d it not been that over it all hung the knowledge that Julie
Breton was lost to him. Kind she was as a sister is kind, but her heart
he knew was far in the south at East Main in the keeping of Inspector
Wallace, to do with it as his manhood prompted. And knowing what he did,
Marcel kept silence.

On his return he had learned the story from big Jules. All Whale River
had watched the courting of Julie. All Whale River had seen Wallace and
the girl walking nightly in the long twilight, and had shaken their
heads sadly, in sympathy with the lad who was travelling down the coast
on the mad quest of his puppy. Yes, he had lost her. It was over, and he
manfully fought the bitterness and despair that was his; tried to forget
the throbbing pain at his heart, as he made the most of those three
short days with the girl he loved, and might never see again, as a girl,
for Marcel was not returning from the Ghost at Christmas.

His dreams were dead. Ambitions for the future had been stripped from
him, as the withering winds strip a tree of leaves. The home he had
pictured at Whale River when, in the spring, he fought through to the
Salmon for a dog-team which should make his fortune, was now a phantom.
There was nothing left him but the love of his puppy. She would never
desert Jean Marcel.

But Jean Marcel was a trapper, and the precious days before the ice
would close the upper Whale and the Ghost to canoe travel were slipping
past. Before he went south his partners of the previous winter had
agreed to take with them the supplies, which he had drawn from the post,
but that they would not net fish for his dog he was certain. Exasperated
at his determination to go south, they would hardly plan for the dog
they were confident he would not recover.

So Marcel bade his friends good-bye and with as much cured whitefish as
he could carry without being held up on the portages by extra trips,
started with Fleur on the long up-river trail to his trapping grounds.

When he left, he said to Julie in French: "I have not spoken to you of
what I have heard since my return."

The girl's face flushed but her eyes bravely met his.

"They tell me that you are to marry M'sieu Wallace," he hazarded.

"They do not know, who tell you that!" she exclaimed with spirit.
"M'sieu Wallace has not asked me to marry him, and beside, he is still a
Protestant."

Ignoring the evasion, he went on slowly: "But you love him, Julie; and
he is a great man----"