our promise
in this matter."

"Why?"

"You will learn that later, too. Will you promise?"

For a minute, the girl struggled, and then love won. Better to read
the bitter parting message and lose it than not see it at all.

"Yes, I promise," she said, quietly; and he immediately put the
envelope in her hands.

Her trembling fingers picked at the flap as she turned away.

"You will pardon me?" she announced rather than asked, turning her
back upon him. No living being must see her expression as these
last words met her eye.

"Certainly."

With seeming nonchalance, Seguis filled his pipe from a skin
tobacco-pouch, and began to smoke. The men gathering up scattered
stores at the edge of the woods below moved slowly and painfully
because of their wounds, he noticed. A snow-bunting chirped from
a drift near by, and faintly to his ears from the deeper woods came
the chattering scold of a whiskey-jack, or jay. He noticed these
things during the first few whiffs. Then, he looked once again at
Jean. Her back was still turned, but presently she faced him slowly,
her cheeks flushed, and her blue eyes starry bright, though wet.
He appeared unconscious of her emotion, a thing for which she
mentally thanked him. In fact, she found him less offensive every
moment. He was different from any half-breed she had ever known,
but he was only less offensive than others. He could never be
anything better.

"Now, tell me why you want this letter back?" she asked, clinging
to it desperately, as though it were her lover's hand.

"I want to take it to Captain McTavish, but I want you to write
something on it first. You will pardon me if I ask if that was not
a letter of farewell?"

"It was."

"Have you a pencil with you?"

"Not here, but there is one in the cabin, among my father's journals.
Shall I get it?" Then she bit her lip with vexation. Instead of
dominating this interview, as she had intended, she was submitting
herself to the plans of the half-breed.

"I must ask for the letter while you are gone."

After a moment's thought Jean handed it to him, with a promise to
return without warning the men at the edge of the woods. A certain
curiosity to see this mysterious happening to its conclusion stirred
within her. Now that Donald had escaped the shadow of death that had
been hovering over him, her spirits rose buoyantly, and she was anxious
to further anything that concerned him. She returned presently with
the pencil, a