im in a
tumultuous flood.

"Ma'amselle," he said, "Ma'amselle!"

And in the next moment stopped, for the words of love were on his tongue
and the wide dark eyes were looking at him wonderingly.

"No longer could I withstand the call of the springtime and the woods,"
he finished falteringly; "the trading-room and the bargain were grown
hateful to me in these warm days with the scent of flower and leaf and
heated mould coming in at the door and bidding me come. I left my post,
a traitor, Ma'amselle, betrayed by the forest. Too weak am I for courage
when the big woods call."

Maren looked at him and the light grew up in her eyes, that little flame
that flickered and leaped and gave so baffling a charm to her beauty.

"Ah!" she said softly; "you love it too, the great wilderness?"

"Aye, most truly."

"And you can hear the whisper of the far countries, the ripple of
distant streams, the wind in the pines that have never sheltered a white
man? You know these things, M'sieu?"

She leaned forward from the great smooth-barked tree and looked at him
eagerly.

"They are what brought me over seas," he said quietly, "what sent me to
De Seviere, what hold me to the tribes that come each year to my doors."

Maren's lips were parted, the fire of her passion in her flaming face.
"Then you know why I come to the woods, why I grieve that the spring
is passing, why I can scarcely hold my soul in patience through this
delay!"

With the suddenness of her words her breath had leaped to a heaving
tumult, the wide eyes, so calm, so cool, had filled first with fire and
then with a mist. That clouded them like tears.

"Oh, M'sieu!" she cried tensely; "know you of that country which lies
far to the west and which the Indians call the Land of the Whispering
Hills?"

"Aye. It lies circling a great lake, blue as the summer skies, its
waters forever rippled by the winds of the west which sing in the grassy
vales and over the rounded knolls that stud the region,--a land of
waving trees, of high coolness, or rich valleys thick with rank grasses
and abounding with the pelt animals. It is the country of the Athabasca
and from it came last year a band of the Chippewas heavily laden with
furs. They told fine tales of its beauty. It is for that land you are
bound?"

"For that land, M'sieu," said Maren Le Moyne, and her lips trembled;
"for that virgin goddess of the dreams of years! I have seen its hills,
its waving grass, wind-blown, its