ard with rifle and ball while Dupre snatched heavy sleep,
herself dropping down like the veriest old wolf of the North on mossy
bank or green grass for the rest they sternly shortened.

"'Tis near the time of the Hudson's Bay brigade, is it not, M'sieu?" she
would ask sometimes. "Think you we shall meet them surely if we skirt
the eastern shore of Winnipeg?"

And Dupre would always answer, "Assuredly. By the third week in July
they will be at the upper bend where the river comes down from York. The
Nakonkirhirinons will hold to the west, going up Nelson River and west
through the chain of little lakes that lie to the south of Winnipeg,
thence gaining Deer River and that Reindeer Lake which sends them forth
into their unknown region beyond the Oujuragatchousibi. We, then, will
make straight for the eastern shore, skirting upward to the interception
of the ways, and we will surely meet the brigade."

"And they will surely lend help, think you, to a factor of the Company
in such grave plight?"

"Surely, Ma'amselle."

So the hours of day and darkness slipped by with dip of paddle and with
portage, with snatched rest and fare of the wild.

In a plentiful forest and on an abundant stream Dupre was at no loss for
food. Trout, sparkling and fresh from the icy water, roasted on forked
sticks stuck in the ground beside a bed of coals, made fare for an
epicure, and the young trapper, watching Maren as she knelt to tend
them, shielding her face with her hand, thought wistfully of a cabin
where the fire leaped on the hearth and where this woman passed back and
forth at the tasks of home.

"'Tis too great a thing to ask of le bon Dieu," he said in his heart;
"'tis not permitted even that one dream of such joy,--'twould be heaven
robbed of its glory."

So he fished and hunted for her, as the primal man has hunted and fished
for his woman since time began, tended her fires and guarded her sleep,
and the wistful sadness within him grew with the passing days.

Down that northbound river the lone canoe with its two people hurried
after the great flotilla, silent and determined, like a starved wolf on
the flanks of a caribou herd.

Out on the breast of the great blue lake it, too, was shot by the
rushing waters, lone little cockleshell, to head its prow to the
eastward, where the green shore curved away, to take its infinitesimal
chance of victory against all odds.

When the sun came out of the eastern forest, a golden ball in