"Listen to me well," he commanded. "You shall make a count of all
rifles in this place--at once. Let no one furnish this man with food
or arms. You know the story of _la Longue Traverse_. This man shall
take it. So inform my people. I, the Factor, decree it so. Prepare all
things at once--understand, _at once_!"

Ned Trent waited to hear no more, but sauntered from the room
whistling gayly a boatman's song. His point was gained.

Outside, the long Northern twilight with its beautiful shadows of
crimson was descending from the upper regions of the east. A light
wind breathed up-river from the bay. The Free Trader drew his lungs
full of the evening air.

"Just the same, I think she will come," said he to himself. "_La
Longue Traverse_, even at once, is a pretty slim chance. But this
second string to my bow is better. I believe I'll get the rifle--if
she comes!"

_Chapter Seven_

Virginia ran quickly up the narrow stairs to her own room, where she
threw herself on the bed and buried her face in the pillows.

As she had said, she was very much shaken. And, too, she was afraid.

She could not understand. Heretofore she had moved among the men
around her, pure, lofty, serene. Now at one blow all this crumbled.
The stranger had outraged her finer feelings. He had insulted her
father in her very presence;--for this she was angry. He had insulted
herself;--for this she was afraid. He had demanded that she meet him
again; but this--at least in the manner he had suggested--should not
happen. And yet she confessed to herself a delicious wonder as to what
he would do next, and a vague desire to see him again in order to find
out. That she could not successfully combat this feeling made her
angry at herself. And so in mingled fear, pride, anger, and longing
she remained until Wishkobun, the Indian woman, glided in to dress her
for the dinner whose formality she and her father consistently
maintained. She fell to talking the soft Ojibway dialect, and in the
conversation forgot some of her emotion and regained some of her calm.

Her surface thoughts, at least, were compelled for the moment to
occupy themselves with other things. The Indian woman had to tell her
of the silver fox brought in by Mu-hi-ken, an Indian of her own tribe;
of the retort Achille Picard had made when MacLane had taunted him;
of the forest fire that had declared itself far to the east, and of
the theories to account for it where no campers had