d Maren Le Moyne, and all
the pleasure had slipped from her deep voice, leaving it cold as steel.

Abruptly she turned away, her high head shining in the sun, her strong
shoulders swinging slightly as she walked.

Francette looked after her, with small hands clinched and breast heaving
with, anger, and there had the stranger made her second enemy in Fort de
Seviere within the first fortnight.

Along the northern wall there was much bustle and scurry, the noise of
voices and of preparation, for the men were busy with the raising of the
first new cabin. As some whimsical fate would have it, there were the
hewn logs that Bard McLellan had prepared a year back for his own new
house when he should have married the pretty Lila of old McKenzie, who
sickened suddenly in the early autumn when the leaves were dropping in
the forest and fled from his eager arms. No heart had been left in the
breast of the trapper after that and the logs lay where he had felled
them.

Now McElroy, tactful of tongue and gentle, touched the sore spot, and
Bard gave sad consent to their use.

"Take them, M'sieu," he said wearily; "my pain may save another's need."

So the first new cabin went up apace.

Anders McElroy looked over his settlement day by day and there was great
satisfaction in his eyes. Fort de Seviere was none so strong that it
could afford to look carelessly on the acquisition of five good men and
hardy trappers, and, beside, somehow there was a pleasanter feeling to
the warm spring air since they had arrived-a new sense of bustle and
accomplishment.

Often he stood in the door of the factory and looked to where the women
sang at their work or carried the shining pails full of water from the
one deep well of the settlement, situated near the gate in the eastern
wall, and the smiles were ever ready in his blue eyes.

A handsome man was this factor of Fort de Seviere, tall and well formed,
with that grace of carriage which speaks of perfect manhood; his head,
covered with a thick growth of sun-coloured hair curling lightly at the
ends, tossed ever back, ready to laugh. Scottish blood, mingled with a
strong Irish strain, ran riot in him, giving him at once both love of
life and honour.

They had known what they were doing, those lords of the H. B. Company,
when they had sent this young adventurer from Fenchurch Street to the
new continent, and, after five years among the hardships of the trade,
he found himself factor of Fort