ocal post-office. The young man chatted with her
for some time. It was pleasant to be among people again, to hear a
voice that was not the gruff speech of Stefan, given out in a powerful
bass.

"More as two months ve traipse all ofer," volunteered the latter.
"Ye-es, Miss Sophy, ma'am, ve vork youst like niggers. Und it's only
ven ve gets back real handy here, by de pig Falls, dat ve strike
someting vhat look mighty good. Hugo here he build a good log-shack.
He got de claim all fix an' vork on it some to vintertime. Nex spring
he say he get a gang going. Vants me for foreman, he do."

This was pleasant news. Hugo would be a neighbor, for what are a dozen
miles or so in the wilderness? He would be coming back and forth for
provisions, for dynamite, for anything he needed.

"We had a fine trip anyway, and saw a lot of country," declared Hugo,
cheerfully.

"Ve get one big canoe upset in country close in by Gowganda," said
Stefan again. "Vidout him Hugo I youst git trowned."

"That wasn't anything," exclaimed Hugo, hastily.

"It was one tamn pig ting for me, anyvays," declared Stefan, roaring
out with contented laughter.

Miss Sophy was not greatly pleased when Hugo civilly declined an
invitation to have dinner with her ma and pa. The young man was
disappointing. He spoke cheerfully and pleasantly but appeared to take
scant notice of her new ribbon, to pay little heed to her grey-blue
eyes.

After this, once or twice a week, Hugo would come in again, for
important or trifling purchases. It might be a hundred pounds of flour
or merely a new pipe. He was the only man in Carcajou who took off his
cap to her when he entered the store, but when she would have had him
lean over the counter and chat with her he seemed to be just as
pleased to gossip with lumberjacks and mill-men, or even with Indians
who might come in for tobacco or tea and were reputed to have vast
knowledge of the land to the North. Once he half promised to come to a
barn-dance in which Scotty Humphrey would play the fiddle, and she
watched for him, eagerly, but he never turned up, explaining a few
days later that his dog Maigan, an acquisition of a couple of months
before, had gone lame and that it would have been a shame to leave the
poor old fellow alone.

Sophy met him in the village street and he actually bowed to her
without stopping, as if there might be more important business in the
world than gossiping with a girl. She began to feel, after