in my call whatever happens, while Frith and Brilliers and Wilson
will stay with the canoe, ready for instant flight. M'sieu," she laid a
hand on Dupre's arm and her voice deepened softly, "is scout and captain
and he goes at my side. More I cannot say until we know the lie of land
to-morrow."

So they again took boat, this little band of venturers than whom there
were no more daring threaders of the wilderness in all the vast unknown
country; and Maren sat in the prow, her hands idle in her lap, for she
had paddled since four by the sun.

Beside her, huddled half under the feet of Wilson on the foremost
thwart, Dupre watched the stars as they came out in a turquoise sky, for
the sleep that was due him would not come. He thought of the morrow
and what it would bring, and the sadness in his heart grew with the
deepening shades.

The fringed garment of white doeskin lay under his elbow and a fold of
it brushed his cheek, and, boy that he was, its touch brought the quick
tears to his eyes.

"Ma'amselle," he said presently, when the turquoise had faded to purple
and the purple to velvet black, with the stars like a dowager's diamonds
thickset upon it, "Ma'amselle, what think you is behind the stars?"

Maren turned her face to him like a sweet young moon, pale in the night.

"Behind the stars? Why, Heaven, M'sieu, where all is glory; Heaven
assuredly."

"Aye. Where all is glory. Yes, for those who keep the holy mandates,
whose hearts are pure as that heaven itself. For such as you. Oh, Holy
Mother!--" his voice fell to a whisper; "there is no heaven, Ma'amselle,
so pure as the white heart of you! But for him whose days have gone like
the butterfly's flight from one prodigal joy to the next, whose heart
has known neither love of God nor love of a good woman, save for a
little space, whose tongue has boasted and blasphemed, and whose life
has been worth no jot of good,--what, think you, a waits so lost a man
as this?"

The light "whoosh,--sst--whoosh" of the dipping paddles, the occasional
rattle of a handle on a gunwale, formed a blending background against
which his low words were distinguishable only to the girl beside him.

She looked long into his upturned face. The wistfulness sat heavy
upon it. The youthfulness of this dashing trapper of the posts and
settlements came out plain in the starlight. She saw again the
pliant strength beneath the slender grace, caught the suggestion of
contradicting forces that she