at long before the pleasant wood fire For the
first time Annie Gray felt she had found some one to whom she could
talk and tell what was in her heart, and the story of the last eleven
years was revealed, from the time that pretty Annie Simmons, fresh
from Scotland, arrived at the Hudson's Bay post at Fort Resolution,
coming by dog-train the last two hundred miles to her cousin, the
factor's wife--the thin-lipped daughter of the Covenanters--who kept
the pretty young cousin closely at work in the kitchen with her pots
and pans when the traders came in, for Mrs. McPherson had no intention
of losing Annie and her capable help after bringing her all the way
from the Isle of Skye.

After a year of hard work, and some lonesome times, too, in the long,
dark winter, there came to the Post a young trapper and prospector,
Jim Gray.

"When I saw him," said the woman, with the silver bands of gray
encircling her shapely head, "I knew him for my own man. He was tall
and dark, with a boyish laugh that I loved, and a way of suddenly
becoming very serious in the middle of his fun--a sort of clouding
over of his face as if the sun had gone under for a minute."

She spoke haltingly, but Pearl knew what was in her heart, and her
quick imagination painted in the details of each picture. She could
see the homesick Scotch girl, in the far Northern post, hungry for
admiration and love, and trying to make herself as comely as she
could. She could sense all the dreams and longings, the hopes and
thrills.

"Tell me more about him," Pearl urged.

"He had the out-of-doors look," said Mrs. Gray, "big, gentle,
fearless. I knew as soon as I looked in his eyes that I would go with
him if he asked me--anywhere. I would dare anything, suffer anything
for him. Nothing mattered; you will know it some time, Pearl, I hope.
It brings sorrow, maybe, but it is the greatest thing in life. Even
now, looking back down these black years, I would do the same--I would
go with my man.

"My cousin and her husband, the factor, forbade him the house when they
saw what was happening. They had nothing against him. Every trapper
said Jim Gray was straight as a gun-barrel. It was just that they
would not let me go--they wanted my work, but I had already worked out
my passage money, and considered myself free. They locked me in my
room at night, and treated me like a prisoner. They said abominable
things.

"One night a tapping came at the little square window It wa