of them all.

Presently Monseigneur Lourde saw Fleda leave the Fete and take the road
towards home. There was a sense of excitement in her motions, and he
also had seen that tremulous, embarrassed look in her eyes. It puzzled
him. He did not connect it wholly with Ingolby as Madame Thibadeau
had done. He had lived so long among primitive people that he was more
accustomed to study faces than find the truth from words, and he had
always been conscious that this girl, educated and even intellectual,
was at heart as primitive as the wildest daughter of the tepees of the
North. There was also in her something of that mystery which belongs to
the universal itinerary--that cosmopolitan something which is the native
human.

"She has far to go," the priest said to himself as he turned to greet
Ingolby with a smile, bright and shy, but gravely reproachful, too.

This happened on the day before the collision between the railway-men
and the river-drivers, and the old priest already knew what trouble was
afoot.

There was little Felix Marchand did which was hidden from him. He made
his way to Ingolby to warn him.

As Ingolby now walked in the woods towards Gabriel Druse's house, he
recalled one striking phrase used by the aged priest in reference to the
closing of the railway offices.

"When you strike your camp, put out the fires," was the aphorism.

Ingolby stopped humming to himself as the words came to his memory
again. Bending his head in thought for a moment, he stood still,
cogitating.

"The dear old fellow was right," he said presently aloud with uplifted
head. "I struck camp, but I didn't put out the fires. There's a lot of
that in life."

That is what had happened also to Gabriel Druse and his daughter. They
had struck camp, but had not put out the camp-fires. That which had
been done by the River Starzke came again in its appointed time. The
untended, unguarded fire may spread devastation and ruin, following with
angry freedom the marching feet of those who builded it.

"Yes, you've got to put out your fires when you quit the bivouac,"
continued Ingolby aloud, as he gazed ahead of him through the opening
greenery, beyond which lay Gabriel Druse's home. Where he was the
woods were thick, and here and there on either side it was almost
impenetrable. Few people ever came through this wood. It belonged in
greater part to Gabriel Druse, and in lesser part to the Hudson's Bay
Company and the Government; and as the