want with me?" she faltered, with a little sob.

The man looked at her keenly, laughed, and exclaimed in an every-day,
matter-of-fact voice:

"Why, I really believe my song frightened you. It is only a boating
song. Come, let us go and sit on the gun-carriages and talk."

"Oh!" she gasped, a trifle hysterically. "Don't do that again! Please
don't. I do not understand it! You must not!"

He laughed again, but with a note of tenderness in his voice, and took
her hand to lead her away, humming in an undertone the last couplet of
his song:

_"Non, ce n'est qu'une etoile,
Qu'eclaire nos amours!"_

_Chapter Eight_

Virginia went with this man passively--to an appointment which, but an
hour ago, she had promised herself she would not keep. Her inmost soul
was stirred, just as before. Then it had been few words, now it was a
little common song. But the strange power of the man held her close,
so she realized that for the moment at least she would do as he
desired. In the amazement and consternation of this thought she found
time to offer up a little prayer: "Dear God, make him kind to me."

[Illustration: THE HALF-BREED SEEKS TO AVENGE HER FATHER. Scene from
the play.]

They leaned against the old bronze guns, facing the river. He pulled
her shawl about her, masterfully yet with gentleness, and then, as
though it was the most natural thing in the world, he drew her to him
until she rested against his shoulder. And she remained there,
trembling, in suspense, glancing at him quickly, in birdlike, pleading
glances, as though praying him to be kind. He took no notice after
that, so the act seemed less like a caress than a matter of course. He
began to talk, half-humorously, and little by little, as he went on,
she forgot her fears, even her feeling of strangeness, and fell
completely under the spell of his power.

"My name is Ned Trent," he told her, "and I am from Quebec. I am a
woods runner. I have journeyed far. I have been to the uttermost ends
of the North, even up beyond the Hills of Silence."

And then, in his gay, half-mocking, yet musical voice he touched
lightly on vast and distant things. He talked of the great
Saskatchewan, of Peace River, and the delta of the Mackenzie, of the
winter journeys beyond Great Bear Lake into the Land of the Little
Sticks, and the half-mythical lake of Yamba Tooh. He spoke of life
with the Dog Ribs and Yellow Knives, where the snow falls in
midsummer. Before h