of a man's eyes as she thought
of McElroy's, thrilling to the very tips of her fingers at memory of the
blue fire in them, and never before had she been conscious of anything
as she was conscious of the flesh on her shoulders where his hands had
rested, her lips sealed under the warm caress of his. Verily, there was
nowhere another such man as this one who knew the longing of the wild as
did she, whose heart responded to the same call of the great wilderness.

Night and day she thought of him, and the memory of that day in the
forest glade haunted her like a golden melody newly heard.

Yet something within her held her back from his sight, kept her eyes
from that part of the small settlement where stood the factory with its
wide doorway. She could not bear to look upon him yet in the newness of
this awakening.

And McElroy, deep in the work of the trading, was eaten by a thousand
qualms and torments. All those doubts that beset lovers tore at his
heart and made of his days a nightmare.

With the cooling of his exalted intoxication what time the touch of the
girl's young body had fired him with all confidence, came a thousand
condemnations for his blundering haste, his stupid boasting of conquest.

To what depths of scorn might he not now be fallen in the mind of such
a girl as Maren Le Moyne with her calm judgment; how far might he not be
from the object of his longing!

And the fact that he could catch no sight of her, no matter how often he
stepped near the door nor how diligently he sought for a glimpse of the
shining braids and plain garment among the women at the well, but added
fuel to the fire that scorched him.

But the times were getting very busy at Fort de Seviere. Before the
Assiniboines were ready to depart back up the waterways down which they
had come, their canoes laden with the wealth of the coming season, other
flotillas were on the little waves of the river, other chiefs made their
entrance up the main way of the post, and the goods of the Hudson's Bay
Company went out in a stream as the priceless pelts came in.

"Lad," said Edmonton Ridgar with that easy probing of the well-known
friend, "there is something eating at your mind these days. The trade
goes differently from that of last year. It is not so all-absorbing. I
fear me that the Nor'westers, with their plundering and their tales of
deportation, have entered a wedge of worry."

"'Tis not of the Nor'westers I give a thought, Ridgar," he