ap in
his veins. The very shine of the sun was different when it struck the
tight black braids wrapped round her head.

Verily the little kingdom had brought forth its Princess.

And with her coming there was one heart that burned hot with passion,
that fashioned itself after the form of hatred, for little Francette had
seen, first a glow in a man's eyes and then a gift in his hand, and she
fingered a small, flat blade that hung in her sash with one hand, the
while the other strayed on the head of Loup. Dark was the fire that
played in her pretty eyes, heavy the anguish that rode her breast.

She hated the memory of that white garment spread out on Maren Le
Moyne's bed.

"Tessa," she said one day, sidling up to that Tessa Bibye who had cast a
taunt in her teeth, "know you the charm which that doctress of the Crees
gave to Marci Varendree when she sickened for love of that half-breed,
Tohi Stannard?"

"Oho!" cried Tessa gleefully, "a man again! Who lacks one now,
Francette?"

"Nay," said Francette, "but I know of one who sickens inwardly and I
would give her the charm."

"Go into the flats of the Beaver House after Marci and her Indian,
whither they went," Tessa laughed. "I know not the charm. But it was
good, for she got him, and went to the wilds with him. Follow and learn,
Francette."

But Francette, with a gesture of disgust, turned away.

The warm spring days passed in a riot of song from the depths outside
the post, the Assiniboine rippled and whispered along its shores and
over the illimitable stretches of the wilderness there hung the very
spirit of the mating-time.

Within the stockade, mothers sat in the doors crooning to the babes that
clutched at the sunbeams, dogs slept in the cool shadows of the cabins,
and here and there a youth sang a snatch of a love song.

"Verily, Marie, it is good to be here," sighed Micene Bordoux, sitting
on her sill with her capable arms folded on her knees, and her eyes,
cool and sane and tolerant, roving over the settlement lolling so
quietly in the sun. "After the trail the rest is good, and yet I will
be eager long before the year has passed to follow Maren,--may Mary give
her grace!--into that wilderness which so draws at her heartstrings."

"Oh, Micene!" cried Marie, a trifle vexed, "if only she might forget her
dreams! What is it like, the heart of a maid, that turns from thought of
love to that of these wild lands, to the mystery of the Whispering Hills
that