ith longing.

Can any man blame me for breaking through the thicket and my resolution
and discretion and all?

"Here--beloved!" I sprang from the bush.

She gave a cry of affright and would have fallen, but my arms were about
her and my lips giving silent proof that I was no wraith.

What next we said I do not remember. With her head on my shoulder and I
doing the only thing a man could do to stem her tears, I completely lost
track of the order of things. I do not believe either of us was calm
enough for words for some time after the meeting. It was she who
regained mental poise first.

"Rufus!" she exclaimed, breaking away from me, "You're not a sensible
man at all."

"Never said I was," I returned.

"If you do _that_," she answered, ignoring my remark and receding
farther, "I'll never stop crying."

"Then cry on forever!"

With womanly ingratitude, she promptly called me "a goose" and other
irrelevant names.

The rest of our talk that evening I do not intend to set down. In the
first place, it was best understood by only two. In the second, it could
not be transcribed; and in the third, it was all a deal too sacred.

We did, however, become impersonal for short intervals.

"I feel as if there were some storm in the air," said Frances
Sutherland. "The half-breeds are excited. They are riding past the
settlement in scores every day. O, Rufus, I know something is wrong."

"So do I," was my rejoinder. I was thinking of the strange gossip of the
Assiniboine encampment.

"Do you think the _Bois-Brules_ would plunder your boats?" she asked
innocently, ignorant that the malcontents were Nor'-Westers.

"No," said I. "What boats?"

"Why, Nor'-West boats, of course, coming up Red River from Fort William
to go up the Assiniboine for the winter's supplies. They're coming in a
few days. My father told me so."

"Is Mr. Sutherland an H. B. C. or Nor'-Wester?" I asked in the slang of
the company talk.

"I don't know," she answered. "I don't think he knows himself. He says
there are numbers of men like that, and they all know there is to be a
raid. Why, Rufus, there are men down the river every day watching for
the Nor'-Westers' Fort William express." "Where do the men come from?" I
questioned, vainly trying to patch some connection between plots for a
raid on North-West boats and plots for a fight by Nor'-West followers.

"From Fort Douglas, of course."

"H. B. C.'s, my dear. You must go to Fort Douglas at on