for
the father whose heart must be the pattern of her own.

And in her train, swept together by that fire within her, touched into
flame by her ever-mounting hope, her courage, and her magnetism, went
that small band of men and women, all young, all of adventurous blood,
all daring the odds that let reluctantly a woman into the wilderness.

Yet it has been ever women who have conquered the wilderness, for until
they trod the trace the men had cut it still remained a wilderness.

So she leaned in the door of Marie's new home, this taut-strung Maren
Le Moyne, and gazed away above the rim of the budding forest, and her
spirit was as a chaffing steed held into quiet by a hand it knows its
master.

For a year she must endure the strain,--then, as the good God willed,
the leap forward, the wild breath in her nostrils, the forging into the
unknown.

"Ah, yes!" she said again, "it is the spring."

"Bon jour," she nodded, unsmiling, as a slim youth swung jauntily up the
hard-beaten way between the cabins.

"Eh!" said Marie, alert, "and who is that lord-high-mighty, with his red
cheeks and his airs, Maren? You know, as it is always, every man in the
post already. It is not so with the women, I'll wager. For instance, who
lives in the tiny house there by the south bastion?"

"I know not," answered Maren, as though she humoured a child, and taking
the last question first; "as for the youth, 'tis young Marc Dupre, and
one of a sturdy nature. I like his spirit, though all I know of it is
what sparkles from his roguish eyes. A fighter,--one to dare for love of
chance."

Marie looked quickly up, ever ready to pounce on the first gleam of
aught that might ripen into a love interest, but she saw Maren's eyes,
cool and shining, watching the swaggering figure with a look that
measured its slim strength, its suggestion of reserve, its gay joy of
life, and naught else.

"A pretty fellow," she said, with a touch of disappointment.

Each and every man went by Maren just so,--eliciting only that interest
which had to do apart from the personal.

But the black eyes of Marc Dupre had softened a bit under their daring
as he approached the factory.

"Holy Mother!" he whispered to himself; "what a woman! No maid, but
a WOMAN--for whose word one would fillip the face of Satan. She is
fire--and, if I am sure, all men are tow."

CHAPTER IV THE STRANGER FROM CIVILISATION

"How goes it, little one, with Loup?"

The factor stoppe