eart the winter posts,
although she had never seen them. She could imagine the isolation of
such a place, and the intense loneliness of the solitary man condemned
to live through the dark Northern winters, seeing no one but the rare
Indians who might come in to trade with him for their pelts. She could
appreciate the wild joy of a return for a brief season to the company
of fellow-men.

When her glance fell upon the last of the canoes, it rested with a
flash of surprise. The craft was still floating idly, its bow barely
caught against the bank. The crew had deserted, but amidships, among
the packages of pelts and duffel, sat a stranger. The canoe was that
of the post at Kettle Portage.

She saw the stranger to be a young man with a clean-cut face, a trim
athletic figure dressed in the complete costume of the _voyageurs_,
and thin brown and muscular hands. When the canoe touched the bank he
had taken no part in the scramble to shore, and so had sat forgotten
and unnoticed save by the girl, his figure erect with something of the
Indian's stoical indifference. Then when, for a moment, he imagined
himself free from observation, his expression abruptly changed. His
hands clenched tense between his buckskin knees, his eyes glanced here
and there restlessly, and an indefinable shadow of something which
Virginia felt herself obtuse in labelling desperation, and yet to
which she discovered it impossible to fit a name, descended on his
features, darkening them. Twice he glanced away to the south. Twice he
ran his eye over the vociferating crowd on the narrow beach.

Absorbed in the silent drama of a man's unguarded expression, Virginia
leaned forward eagerly. In some vague manner it was borne in on her
that once before she had experienced the same emotion, had come into
contact with someone, something, that had affected her emotionally
just as this man did now. But she could not place it. Over and over
again she forced her mind to the very point of recollection, but
always it slipped back again from the verge of attainment. Then a
little movement, some thrust forward of the head, some nervous, rapid
shifting of the hands or feet, some unconscious poise of the
shoulders, brought the scene flashing before her--the white snow, the
still forest, the little square pen-trap, the wolverine, desperate but
cool, thrusting its blunt nose quickly here and there in baffled hope
of an orifice of escape. Somehow the man reminded her of the