eadily upon her, wafted back on the golden wind. Francette, her eyes
flaming with all too great a fire, set a pan of cool water beneath the
fevered muzzle of the husky and glanced, scowling, across her shoulder
toward the factory.

Five days had passed since the episode beside the stockade, and Bois
DesCaut had said no word, of his property. In fact, the great dog was
seemingly scarce worth a thought, much less a word. Helpless, bruised
from tip to tip, one side flat under its broken ribs, he lay sullenly in
the shade; of the cabin where McElroy had put him down, covered at night
from the cool air by Francette's' own blanket of the gorgeous stripes,
fed by her small loving hands bit by bit, submitting for the first time
in his hard and eventful life to the touch of woman, thrilling in his
savage heart to the word of tenderness.

Gently the little maid stroked the rough grey fur and scowled toward the
factory.

So intent was she with her thought that she did not hear the step beside
her, springing quickly up when a voice spoke, cool and amused, behind.
"Well said, little maid," it praised; "that was a neat turn."

The tall stranger, Maren Le Moyne, stood smiling down upon her.

Francette, sharpest of tongue in all the settlement, was at sudden
loss before this woman. She looked up into her face and stood silent,
searching it with the gaze of a child.

It was a wondrous face, dark as her own, its cheeks as dusky red, but in
it was a baffling something that held her quick tongue mute, a look as
of great depth, of wondrous strength, and yet of fitful tenderness,--the
one playing through the other as flame about black marble, and with the
rest a smile.

More than little Francette had beheld that baffling expression and
squirmed beneath its strangeness. Francette looked, and the scowl drew
deeper.

She saw again this woman leaning slightly forward, her eyes a-glitter on
the prostrate DesCaut, her strong hand doubled and flecked with blood,
with Loup at her feet,--and quick on the heels of it she saw the look in
the factor's eyes as he had commanded her to silence with a motion.

"So?" she flamed at last, recovering her natural audacity, for the maid
was spoiled to recklessness by reason of her beauty; "I meant it to be
neat."

At the look which leaped into the eyes of the stranger her own began to
waver, to shift from one to the other, and lastly dropped in confusion.

"But spoiled at the end by foolishness," sai