low, she stood, a Diana of flesh and blood,
whose open hunting-shirt fell away from her rounded throat in soft,
fringed folds. Her short skirt of heavy drilling came only to her
knees; she wore no stockings, and her tiny feet were incased in heavily
beaded moccasins.

And so she stood there in the midnight, smiling down upon the man who
gazed speechless from his blanket upon the opposite side of the dying
fire; and then she spoke:

"I have come," she said simply.

"Jeanne!" cried the man, "why have you done this thing?"

"I love you, and I will go with you."

"But, girl, don't you realize what it means? This is the third night
since I left the camp of Jacques----" The girl interrupted him with a
laugh:

"And I, too, have been gone three nights; have struck straight through
the forest, and because the river makes a great bend of many miles I
came to this place before you, and have waited for you here a night and
a day.

"And now I'm hungry. I will eat first, and then we will sleep, and
to-morrow we will start together for the land of the white men."

The man's mind worked rapidly as he watched in silence while the girl
removed some bacon and bannock from his pack-sack and set the
coffee-pot upon the coals. When she had finished her meal he spoke,
slowly but firmly.

"Jeanne, you have waited here a night and a day; you are rested, you
have eaten. I will now make up the pack, and we will take the trail."

"To-night?"

"Yes, to-night--now. The back trail for the lodge of Jacques." The girl
regarded him in amazement, and then smiled sadly, as a mother smiles on
an erring child.

"We cannot return," she said, speaking softly. "Wa-ha-ta-na-ta would
kill me. She thinks we came away together. Wa-ha-ta-na-ta was married;
we are not married; we cannot go back." The man rolled the blankets and
buckled the straps of his pack-sack. He was about to swing it to his
shoulders when the girl grasped his arm.

"I love you," she repeated, "and I will go with you."

"But, Jeanne," the man cried, "this cannot be. I cannot marry you. In
my life I have loved but one woman----"

"And she is the wife of another!" cried the girl.

Bill winced as from a blow, and she continued, speaking rapidly:

"I do not ask that you marry me--not even that you love me. It is
enough that I am at your side. You will treat me kindly, for you are
good. Marriage is nothing--empty words--if the heart loves; nothing
else matters, and some day you