ith your big body and generous heart,
and I--well, I guess you haven't found things easier because I've butted
into yours. Still, the thing's happened, and it makes me kind of glad.
Some day--But there--what's the use?"

The temptation was irresistible. Marcel flung out one great hand and
closed it over the hands the girl was holding out to the fire.

"That's it," he said hoarsely, while his body thrilled at the girl's
warm clasp in his. "What's the use? Neither you nor I can say the things
we feel. That's so. There's a great big God of this Northland looking on
and fixing things the way He sees. As you say 'Some day'! Meanwhile
there's the start back to-morrow morning. Just get right along and
sleep, and dream good, and be sure you're aren't alone in the
world--ever again."

CHAPTER X

THE FAREWELL

A burden of grey hung depressingly over the world. A bleak north wind
came down the river gorge. The sun's power had weakened before the
advance of the Arctic night. Beaten, dismayed, it lived only just above
the skyline.

The sightless sockets of the old moose stared wide-eyed down the river.
They were fulfilling the task that had been set them. The howling of the
gale, the polar cold, the blinding storm of snow; these things would
have no power to turn them from their vigil. The wide-antlered,
bleaching skull was the guardian of the tryst, and its sole concern was
its watch and ward.

The chill and cheerlessness of it all was reaching at the hearts of the
boy and girl who were at the moment of parting. Marcel was silently
whittling a stout twig of tamarack, whose toughness threatened to dull
the keen edge of his sheath-knife. Keeko was standing a few feet from
him, within a yard or so of the precipice which dropped sheer to the
waters below. Her eyes were following the direction of the gaze of the
old moose, and the picture her mind was dwelling upon was far removed
from what she beheld.

It was of the long, lonesome winter, with her mother dying by inches,
while she, herself, spent her days in the avoidance of her step-father
whom she had learned to fear as well as to hate. Marcel had no such
bitterness to look out upon. But he was none the less weighted down that
the farewell must be spoken.

The hot blood of youth was surging through his veins. Manhood's reckless
passion was beating in heart and brain. A desperate desire to yield to
the call of Nature was urging him mercilessly. Yet, through it all,