f, while a blush suffused his rather
delicate features.

"Pardon!" he murmured; "truly do I forget myself, M'sieu; but not for a
twelvemonth have I seen aught to match this moment. I pray you, of what
station of life is the glorious young Madonna before you;--wife or widow
or maid? By Saint Agnes, never have I beheld such beauty!"

"Maid," replied McElroy; "by name Maren Le Moyne, one of a party of
venturers who came but a short while back from Rainy River, and who have
cast in their lot with us for the matter of a year."

The woman and the child passed on their way, disappearing again behind
the next cabin, unconscious of observation, still lost in their play of
the tossing ship at sea, and the two men entered the great trading-room
of Fort de Seviere, where Edmonton Ridgar, chief trader and accountant,
came forward to meet the stranger.

The young factor went in search of Jack de Lancy and word of the meal he
had ordered, and for some reason there was within him a vague vexation
which had to do with the look he had seen in the merry eyes of Alfred de
Courtenay.

He found the great kettles boiling over the fires and a ten-gallon pot
of coffee Venting the evening air.

As he gave word for the feast to be spread on strips of cloth laid on
the hard-beaten ground before the factory that many might sit round at
once and partake, there came from the direction of the gate the voices
of De Courtenay's men. The stranger and himself, with young Ivrey and
Ridgar should be served in the little room off to the west where were
the small table, the chairs, and the row of books.

Not often did Fort de Seviere have so illustrious a guest as must be
this young adventurer.

CHAPTER V NOR'WESTERS

"Merci, my friend, what extravagance is this! The savour of that pot
does fairly turn my head!"

Alfred de Courtenay settled himself gracefully in one of McElroy's
chairs and smiled across at his host with a twinkle in his laughing
eyes.

A dozen candles, lit in his honour, where three were wont to suffice,
shone mellowly in the little room, and Rette de Lancy, still comely
despite her forty years and a certain lavishness in the matter of
avoirdupois, set down in the midst of the table a steaming dish with a
cover. There were a white cloth of bleached linen and cups of blue
ware that had come with her and Jack from across seas, also a silver
coffee-urn that had been her great-grandmother's. When the factor gave
word for a meal