is ready to jump in the fire
an' all that. Hoh! The man's love that'll let her is poor stuff,
Wayland, base metal, kind o' love to burn all away to dross an' ashes
when the fires come! Her's will come out pure gold thro' it all, but
man alive, Wayland, think o' her when she finds his as dross; an' if he
lets her sacrifice hers for his, 'tis dross!"

Wayland grew suddenly hot all over. He could not bring himself to name
her, much less indulge in the cheap confessional of tawdry loose held
affection. He had heard men discuss their love affairs: men who could
discuss them hadn't any; theirs was the sense reflex of the frog that
kicks when you tickle its nerve-end. He rode on unspeaking.

"Y'll be tellin' y'rself 'tis too sacred to mouthe--with an old fellow
like me. All right! We'll say it is _too_ sacred; but that minds me
of a Cree rascal on my Reserve, an old medicine man, always talkin' of
his sacred medicine bag; well, one day when he was good an' far away,
good an' plenty drunk, A took a peep into his medicine bag; there was
nothin' inside but a little snake that hissed; an' him beatin' the big
drum! Hoh! sacred?

"Y'll be tellin' me y'r passion vows are stronger than life or death?
Hoh! Y'd be a poor man if love wasn't stronger than death without any
vows and big drum! Y'll be tellin' me y've warned her not t' link her
life up wi' y'rs, to help y' resist an' all that; well, while y'r
playin' y'r high and mighty self-sacrifice, did y'r manhood melt in the
love light o' her eyes?"

Wayland jerked his horse roughly to a dead stop. "Mr. Matthews, for
what reason are you saying all this?"

"A'll tell y' that too! A've come for her, Wayland. A've come to take
her back to her people. Y' don't understand, her father is a MacDonald
of the Lovatt clan--came out with Wolfe's regiment in 1759."

"In 1759?" repeated Wayland. "I heard her father say that very year."

"Yes, and a dark doursome race they are. Lovatt: Fraser MacDonald was
his name; fought under Wolfe and joined the up country furhunters.
When he came back from his hunting one year, he found his wife had
eloped with an officer of the regiment; so he took to the north woods
an' married an Indian girl and his son was the man o' the iron arm, the
piper for little Sir George in the thirties, who blew the bag pipes up
Saskatchewan and over the mountains and down the Columbia and all round
them lakes where y'r Holy Cross Forest is. They were a' da