-quelle affaire et
quelle drolerie!"

She laughed. Taken aback in spite of his anger, he stared at her. How
good her French accent was! If she would only speak altogether in
that beloved language, he could smother much malice. She was beautiful
and--well, who could tell? Ingolby was wounded and blind, maybe for
ever, and women are always with the top dog--that was his theory.
Perhaps her apparent dislike of him was only a mood. Many women that
he had conquered had been just like that. They had begun by disliking
him--from Lil Sarnia down--and had ended by being his. This girl
would never be his in the way that the others had been, but--who could
tell?--perhaps he would think enough of her to marry her? Anyway, it was
worth while making such a beauty care for him. The other kind of women
were easy enough to get, and it would be a piquant thing to have one
irreproachable affaire. He had never had one; he was not sure that any
girl or woman he had ever known had ever loved him, and he was certain
that he had never loved any girl or woman. To be in love would be a new
and piquant experience for him. He did not know love, but he knew what
passion was. He had ever been the hunter. This trail might be dangerous,
too, but he would take his chances. He had seen her dislike of him
whenever they had met in the past, and he had never tried to soften her
attitude towards him. He had certainly whistled, but she had not come.
Well, he would whistle again--a different tune.

"You speak French much?" he asked almost eagerly, the insolence gone
from his tone. "Why didn't I know that?"

"I speak French in Manitou," she replied, "but nearly all the French
speak English there, and so I speak more English than French."

"Yes, that's it," he rejoined almost angrily again. "The English will
not learn French, will not speak French. They make us learn English,
and--"

"If you don't like the flag and the country, why don't you leave it?"
she interrupted, hardening, though she had meant to try and win him over
to Ingolby's side.

His eyes blazed. There was something almost real in the man after all.

"The English can kill us, they can grind us to the dust," he rejoined in
French, "but we will not leave the land which has always been ours. We
settled it; our fathers gave their lives for it in a thousand places.
The Indians killed them, the rivers and the storms, the plague and the
fire, the sickness and the cold wiped them out. They were bu