or a world like them, why, it would be heaven. But you have to
come back, you have to live on, perhaps for a great while, in the world
of Shadrach and Myrtle Forge. I'm not sure that I'd refuse if you asked
me to go, Howat. I just don't know if a woman can stand alone, for
that's what it would come to afterward, against a whole lifeful of
misjudgment. It might be better in the end, for everybody, if she
continued home, made the best of things with the others."

"You may possibly be right," he told her with a sudden resumption of
indifference. After all, it was unimportant whether or not Fanny Gilkan
went with him to the source of the stream he had discovered. Every one,
it became more and more evident, was alike, monotonous. He wondered
again, lounging back against the wall, about the French forts, outposts
in a vast wilderness. There was an increasing friction between the
Province and France, the legacy of King George's War, but Howat Penny's
allegiance to place was as conspicuous by its absence as