emained at the school by command of the crafty
Lapierre, there remained only LeFroy and a few of the older men who
were unfit to go on the trap-lines, together with the women and
children.

MacNair's Indians, who had long since laid down their traps to pick up
the white man's tools, stayed at the school. And much to the girl's
surprise, under the direction of the refractory Sotenah, and Old Elk,
and Wee Johnnie Tamarack, not only performed with a will the necessary
work of the camp--the chopping and storing of firewood, the shovelling
of paths through the huge drifts, and the drawing of water from the
river--but took upon themselves numerous other labours of their own
initiative.

An ice-house was built and filled upon the bank of the river. Trees
were felled, and the logs ranked upon miniature rollways, where all
through the short days the Indians busied themselves in the rude
whip-sawing of lumber.

Their women and children daily attended the school and worked
faithfully under the untiring tutelage of Chloe and Harriet Penny, who
entered into the work with new enthusiasm engendered by the interest
and the aptness of the Snare Lake Indians--absent qualities among the
wives and children of Lapierre's trappers.

LeFroy was kept busy in the storehouse, and with the passing of the
days Chloe noticed that he managed to spend more and more time in
company with Big Lena. At first she gave the matter no thought. But
when night after night she heard the voices of the two as they sat
about the kitchen-stove long after she had retired, she began to
consider the matter seriously.

At first she dismissed it with a laugh. Of all people in the world,
she thought, these two, the heavy, unimaginative Swedish woman, and the
leathern-skinned, taciturn wood-rover, would be the last to listen to
the call of romance.

Chloe was really fond of the huge, silent woman who had followed her
without question into the unknown wilderness of the Northland, even as
she had accompanied her without protest through the maze of the far
South Seas. With all her averseness to speech and her vacuous, fishy
stare, the girl had long since learned that Big Lena was both loyal and
efficient and shrewd. But, Big Lena as a wife! Chloe smiled broadly
at the thought.

"Poor LeFroy," she pitied. "But it would be the best thing in the
world for him. 'The perpetuity of the red race will be attained only
through its amalgamation with the white,'" sh