except for the
mumbling of his lips beneath his beard.

"It shall be just as you wish," he added a moment later.

At once a conflict arose in the girl's mind between her restless
dreams and her affections. But beneath all the glitter of the
question there was really nothing to take her out. Here was her
father, here were the things she loved; yonder was novelty--and
loneliness.

Her existence at Conjuror's House was perhaps a little complex, but
it was familiar. She knew the people, and she took a daily and
unwearying delight in the kindness and simplicity of their bearing
toward herself. Each detail of life came to her in the round of
habit, wearing the garment of accustomed use. But of the world she
knew nothing except what she had been able to body forth from her
reading, and that had merely given her imagination something
tangible with which to feed her self-distrust.

"Must I decide at once?" she asked.

"If you go this year, it must be with the Abitibi _brigade_. You
have until then."

"Thank you, father." said the girl, sweetly.

The shadows stole their surroundings one by one, until only the
bright silver of the tea-service, and the glitter of polished wood,
and the square of the open door remained. Galen Albret became an
inert dark mass. Virginia's gray was lost in that of the twilight.

Time passed. The clock ticked on. Faintly sounds penetrated from
the kitchen, and still more faintly from out of doors. Then the
rectangle of the door-way was darkened by a man peering
uncertainly. The man wore his hat, from which slanted a slender
heron's plume; his shoulders were square; his thighs slim and
graceful.

Against the light, one caught the outline of the sash's tassel and
the fringe of his leggings.

"Are you there, Galen Albret?" he challenged.

The spell of twilight mystery broke. It seemed as if suddenly the
air had become surcharged with the vitality of opposition.

"What then?" countered the Factor's heavy, deliberate tones.

"True, I see you now," rejoined the visitor carelessly, as he flung
himself across the arm of a chair and swung one foot. "I do not
doubt you are convinced by this time of my intention."

"My recollection does not tell me what messenger I sent to ask this
interview."

"Correct," laughed the young man a little hardly. "You _didn't_
ask it. I attended to that myself. What you want doesn't concern
me in the least. What do you suppose I care what, or w