."

"You are very quick to find an imagined right, young man,"
Fitzpatrick said, grimly. "How about myself, the girl's father,
the one who, most of all, should give up everything to such a
search? Did I leave the Company's business to take care of itself?"

"No, but it is well I did, or else you would never have seen Jean
again. I don't think, Mr. Fitzpatrick, that there is anything gained
arguing in this circle. What else have you to say to me?"

"My daughter has told me everything," went on the factor painfully,
shifting on his rough bed. "In fact, she got quite excited over
your chivalrous treatment of her, while you were together. Of course
I believe my daughter, and, when she tells me that you acted merely
as friends, I take her word. At the same time, Captain McTavish,
there does not come to my mind the slightest reason why you should
have forced yourself into the same cabin with her."

Donald briefly explained the situation, outlining the treachery of
Maria and her Indian son, Tom, who should, by this time, be safe
in Fort Severn.

"If I had not done as I did, I should have frozen to death," he
concluded.

"Better you should," cried the factor passionately, "than that my
little girl should be ruined for life before the whole world."

"How will she be ruined?" demanded the young man, crisply. "No one
knows the story except Braithwaite and his two men, and I think we
can keep their mouths closed easily enough."

"It is impossible!" said the other. "You know yourself that Napoleon
Sky's tongue is swiveled two ways, and is the only successful
perpetual-motion machine ever invented. If we bribed them, we could
be held up regularly for blackmail, and even that would fail; the
news would leak out somewhere. I know these wild places; I know
what rumor can do. Perhaps, the wind whispers it; perhaps, the
birds carry it, or the streams call it out at night. Whatever is
done, I know this: that rumor will leap across a practically
uninhabited country like wild-fire, and, by the time the _brigades_
come down in the spring, I could not hold my head up among the
curious eyes, jerked thumbs, and tongues in cheek. What I want to
know, Captain McTavish, is, what can you do about it?"

"Is the Reverend Mr. Gates in the camp?"

"Yes."

"I'll marry Jean this afternoon, providing she will have me?"

"You shall not!" cried the factor suddenly, with great fierceness,
turning his fiery eyes upon the younger man in an expre