n that vast region
of hard living and daily tragedy, with the strength of the man set
behind the woman's wisdom in as delicate a compliment as ever breathed
itself in silken halls, and the blind courage of the dreamer urged it
on..

At the forks of Red River they passed the signs of a landing.

Here had the Indians summarily sent ashore all of the Nor'westers who
had been with De Courtenay and who had followed in the uncertainty of
fear, not daring to desert lest they be overtaken and massacred.

All, that is, save Bois DesCaut and the lean, hawk-faced Runners of the
Burnt Woods.

Thanking their gods, the North-west servants had lost no time in taking
advantage of the fact that they were not wanted, leaving their Montreal
master to whatever fate might befall him.

Dupre went ashore and examined the reach of land, the trampled grass, a
broken bush or two.

"Ten men, I think," he said, returning, "and all in tremendous haste.
The Nor'westers escaping, I have no doubt. Would our captives were among
them."

"No such fortune, M'sieu," said Maren calmly, "Heard you not the cry
before the gate in that unhallowed scramble what time they took the
factor and the venturer? 'Twas 'a skin for a skin.' There are many
guards."

The summer day dreamed by in drowsy beauty, like a woman or a rose
full-blown, and Maren, who would at another time have seen each smallest
detail of its perfection through the eye of love, saw only the rushing
water ahead and counted time and distance.

Dupre, kneeling in the bow, his lithe brown arms bare to the shoulder,
where the muscles lifted and fell like waves, was silent. Sadness sat
upon him like a garment, yet lightened by a holy joy.

Odd servers of Love, these two, who knew only its pain without its
pleasure, yet who were standing on the threshold of its Holy of Holies.

Of nights they sat together at the tiny fire of a few laid sticks and
talked at intervals in a strange companionship.

Never again did they speak of love, nor even so much as skirt its
fringes, though the young trapper read with wistful eyes its working
in the woman's face. Out of her eyes had gone a certain light to be
replaced by another, as if a star had passed near a smouldering world
and gone on, changed by the contact, its radiance darkened by a deeper
glow.

The firm cheeks, dusky as sunset, had lost something of their contour.

Like comrades, too, they shared the work and the watches, the girl
standing gu