he asked, "you not marry, you bad?"

"No! No! No! You poor child!" cried Chloe, "of course you are not
bad! You are going to live with me. You will learn many things."

"An' som' tam', we fin' my man?" she asked eagerly.

Chloe's voice sounded suddenly harsh. "Yes, indeed, we will find him!"
she cried. "We will find him and bring him back--" she stopped
suddenly. "We will speak of that later. And now that my clothes are
dry you can help me put them on, and if you have any grub left in your
pack let's eat. I'm starving."

While Chloe finished dressing, the Louchoux girl boiled a pot of tea
and fried some bacon, and an hour later the two girls were fast asleep
in each other's arms, beneath the warm folds of the big Hudson Bay
blankets.

The following morning they had proceeded but a short distance upon the
back-trail when they were met by a searching party from the school.
The return was made without incident, and Chloe, who had taken a great
fancy to the Louchoux girl, immediately established her as a member of
her own household.

During the days which followed, the girl plunged with an intense
eagerness into the task of learning the ways of the white women.
Nothing was too trivial or unimportant to escape her attention. She
learned to copy with almost pathetic exactness each of Chloe's little
acts and mannerisms, even to the arranging of her hair. With the other
two inmates of the cottage the girl became hardly less a favourite than
with Chloe herself.

Her progress in learning to speak English, her skill with the needle
and the rapidity with which she learned to make her own clothing
delighted Harriet Penny. While Big Lena never tired of instructing her
in the mysteries of the culinary department. In return the girl looked
upon the three women with an adoration that bordered upon idolatry.
She would sit by the hour listening to Chloe's accounts of the wondrous
cities of the white men and of the doings of the white men's women.

Chloe never mentioned the girl's secret to either Harriet Penny or Big
Lena, and carefully avoided any allusion to the subject to the girl
herself. Nothing could be done, she reasoned, until the ice went out
of the rivers, and in the meantime she would do all in her power to
instil into the girl's mind an understanding of the white women's
ethics, so that when the time came she would be able to choose
intelligently for herself whether she would return to her free-trader