ian. Granger, as he watched her, guessed all this, for had
not he himself been parted from his old traditions?--and he had not
known Keewatin till he was a grown man. Well, these people had lived
there longer than he had! They should know what was best suited to
their circumstance, he told himself; and so, without questioning or
combatting their social methods, he resigned himself to accept their
modes of life.

It was a strange wedding that he had had--very different from the kind
he had planned for himself in the heat of his passion, when he was a
younger man. And this was a strange woman whom he must call his
wife--one who worked for him tirelessly with her head and hands, but
who appeared to crave for none of his affection, and with whom he
could have not a moment's conversation; the exchange of a few
monosyllables and signs in the course of a day seemed to be the most
that he might expect. Yet, because of her meekness and faithfulness,
and her ready willingness to serve, he was conscious of a growing
protective quality of love for her. If he could prevent himself from
adopting her reticence, he promised himself that he would gather her
whole heart into his own by and by.

He did not as yet realise that the mere fact that he could feel thus
towards her, when no speech had passed between them, was an indication
that she was communicating herself in a more vigorous and sincerer
language than that of words. This difference between them, that he
expected her to use her lips to explain her personality, and that she,
far from imagining that she was silent, believed herself to be in her
deeds most eloquent, was one of the few traits remaining to him of the
street-born man.

As an example of their reservedness was the fact that, though Eyelids,
Peggy's brother, had set out on the winter hunt and had not returned,
no explanation of his delay had been forthcoming, nor had Granger
summoned up the energy to inquire for himself. On their first arrival
he had felt distinctly curious as to his whereabouts. Had he come
across traces of Spurling and gone in pursuit of him? Had he heard
from some stray Indian that Spurling was an outlaw, with a price upon
his head? Had Beorn, having found that his cache at the Forbidden
River had been broken into, dispatched his son to follow up the thief
and exact revenge? Or was Spurling dead, and had Eyelids killed him,
for which reason he was afraid to come back?

For the first few days afte