hand, and we will live the white life together."

Cheek to cheek they saw the darkness come, and afterwards the silver moon
steal up over a frozen world, in which the air bit like steel and braced
the heart like wine. Then, at last, before it was nine o'clock, after her
custom, the Indian woman went to bed, leaving her daughter brooding
peacefully by the fire.

For a long time Pauline sat with hands clasped in her lap, her gaze on the
tossing flames, in her heart and mind a new feeling of strength and
purpose. The way before her was not clear, she saw no further than this
day, and all that it had brought; yet she was as one that has crossed a
direful flood and finds herself on a strange shore in an unknown country,
with the twilight about her, yet with so much of danger passed that there
was only the thought of the moment's safety round her, the camp-fire to be
lit, and the bed to be made under the friendly trees and stars.

For a half-hour she sat so, and then, suddenly, she raised her head
listening, leaning toward the window, through which the moonlight
streamed. She heard her name called without, distinct and
strange--"_Pauline! Pauline!_"

Starting up, she ran to the door and opened it. All was silent and cruelly
cold. Nothing but the wide plain of snow and the steely air. But as she
stood intently listening, the red glow from the fire behind her, again
came the cry--"Pauline!"--not far away. Her heart beat hard, and she
raised her head and called--why was it she should call out in a language
not her own?--"_Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle?_"

And once again on the still night air came the trembling appeal,
"Pauline!"

"_Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle_?" she cried; then, with a gasping murmur of
understanding and recognition she ran forward in the frozen night toward
the sound of the voice. The same intuitive sense which had made her call
out in French, without thought or reason, had revealed to her who it was
that called; or was it that even in the one word uttered there was the
note of a voice always remembered since those days with Manette at
Winnipeg?

Not far away from the house, on the way to Portage la Drome, but a little
distance from the road, was a crevasse, and toward this she sped, for once
before an accident had happened there. Again the voice called as she
sped--"Pauline!"--and she cried out that she was coming. Presently she
stood above the declivity, and peered over. Almost immediately below her,
a few feet