that flickered ever behind the graveness of her eyes leaped
up. She longed for their speech that she might go among them and ask.

A little way along the stockade wall to the north there lay a great
rock, flat and smooth of surface, and here the girl drew apart from the
women and sat herself down thereon, hands clasping her knees and the
level sun in her eyes. Her thoughts were soon faraway on the misty trail
they had worn for themselves in the many years they had traversed the
wilderness in search of what it held, and the eyes between the narrowed
lids became blank with introspection. And as she sat thus, a little way
withdrawn from the scurrying activity of the scene, there came a step
on the soft green sod and a slim form in buckskins halted beside her.

It was young Marc Dupre, and his devil-may-care face was alert and
smiling.

"Is that seat big enough for two, Ma'amselle?" he asked impertinently,
though the heart in him was thumping a bit. This was a woman, he
recalled having thought, for whom one would fillip the face of Satan,
and he was uncertain whether or no he had made a right beginning.

Maren started and looked swiftly up at him.

"It is, M'sieu," she said quietly, "if those two are in simple, sensible
accord. Not if one of the two coquettes."

Over the handsome features of the youth there spread a deep red flush.

"Forgive me, Ma'amselle," he said, "my speech was foolish as my heart.
They are both sobered."

"Then," said the girl, drawing aside the folds of her dress, "you may
sit beside me."

With a sudden diffidence he sank upon the stone, this handsome boy whose
tongue was ever ready and whose heart of a light o' love had taken toll
from every maid in the settlement, and for the first time in his life he
had no sprightly word, no quip for his careless tongue.

They sat in silence, and presently he saw that her eyes were again
half-closed and the dreaming look had settled back in them. She had
forgotten his presence.

Never before in his experience had a woman sat thus unmoved beside him
when he longed to make her speak, and it stilled him with silent wonder.

He thought of the words of Pierre Garcon that day on the river bank when
this maid was new to the post, "if there is, I would not be the one to
waken it and not be found its master," and they sent a thrill to his
inmost being.

Who would awaken her; he wondered, as he watched the cheek beside him
from the tail of his eye, a round w