father!"

"Oh, you don't, eh?" sneered the trader. "There are many years ahead of
us both, and the time may come when you will want my help! And you,"
turning to Danvers, "I'll get even with you! If I can't win Eva
Thornhill, you never shall, mark my words! I'll----"

"You dare to threaten--us? Get out of our way!"

With a touch Danvers quickly started both his horse and Miss
Thornhill's. After a brief interval he slowed the pace.

"And now, darling, you must let me care for you always," urged Philip,
after he had restored Eva to some semblance of calm. "Let me speak to
your father to-night!" He talked on, encouraged by the girl's silent
yielding and the long kiss he laid on her willing lips. She was told of
his prospects, both in the army and in England, where his father and
sister lived. He told her of his lovely American mother, who had died so
young. He had enlisted, he said, for sheer love of a military life.

"Father wanted to buy a commission for me, but I knew I could get
one--without money!" was the modest close.

The afternoon together ended by Philip's putting his mother's engagement
ring on Eva's hand for their plighted troth. She looked at it a moment.

"I cannot wear this now," she said. "If we are engaged, I want it to be
kept secret until next spring. Don't you see, dear," she rubbed her face
caressingly on Philip's impatient hand, "that it will be better so?
Father will be furious when he knows that I've given Mr. Burroughs his
conge, and you'll come into your fortune when you are twenty-one next
June. Father'll never consent until then. He'll make me miserable all
winter!"

[Illustration]

Chapter IV

The Return to Fort Benton

That autumn visit of Eva Thornhill glowed in Danvers' heart like the
riotous colors in the gray landscape that precedes the frost of winter;
for winter was coming, her visit was over, and Eva and her father were
to leave for Fort Benton on the morrow. Danvers inwardly chafed under
the secrecy imposed upon their engagement, and yet it would have been
hard for him to have spoken of his love for Eva, even to the sympathetic
Latimer.

But he longed to see more of her, to drink his fill of her beauty and
fix her image in his memory that he might not famish in his loneliness
during the dreary winter months when they should be separated.

Though it was hard to evade her father, Eva Thornhill granted her lover
a last interview. His reserve, now softened by his l